In February of 2020, before the world knew of COVID-19 and the difficult times that lay before us, I found myself running around New York to see the museum exhibitions that were soon to end their runs. Given my particular interest in nineteenth-century sculpture, I was drawn to Ellis Island's National Museum of Immigration for the exhibition Sisters in Liberty:From Florence, Italy to New York, New York, which had opened the previous October and was to end in April. (Due to COVID-19, the exhibition was extended until September 13, 2020). Held inside the former Dormitory Rooms above the Registry Room (Great Hall) at Ellis Island (fig. 1), the presentation focused primarily on two sculptures, the first of which was the Liberty of Poetry (1861-83), an allegorical figure created by the Italian artist Pio Fedi (1815-92). The original sculpture is placed on the tomb of the Italian poet and playwright Giovanni Battista Niccolini (1782-1861) at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. The second sculpture at the core of this exhibition was Liberty Enlightening the World (1865-86), otherwise known as the "Statue of Liberty," by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904), a work situated in New York harbor right outside of the exhibition. At a glance, Fedi's sculpture looks very familiar:some have suggested that it was the inspiration for Bartholdi's work. While evidence for that claim is lacking, it is true that these sister sculptures, though born to different fathers, share between them symbols associated with the allegorical mother spirit of Liberty.
During the fall of 2019 and the winter of 2020, the Petit Palais in Paris mounted a significant exhibition of 120 works by the Italian realist sculptor Vincenzo Gemito . The exhibition should have been long concluded by the time of the publication of this review, as it was expected to travel to the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples and to be displayed there from March 15 until June 16, 2020. However, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the exhibition from being presented to the public in Naples during those dates, and instead the show was postponed until this fall. I was privileged to see the exhibition just before COVID-19 rules were in place, when Americans were still permitted to visit Europe and the Petit Palais was packed with unmasked Saturday visitors.Gemito is by far the best-known and most brilliant Neapolitan sculptor of the second half of the nineteenth century. He was abandoned by his birth parents at the ruota dell'Annunziata in Naples on July 17, 1852, and he was given the surname "Gemito," or "he who moans." This seems to be an ironic foreshadowing of his adult life, wherein he would see the death of two of his closest lovers, and in which he would suffer several mental breakdowns. In any event, Gemito was adopted by a poor couple, and he later formed a close relationship with
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