The Pursuit of Italy by David Gilmour

Author:David Gilmour
Language: ru
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, History
ISBN: 9781846142512
Publisher: Allen Lane (Penguin Group)
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

FATHER OF THE NATION

Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, the Patriarch of Venice, visited Turin in 1953 and was astonished by the abundance of enormous monuments he saw there. Officiating in a city whose republic had forbidden statues in public places, the future Pope John XXIII was perplexed. What were they doing, he asked a Torinese, all these warriors on horseback, waving their swords as if charging at the head of their troops?13

Most of the equestrian sword-wavers, cast in bronze and dominating their piazzas, are members of the House of Savoy. They include Emanuel Philibert, the sixteenth-century duke, who is thrusting his weapon back in its scabbard after a victory in alliance with Spain against France; Charles Albert who, despite his brief and disastrous military career, is depicted as a conqueror guarded by the figures of a gunner, a lancer, a grenadier and a bersagliere; and Ferdinand of Genoa, Victor Emanuel’s brother, who is urging his men forward even though his horse has been mortally wounded and is already on its knees. The most majestic is of Victor Emanuel’s second son, Amedeo, who, after a bizarre invitation to become King of Spain, duly took up his duties in Madrid and remained there for just over two years before abdicating in 1873. He sits high on a prancing horse in the Valentino park beside the River Po, the plinth beneath him ringed by dozens of horsemen representing the most illustrious members of the family since the founding of the line in the early Middle Ages. It is a tremendous tribute to a dynasty that over the centuries acquired the titles of Count of Savoy, Duke of Savoy, King of Sicily, King of Sardinia, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, King of Italy, Emperor of Ethiopia and King of Albania.

Victor Emanuel is the only rival to Garibaldi in the number of statues in Italy. He too is frequently shown on a stallion, the helmeted image of a conqueror flourishing his sword, but he is often portrayed also as a standing figure, regal and uniformed, one hand holding his helmet, the other resting on his sword-hilt. This is how he poses in Turin in the gigantic monument which you see looming above the trees as you walk along the Corso Vittorio Emanuele towards its intersection with the Corso Galileo Ferraris. The king himself, on top of a column, is nine metres tall; the whole structure reaches a height of thirty-nine metres.

The statues of the king, like his many portraits, were executed as acts of homage and propaganda. Yet they seldom attempted to disguise their subject’s unhandsome appearance or to romanticize him or make him look intelligent. The monarch had a squat figure, a red face and unprepossessing features – a fat nose, a round face, bulbous eyes and an enormous moustache. So dissimilar was he to Charles Albert – who was tall, pale, thin-faced and aristocratic – that a biological connection between the two of them must be questionable. Rumours were whispered shortly after the boy’s birth in 1820, before Charles Albert became king, that they were not father and son.

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