Ok, so you’re a sculptor, here’s the brief: we need a statue to represent a fictional heroine from an 1858 poem who meets the Italian patriots before they go and die fighting against the kingdom of Naples. Fair enough. I’ll get to work.

If the sculptor was English he’d be thinking of a Florence Nightingale type and start with a lamp. If Scottish he’d make the woman ugly, Sturgeonesque and fiercely aggressive. A French sculptor engaged in any depiction of war would probably start with the white flag.

But Emanuele Stifano is an Italian sculptor. So he started with a fabulous arse. And cobbled the rest of the woman together around that. And why not? How could he not? He’s Italian and that’s just how he’s wired. He wanted the make the statue a nude but was dissuaded so made the token gesture of clothing it in the flimsiest, wind-blowniest fabric he could conjure out of bronze. It’s almost a tribute to the wet t-shirt.

The statue has been accused of being ‘deeply sexist’, of being ‘a sexualised body devoid of soul’. Whereas I see this image as being deeply empowering of women. Especially empowering of women with fabulous arses. Who should be empowered and revered.

Emanuele could have made the woman less beautiful, less ‘sexualised’, he could have made a sort of ‘Les Dawson in drag’ image. But would that have inspired or comforted soldiers about to die? They’d have run to their death in terror. Whereas this image would be what those poor, fictional boys would undoubtedly want as their last view of life. It’s what all Italian boys want. A strong and appealing woman, confident and independent, in a pseudo-pornographic pose with a wonderful bum.

If they wanted different they should have gone to a priest for their sculpture. Or not an Italian male.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx