The Last Portrait. Mazzini and Lega – Parallel Lives in the Risorgimento

The centerpiece of the exhibition project hosted in the Sala Zanardelli of the Vittoriano is a painting of extraordinary intensity that depicts Giuseppe Mazzini on his deathbed in all his fragile and composed humanity and reaffirms the central role of painting in the process of transmitting historical memory in the same way as other mediums.

The painting is exhibited to the public thanks to a loan from the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, US. It is the work of Silvestro Lega, a fervent Mazzinian and follower of republican ideals, who conceived it on 12 March 1872 in Pisa, in the home of Pellegrino Rosselli and his wife Janeth Nathan where Giuseppe Mazzini had died two days earlier under the pseudonym of George Brown. Lega’s painting returns an image of Mazzini that is unprecedented and very far from the official iconography proposed by his followers of a severe and imperturbable hero.

The exhibition is organized on two floors. The first is dedicated to the figure of Giuseppe Mazzini and opens with an important and recent acquisition by  VIVE - Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia: the Bust of Giuseppe Mazzini executed by sculptor Giovanni Spertini in 1878, the year in which the idea of building the Vittoriano was born. On the second floor, the exhibition revolves around the profile of Silvestro Lega and the pivotal role played by the work “The Dying Mazzini” in the iconographic imagery of one of the founders of modern Italy and in the artist’s creative journey.

In total, the exhibition includes more than sixty objects, including sculptures, paintings, engravings, photographs, manuscripts, unpublished documents and Mazzini memorabilia, including his spectacles, sword and shawl, which once belonged to Carlo Cattaneo, providing the visitor with a faithful and compelling historical context. The exhibition ends with an immersive space that allows the public to reflect on the contents of the exhibition, to literally enter the works of art on display, so as to appreciate their details, as well as to verify through the monuments how much the memory of Giuseppe Mazzini remains alive and relevant today.