Vincenzo Gemito , 1852 – 1929

Siren 1920

Terracotta; signed and dated to the side of the base ‘V Gemito 1920’ and further inscribed to the reverse ‘La fontana della Sirena;’ one branch of the lyre replaced 10 cm. high

Literature: A. Schettini, Gemito, Milan, 1944, p. 39, pl. 51. F. Bellonzi, Appunti sull’arte di Vincenzo Gemito, , 1952, p. 29. C. Siviero, Gemito, Napoli, 1953, pp. 90-91. L. Gambara, Le ville parmensi, Parma, 1966, p. 327. S. Susinno (ed. by), Da Canova a De Carolis: acquisizioni e restauri delle collezioni dell’Ottocento della Galleria nazionale d'arte moderna, Rome, 1978, p. 66.

Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist in 1923 by Riccardo Fainardi, Gaiano, and by descent; Private collection, .

Recently brought back to the attention of the international public thanks to the important retrospective at the , and the Museum di Capodimonte, Naples,1 Vincenzo Gemito is rightly considered by critics as one of the most original Italian sculptors active between the 19th and 20th centuries.

Gemito’s bibliography has mainly focused on his early production: that is, on the period between his training at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples, in association with the painter , 2 and the mental crisis that seized him in 1887, forcing him to inactivity for more than twenty years. His 20th century production, on the other hand, is still substantially unexplored, and sometimes superficially labelled as a phase of classicist revival.

Despite the obsession with antiquity, which led him to measure himself on several occasions against classical themes (from Alexander the Great to the Medusa), Gemito's work from the first two decades of the 20th century is, on the contrary, marked by moments of unexpected creativity. This is demonstrated by the small terracotta entitled by the artist the Siren Fountain (La fontana della Sirena), signed and dated 1920, and which is surprising at the same time for the freshness of the modelling, left in an almost sketchy state, and for the attention to finely tooled details. The sensuality of the terracotta, even more sophisticated due to its diminutive format, is a distinctive

1 J.L. Champion (ed. by), Gemito. Le sculpteur de l’âme napolitaine, Paris, 2019. 2 For an in-depth study see M. Carrera, C. Virno (ed. by), Gemito, Mancini e il loro ambiente: opere giovanili, Rome 2017.

feature of Gemito’s sculpture, which culminates in the creation of the small precious sculptures on which he worked between the 1910s and 1920s.

Although a recent rediscovery, the Siren Fountain was published for the first time by Alfredo Schettini in the Gemito monograph published in Milan in 1944 - although with the incorrect date of 1918 - which was reiterated in more recent publications. Schettini gave great relevance to the small sculpture, reproducing it on a full page, and gave a rare testimony of the genesis of the artwork: the artist was in the park of Villa Lucia, then frequented by leading Neapolitan artists and intellectuals, when he was inspired by the vision of a young woman in which he seemed to recognize the siren Partenope. He asked her to pose nude for him, but the girl, ‘a demure virgin’, refused the proposal, so Gemito modelled the sculpture in his studio only using his imagination.

The enthusiasm shown by the sculptor in the realization of this small masterpiece is also documented by the Neapolitan painter Carlo Siviero, a friend of the artist, who, in his 1953 monograph, refers to letters sent to him by Gemito in which he told him about his newfound inspiration and ‘to be intent on modelling a little mermaid’.3

Furthermore, as proof of the importance the artist attributed to the Siren Fountain, it is worth mentioning the unlocated Self-portrait from 1920 in which, behind the bearded sculptor, one can see the very same terracotta sitting on the perch, awaiting the final touches (Schettini 1944, fig. 60), Figs. 1 & 2.

In this work Gemito approaches for the last time, as far as we know, the subject of the siren Partenope, emblem of the myth of Naples. In some drawings made between 1911 and 1912, the artist already portrayed his daughter Giuseppina as a siren, naked and with the attribute of the lyre (Artist’s daughter as the siren Partenope, 1911, Naples, Gallerie d'Italia and Study for the siren Partenope, 1911, private collection), Figs. 3 & 4.

In the drawings in which Partenope is impersonated by his daughter - the body represented with outspoken realism - Gemito seems to have Michelangelo’s drawings in mind, while in this terracotta the references shift to Mannerist sculpture and in particular to Benvenuto Cellini, one of the ideal references of the Neapolitan sculptor, particularly during his late period. Indeed, the artist considered himself a reborn Cellini (‘Jealous of Cellini, I too have a foundry’, he wrote as early as 1883),4 to the point that he longed to spend his final years in Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, calling upon the highest Italian authorities to see his every desire satisfied.

