Love and Loyalty in Florence, Italy

myminifactory

A brief life of Pietro Arrow, the sculptor, who lived from 1814 to 1856. It was a life spent in early years mastering marble, a life that opened up to fame and success, but tragically ended at age thirty-two when he fell off a scaffold while working on the famous Columbus Monument in Piazza Acquaverde, Genoa. The year was 1854; two years later, due to serious injuries, he passed away. Fate's cruelty did not allow him to continue on his promising path, with his wonderful works created in the wake of Lorenzo Bartolini's magisterial lexicon, where careful and meticulous analysis of truth would lead to different stylistic results. The presence of one of his sculptures, Love and Loyalty, 1840, now at the Galleria of Modern Art in Palazzo Pitti, Florence, provides a comprehensive view of the artist's language. A child, personification of Love, sits on a log while idealizing their gaze, veiled with unshed tears, towards Loyalty, represented by a lifeless dog at her feet. The theme is Anacreontic, and the structural and stylistic figure does not deviate from neoclassical poetry's dictates, yet a warm family thrill runs through the icy marble, making human pain tangible in the mythological character who suffers visibly before the real and tangible figuration of Fidelity, a little dog that puts its head down on the child's foot, seeking physical contact in this safe harbor amidst life's uncertainties.