Massimo Taparelli, Marquis d'Azeglio (1798-1866) was born into an aristocratic Piedmontese family, and as a youth relinquished a commission in the army to become a painter. His artistic career was interrupted between 1849 and 1852, when he was prime minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia. He left behind a considerable legacy of landscape paintings and occasionally portraits, including one very remarkable one of his father-in-law, the novelist, Alessandro Manzoni. He was also himself a novelist, and a composer of at least one opera. Despite all this, Massimo d'Azeglio is now better known as one of the politicians who guided Northern Italy towards independence, and ultimately towards unification. Throughout his premiership and beyond, his nephew, Emanuele d'Azeglio was Sardinian ambassador in London, and between them they insured that Britain supported their cause. Massimo had outlined his "moderate" position in relation to Risorgimento politics in his Programma per l'opinione nazionale italiana of 1847. Responsible, while he was prime minister, for bringing Camillo Cavour into the government, d'Azeglio was obliged, shortly before his resignation, to head off an alliance between certain members of his cabinet and the left-wing led by Urbano Rattazzi. As his successor, Cavour used his diplomatic skills to secure foreign support for the Italian cause. Between them, d'Azeglio and Cavour created for Piedmont a constitutional monarchy fitted for adoption by Italy after unification in 1862.
The d'Azeglios won many supporters for the Italian cause in Britain, so it was clearly not only with himself in mind that Emanuele d'Azeglio asked his uncle to sit to Marochetti for a portrait bust. Massimo took a little persuading, as can be judged from a letter he sent to his nephew on 24 April 1852. "Your idea", he wrote, "of having my bust made by Marochetti is kind, affectionate, honourable, and flattering to my self-esteem. It really requires all the blindness of the more than papal nepotism which dictates my actions to persuade me not to refuse. I therefore accede to your request, since it seems you cannot be happy without my doing so; but let me first, before you pass sentence on me, humbly represent to you that at sixteen, when I was a fine looking young thing, they had that bust which Roberto now owns, done of me; at 46 years of age, Santarelli did one of me, and, if I was no longer handsome at that age, the bust at least was beautiful. Two years ago, Gayrard of Paris did me in bas-relief, and 'la S. Martino' has since also done me in bust form. Ah! and I'm forgetting the full-length statuette by Putinati. There will be no chance, it seems to me, that posterity will be left wondering how this cute kid was configured. It certainly won't be able to plead ignorance on that account. So let's see whether, this being the case, you still have the guts to persist with your project." (Lettere inedite di Massimo d'Azeglio al Marchese Emanuele d'Azeglio, Turin, 1883, p.183)
On the 4 May 1852, Massimo wrote to Emanuele that he was expecting the arrival of Marochetti in Turin, adding "so let God's will be done" (Lettere inedite, p.184). According to two separate accounts, the bust was modelled with extreme rapidity, and once it had been done, d'Azeglio wrote to Lady Elisabeth Romilly, one of his English admirers, to tell her that he had been the more persuaded to sit for it since she had written to assure him that she was one of those interested in the outcome. "I have already been at Marochetti's disposition", he told her, and added that the sculptor "with his talent, will well know how to force posterity to take an interest in me" (Scritti postumi di Massimo d'Azeglio, ed. by Matteo Ricci, Florence 1871, p.483) No doubt in response to her wish, d'Azeglio appears to have sent to her a bronze reduction of the bust. In a letter to her, he described the conditions in which the original model had been executed: "As for Marochetti's bust, I am delighted that you are happy with it. He did it during the days of the ministerial crisis; and if you can't detect any anxiety in it, this really is because I was in fact hardly upset at all at the prospect of no longer being a minister. Marochetti is a man of prodigious talent. He literally threw it off in a flash". (Scritti postumi....., letter of 16 Aug. 1852, pp.485-486) D'Azeglio had threatened resignation in protest at members of his cabinet making common cause with the Rattazzi faction. Sitting for his bust at such a moment would have provided him with a much needed distraction. One of the small bronzes made from Marochetti's model is today in the collection of the Villa Vigoni, near Menaggio on Lake Como.
The marble now in Turin's Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento is the one commissioned by Emanuele d'Azeglio. It was given by him to the city's Museo Civico in 1876, but was deposited in the Museo del Risorgimento before 1911. It has recently been restored and re-displayed.
(The principle source of the above entry has been Alessandra Guerrini, "A diplomatic tour of 1855: Queen Victoria, King Victor Emmanuel II and Carlo Marochetti", Burlington Magazine, no.1328, Nov. 2013, pp.774-778.
Translations of Massimo d'Azeglio's letters from the French and Italian are by Philip Ward-Jackson and Emanuele Gori)
|