Indeed, he would write directly to the King Vittorio Emanuele III: ‘It was the siren who told me to stay in Rome, to work here on the new works (…) And I, both in my sleep and in my wake, listen to the siren. I obey, of course, only the Siren who speaks to me from the bottom of the sea

3 C. Siviero, Gemito, Naples 1953, p. 91. 4 S. Di Giacomo, Vincenzo Gemito: la vita, l’opera, Naples 1905, p. 121.

or the bottom of my soul, not those who call me from cars or steamships. I was not born a traveller and my only journey is my dream as an artist’.5

Already in his early years, Gemito had measured himself against the theme of the Siren. In his memoirs of 1903, the painter Edoardo Dalbono recalled the Neapolitan carnival of 1876, citing as memorable the ‘Siren’s chariot’ modelled by Gemito6 together with other artists active in Naples. In the young nude on the chariot, known thanks to one of the drawings made on by Francesco Paolo Michetti and published in L’Illustrazione Italiana, one can recognize the features of his first wife, Mathilde Duffaud (Fig. 5). In any case, both the Siren of the chariot and that of the terracotta in question seem to recall the famous fountain of the Sirena Partenope today in Piazza Sannazzaro in Naples, created in 1869 by the sculptor Onofrio Buccini in collaboration with the young Francesco Jerace, a friend of Gemito’s. It is perhaps precisely because of his affinity with this fountain that the artist has named the sculpture after it, engraving the title into the clay before firing it.

The hypothesis that the artist intended the sculpture as a project for a fountain which, for whatever reason, was never realised (as was the case with the monument to Alexander the Great, which he had been working on for decades, producing a great number of studies), cannot be ruled out, though it is more likely that, in this instance, the artist attributed to the terracotta the value of a ‘fountain’ conceptually, that is, for the symbolic aspect of its link with water. Indeed, Gemito had already previously given new meaning to the reinterpretation of one of his old sculptures, the famous Acquaiolo of 1881 (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna), which in 1908 became La Sorgente, in a complex game of references to the myth of Galatea.7

The Siren Fountain probably entered the collections of the Emilian painter Riccardo Fainardi in October 1923, when Gemito gave him a declaration of authenticity in which he stated: ‘The little Siren in terracotta just 9 or 10 centimetres tall is uniquely original, and has never been reproduced in any material, so that this one you possess there are no others. For memory / Naples 10 October 1923 / Vincenzo Gemito’ (Figs. 6-7). Fainardi owned a villa in Capri, in the bay of Marina Piccola, where he went annually looking for pictorial motifs. During his vacation periods between Naples and Capri he met the elderly Gemito, from whom he probably bought the work, which he then kept in his villa in Gaiano, protecting it in a glass bell as the most precious of treasures.

Manuel Carrera February 2020

5 C. Afeltra, Vincenzo Gemito, in “La Lettura”, 1929, fasc. 4, p. 268. Numerous references to sirens are present in the letters written by the artist in his maturity years. See the documentary appendix in M. S. De Marinis, Gemito, L’Aquila- Rome 1993. 6 E. Dalbono, Ricordi (dal mio taccuino), in B. Croce (a cura di), La scuola napoletana di pittura nel secolo decimonono ed altri scritti d’arte, Bari 1915, p. 187: ‘Carnival was also an artistic event; and you will remember the famous one with the mermaid's chariot, which was modeled by one of our great sculptors, Vincenzo Gemito’ (‘anche il Carnevale era un fatto artistico; e voi ricorderete quello famoso col carro della Sirena, che era modellata da un nostro grande scultore, Vincenzo Gemito’) 7 G. Brocca, Gemito e Roma, in C. Virno (a cura di), Vincenzo Gemito: la collezione, Rome 2014, pp. 17-24. Fig. 1. Vincenzo Gemito, Self-portrait, 1920, Location unknown.

Fig. 2. Vincenzo Gemito , Self -portrait, 1920 (detail), Location unknown. Fig. 3 Vincenzo Gemito, The artist’s daughter as the siren Partenope, 1911, Gallerie d’Italia, Naples.

Fig. 4 Vincenzo Gemito, Study for the siren Partenope, 1911, Private collection. Fi Fig. 5 F Francesco Paolo Michetti, Chariot of the Siren sculpted by Vincenzo Gemito for the Carnival of Naples, 1876, from L’Illustrazione Italiana. Fi Vi Figs. 6-7 Vincenzo Gemito’s declaration of authenticity, 1923.