In Fonderia 2 2024

ARTE E FONDERIA
Monumento ad Alessandro III di Paolo Troubetzkoy in Piazza Znamenskaya
a San Pietroburgo, prima del 1916.
Monument to Alexander III by Paul Troubetzkoy on Znamenskaya Square in
St. Petersburg, before 1916.
se il prestigioso Premio degli Artisti della Prima
Esposizione Internazionale di Arte Decorativa
Moderna. I pesantissimi bronzi furono lentamente
trasportati dalla fonderia di Sperati fino
alla loro sede definitiva.
Sperati fuse anche nel 1883 la statua equestre
di Vittorio Emanuele modellata dal milanese
Ambrogio Borghi e sistemata in Piazza Bra a
Verona; nel 1886 la statua di Odoardo Tabacchi
raffigurante Alessandro Ferrero della Marmora
che si trova a Biella; nel 1893 un secondo
monumento a Garibaldi, di Davide Calandra,
che sta a Parma. Frammezzo a questi monumenti
realizzò una innumerevole quantità di
altre opere, come il busto di Umberto I a Gressoney-Saint-Jean
(Aosta), del 1901, commisdescription
about the casting of this monument
which is worth rereading: “The horse was made
in 4 pieces, namely: head with neck up to the
martingale, part of the body in front of the strap,
rear part and tail. The man was cast in one piece
apart from the head, which, as the most important
part, was cast separately so as to avoid even
the slightest defect. If it had been cast together
with the body it could have easily been a little
spongy, since the upper part of a casting is never
perfectly sound due to the impurities and waste
that gather there. Horse and rider together weigh
7,550 kilos. The alder wood used for firing all the
lost wax moulds came to the impressive figure of
60 tons, that is, almost 10 times the weight of the
bronze melted with this system and the various
clays used almost reached 60 tons; the waxes
prepared reached the weight of approximately 1
ton, of which 300 kg of rosin and fat and 7 of wax ” .
The highly artistic and technical result is still
perfectly accessible today and can be admired
for its elegance, being certainly one of the best
equestrian monuments of the Italian nineteenth
century. But perhaps Sperati’s masterpiece was
the very laborious and complex casting of the
monument to Duke Amedeo d’Aosta by Davide
Calandra, placed in 1902 in the Valentino park in
Turin. The extraordinary bronze group with pink
granite base was created with such fine detail
that it earned it the prestigious Artists’ Award of
the First International Exhibition of Modern Decorative
Art. The very heavy bronzes were slowly
transported from the Sperati foundry to their final
location.
In 1883 Sperati also cast the equestrian statue of
Vittorio Emanuele modelled by the Milanese Ambrogio
Borghi and situated in Piazza Bra in Verona;
in 1886 the statue by Odoardo Tabacchi depicting
Alessandro Ferrero della Marmora which
is located in Biella; and in 1893 a second monument
to Garibaldi, by Davide Calandra, which is in
Parma. Apart from these monuments, he created
an innumerable quantity of other works, such as
the bust of Umberto I in Gressoney-Saint-Jean
(Aosta), in 1901, commissioned by Peccoz Barons
Carlo and Antonio, which Sperati designed and
modelled personally before casting it in bronze.
There are also numerous cemetery statues,
busts, bronzes, commemorative plaques, cups
and crowns: a truly very vast and flexible number
of works that still await a complete and truly necessary
classification. In those years, Sperati had
the joy of realising, as he had so long desired, that
102 In Fonderia