Silvestro Lega: “The Dying Mazzini" - ultimo ritratto

“The Dying Mazzini" ("Gli ultimi momenti di Giuseppe Mazzini)" now at at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design in Providence in the U.S., is a portrait of extraordinary intensity that can be considered one of the icons of our Risorgimento.

Silvestro Lega conceived the work on March 12, 1872, when he was directly in the presence of Giuseppe Mazzini's body, and devoted himself to its elaboration through a series of intermediate steps until the late summer of 1873.

With this work, Lega achieved an extremely personal language in the canvas, rereading past experiences-first and foremost that of the Macchiaioli-and introducing innovative elements that can be traced back to some exponents of the last generation of the international scene, especially the French.

Determined to carry out a final homage to Mazzini, Lega chose to depict him still alive, a few hours before death seized him. Aware of the importance of historical fidelity, the artist collected a great deal of documentation, and on the basis of these and other materials he made the preparatory study of the head, now in Modigliana, with a chromatic palette all played out in the white of the cushion, the ochre of the background and the brown of the robe with a rapid, loose, even rough brushstroke.

The painting constitutes an element of discontinuity from the official iconography of Giuseppe Mazzini: the image of the imperturbable hero that the Father of the Fatherland himself had imposed until then seems distant here, replaced by a new one of intense, dramatic yet composed fragility. Lega thus gave birth to an original and highly personal stylistic figure, arousing the outrage of the republican movement and, in fact, condemning his own painting to exile.