Ximenes
Ettore (Palermo 1855 - Roma 1926)
Italian
sculptor.
He attended the
Accademia di Belle Arti in Palermo (1868–71) under the
guidance of the sculptor Vincenzo Ragusa (b 1841). In
1872 he moved to Naples, where he was influenced by
Domenico Morelli and Stanislao Lista (1824–1908), and
was also in close contact with Vincenzo Gemito. Between
1874 and 1880 he lived in Florence, supported by a grant,
and became familiar with various aspects of Renaissance
sculpture, which enhanced his eclectic tendency. In 1878
he travelled to Paris, where he came into close contact
with the work of Rodin and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. On
returning to Italy he began a period of extraordinary
artistic productivity, and from 1885 to 1894 was
Director of the Istituto Statale d’Arte in Urbino. His
original training was strictly realist, and he was also
influenced by the Renaissance Revival in Italian
sculpture in the late 19th century. His first public
works, including the monuments to Giuseppe Garibaldi in
Pesaro (1887) and Milan (1895), are characterized by a
strong realistic tendency, both in the handling of the
material and in the rendering of the subject. At the
Venice Biennale, Ximenes exhibited his plaster maquette
for the bronze statue of Giuseppe Zanardelli (1905) in
the Corte d’Appello, Brescia, which represents the
statesman wrapped in a toga over modern clothes. The
Zanardelli tomb (1906) in the Cimitero Vantiniano,
Brescia, shows a more modernist tension in its
composition with the bronze group of The Family set
against an emphatically floral background, parts of
which were in painted stucco (destr.). A similar
tendency appears in the bronze group representing The
Law for the monument to Victor-Emanuel II (1885–1911) in
Rome. Between 1913 and 1920 Ximenes planned a large
monumental group to commemorate Giuseppe Verdi in Parma,
of which all that remains is one bronze plate in the
Piazza Marconi. The plate shows a portrait of Verdi and
an Allegory of Music and Poetry: on the reverse is the
Battle of Legnano, scenes depicting Verdi’s Sicilian
Vespers and Victor-Emanuel II in Parma. This work showed
the influence of Rodin and such Art Nouveau artists as
Leonardo Bistolfi, as well as the friezes created by
Aristide Sartorio for the Palazzo di Montecitorio
(1908–12) in Rome. From 1911 until his death Ximenes
worked mostly on foreign commissions, for example in New
York, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Kiev. Between
1919 and 1926 he worked with the architect Manfredo
Manfredi (1859–1927) in São Paulo, Brazil, on the
Monument to Independence. Ximenes also worked in the
fields of painting and drawing, illustrating the story
Il vino by Edmondo de Amicis, and Nei boschi incantati
by Pìetro Petrocchi.
Works:
Monument Verdi - Parma