Allegory of the fatherland, Stele war memorial

allegory of the Fatherland
STELE WAR MEMORIAL, 1919 - ca 1925
vertical marble stele, crowned in the center by the coat of arms and 2 festoons, and laterally wrapped in a bronze laurel wreath: on the left figure (Italy), in the center plaque with the names of the fallen 1915-18, on the bottom right elements symbolic. On the horizontal base, slightly inclined, marble plaque for the fallen 1940-45, 6 continuous lines, names of the fallen in 4 columns (2 for military and 2 for civilians), date and place at the bottom on a single line

OBJECT
stele war memorial
MATERIAL AND TECHNIQUE
marble/ engraving/ sculpture
CULTURAL FIELD
Viterbo area
LOCATION
square
ADDRESS
Piazza Giacomo Matteotti, Montalto di Castro (VT)
HISTORICAL CRITICAL NEWS
Today's monument was rearranged in 2004 by the municipal administration, on the occasion of the restoration of the municipal headquarters, bringing together the large figurative stele erected in the 1920s in memory of the fallen of the 1915-18 war and the plaque in memory of the fallen of 1940 -45 inaugurated on 3 July 1949, both walled up on the facade of the Town Hall. According to "Il Messaggero" on 12 January 1919, a plaque was inaugurated in Montalto di Castro in memory of the town's fallen soldiers with the following inscription: "XXIV MAY MCMXV - III NOVEMBRE MCMXVIII / IMMORTAL EPIC DATES / THEY SHOCKED IGNAVIA ITALY / COME ON TIES / OF A DARE ALLIANCE / AND THROUGH INSPIRATION STRENGTH AND SACRIFICE / OF THE PEOPLE / WITH DECISIVE VICTORIES / OPENED THE ROADS / OF TRENTO AND TRIESTE / LOVED GOALS / OF EVERY ITALIAN HEART / PERENNIAL SIGH / OF MARTYRS AND HEROES / PERPETUAL DREAM OF THINKERS AND HEROES". It is clear that this plaque has nothing to do with the large stele we referred to. In almost all the municipalities in the Viterbo area, immediately after the war they wanted to honor their fallen with marble. The tributes of this first moment are often simple gravestones without any artistic pretension, the purpose of which is to remember the name of deceased loved ones. The poverty of the marble, of low cost and executable by local marble workers, sometimes corresponds to an elaborate and highly rhetorical dedicatory inscription, often entrusted to local scholars. This is also the case of the Montalto tombstone to which "Il Messaggero" refers. The figurative monument, however, is part of the subsequent moment, when ex-combatants and families of the fallen, but also politicians and administrators interested in relaunching the values ​​of a warrior Italy born on the blood of their children, begin to form committees and raise funds for more significant monuments. The stele represents the allegory of Italy, turreted and with a scepter, which pays homage with a branch of laurel to the soldiers who fell fighting for her freedom; on the left the symbolic elements of the soldiers: the helmet, the dagger and a mortar projectile, perhaps chosen instead of the usual musket, due to its smaller dimensions, useful for the packaging of this modern panoply. The allegory is clearly referable to the funerary model of the "sorrowful" of neoclassical origin, from which, in fact, it also takes up the sadness of the face, even if the forms are closer to that idealized realism, which is equally affected by Art Nouveau and of nineteenth-century realism, typical of the 1920s. It is strange that the composition as a whole closely resembles the Monterosi war memorial, where, however, the figure appears more animated and the non-definition of the background of the marble block contrasts with the deliberate polishing of the Montalto marble
CARD TYPE
Works/objects of art
LEGAL CONDITION
property Territorial public body
NATIONAL CATALOG CODE
1209845605
COMPETENT BODY FOR PROTECTION
Superintendence for Historical, Artistic and Ethnoanthropological Heritage of Lazio (with the exclusion of the city of Rome)
FILING BODY
Superintendency of Fine Arts and Landscape for the provinces of Rome, Frosinone, Latina, Rieti and Viter