Vittorio Emanuele II (1820-1878) was king of Italy from 1861 until his death. The eldest son of Carlo Alberto of Savoy, he had succeeded to the throne of the kingdom of Sardinia when his father abdicated in 1849. His father had been committed to freeing Northern Italy from the Austrian yoke. The son, abetted by such able ministers as Massimo d'Azeglio and Camillo Cavour, used international diplomacy to further the same ends. Following the liberation of Naples and Sicily by Garibaldi, the Piedmontese constitution was adopted for the whole of Italy, with Vittorio Emanuele as its sovereign.
The history of Marochetti's patronage by the Savoy Carignano dynasty dated back to 1827, when his first figure group, Young Girl Playing with a Dog, was presented to the then king of Sardinia, Carlo Felice. Around 1831 Marochetti executed busts of the young Vittorio Emanuel, and of his brother, Ferdinando, Duke of Genoa,, which are today housed in the Castello di Racconigi. For the boys' father, Carlo Alberto, Marochetti executed the work then considered to be his masterpiece, the equestrian statue of the 16th century Duke of Savoy, Emanuele Filiberto, which was erected in the Piazza San Carlo in Turin in 1838. Later, in 1861, a yet more ambitious equestrian monument to Carlo Alberto himself, by Marochetti, was also erected in the city.
The bust of Vittorio Emanuele represents him when he was still King of Sardinia, and before he became King of the unified Italy. Nevertheless, unlike Marochetti's much earlier bust of him, this one shows the image of the adult king with which we are more familiar; the somewhat porcine features, the massive moustache and brush of hair. He is shown wearing the winter uniform of the Piedmontese cavalry, complete with the spencer jacket with its astrakhan collar. To the chest are pinned the Piedmontese Order of the Annunziata and the medals of the Legion of Honour and of the Order of the Garter. Before executing this bust, Marochetti had already created an equestrian statuette of Vittorio Emanuele, which was shown at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1855, but of which no examples have so far come to light. It seems to have been in preparation for this work that Marochetti made known his feelings about the king's appearance to a fellow Piedmontese: "He certainly is not beautiful, our sovereign, but it would be possible to do something striking and original with him: he has some indefinable savagery, a picturesque quality about him, which is not without grandeur and makes one think of a king of the Huns, a barbarian chieftain. He sits a horse well, and I'm sure that in making the most of this ensemble, one might manage to produce an interesting statue". (
Sylvanecte, Souvenirs Contemporains. La Cour Impériale à
Compiègne, Paris, 1884, p.85 )
It has recently been proposed that the portrait bust of the king was executed during the diplomatic visit made by Vittorio Emanuele to England, following a visit to Paris, in 1855. Although it is in a sense a souvenir of that visit, the king having received from Queen Victoria the Order of the Garter on that occasion, it is unlikely that he would have found time for a sitting in the hectic schedule of engagements in and around London. The sculptor had been much involved in this schedule. In company with the Sardinian ambasssador, Emanuele d'Azeglio, and General Grey, Marochetti welcomed the King ashore at Dover on the 30 November. (Times, 1 Dec.1855) For the lunch, given to the King at the Guildhall on 4 December, the windows of the Great Hall were blanked out and filled with appropriate paintings, executed by Messrs Fenton and Absalon. At one end were painted portraits of the heads of state of the allied nations in the war in Crimea; Queen Victoria, Napoleon III, Vittorio Emanuele and Sultan Mustafa Reshid. At the other, a view of the Piazza di S. Carlo in Turin, with Marochetti's statue of Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, founder of the Savoy Carignano dynasty, to which Vittorio Emanuele belonged. (The Lady's Newspaper, 8 Dec.1855) A more likely date for the execution of the bust is suggested by the unwinding of an amorous intrigue, whose details have recently been amusingly retailed in an article in the Burlington Magazine by Alessandra Guerrini. The King's wife, Adelaide of Austria, had died in childbirth shortly before the visit to London, and during the visit, Vittorio Emanuele was clearly smitten by a cousin of Queen Victoria, Princess Mary of Cambridge, who later became Duchess of Teck. Following the royal visit, Marochetti was the channel through which his flirtation was pursued. Knowing that he was about to visit Turin, in June 1856, the sculptor modelled the bust of Princess Mary, and whilst so occupied sounded her out about her feelings for the king, which at that point were fairly positive, despite some reservations about his personal appearance. It was presumably during the sittings for the bust of Vittorio Emanuele, in the months that followed that the king got to hear about these. On his return Marochetti reported to Prince Albert, and was referred by him to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Clarendon. In September Clarendon wrote to tell the prime minister, Palmerston that Vittorio Emanuele "would like the marriage exceedingly, and Cavour is most eager for it". Though her ministers were equally delighted at the prospect, the Queen was concerned about the proposed alliance on diplomatic as well as religious grounds. She claimed that she was leaving it to the Princess to decide for herself, and, whether or not Mary was influenced by her cousin's views on the matter, she finally turned the king down on grounds of religious incompatibility.
It seems probable therefore that the portrait was executed in the summer of 1856. Marochetti was paid 5000 lira for it on 31st Jan. 1858 by the Piedmontese government. He received a further 2000 lira for another marble version, to be sent to Paris as a record of Vittorio Emanuele's visit there in 1855. The British royal collection includes a marble copy of the bust, signed by Joseph Edgar Boehm.
(The information in this entry is derived from the following sources: A. Guerrini, "A diplomatic tour of 1855: Queen Victoria, King Victor Emmanuel II and Carlo Marochetti", Burlington Magazine, no.1328, Nov. 2013, pp.774-778
H.Maxwell, The Life and Letters of George William Frederick, Fourth Earl of Clarendon, 2 vol. London 1913, pp.124-126
C. Kinloch Cooke, A memoir of Her Royal Highness Princess Mary Adelaide Duchess of Teck, 2 vols, London 1900, vol.I p.244
The bust was quite recently identified in the Royal Armoury in Turin by an art historian, Angela Maisano, whilst researching her thesis on Marochetti )
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