Ancient bronze statue of the XIX CENTURY "Bersagliere alla carica"

Bronze statue "Bersagliere alla carica"

Dimensions: H: 37.5 cm, on a marble base 34x19 cm

Attributed to GIORGIO CERAGOLI Born in Porto Santo Stefano on 28 April 1861 by the customs clerk Giuseppe Ceragioli and by Fanny Bracci, he moved to Florence at a very young age, where he trained at the school of the sculptor Ulisse Cambi. He enters the body of the Bersaglieri at eighteen, to which he will always remain very attached and where he remains until 1888 obtaining the rank of lieutenant. After moving to Turin he worked with Augusto Ferri, set designer and decorator. Here he established himself as a painter, exhibiting in particular at the Promoting Society of Fine Arts in Turin; as a sculptor he created in 1886 the large statue "A Bersagliere alla carica", which today adorns the staircase of the Royal Armory. In the period around the turn of 1900 he is very active as a decorator; in particular he takes care of the decoration of Palazzo Marsaglia in Milan and is then entrusted with the task of decorating the Teatro Regio in Turin, for which he will also work as a set designer. [1] In 1904 he designed and built the company stand for FIAT at the Paris Motor Show. In parallel to these activities he deals with applied arts and creates various commercial brands, fabrics, sports trophies and objects that today would be defined as design; the collaboration in the drafting, in 1902, of the "Programmatic Manifesto for the International Exhibition of Decorative Art in Turin" can also be traced back to this line of production. [Also in 1902 together with friends Davide Calandra, Leonardo Bistolfi, Enrico Reycend and Enrico Thovez founded the magazine "Modern decorative art", a monthly illustrated magazine of art and home decoration that will have a significant influence on the panorama of applied arts in Italy. In 1914, with Cesare Biscarra, he created the monument to Ascanio Sobrero in the Parco del Valentino, also in Turin. Even after the First World War his activity continues both as a sculptor and as a painter; among the sculptures of this period can be remembered a statue of the Alpino in Villar Perosa, the bronze high-relief in memory of the bersaglieri who died in the great war, executed in 1923 and placed in 1936 in the Lamarmora garden in Turin and the bronze monument to the Bersagliere of 1936 subsequently placed in the center of Piazza Alessandro Lamarmora in Biella. He also combines his artistic production with teaching activities at the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin. He died in Turin on 11 December 1947.