“[...] stylised shapes of sheet metal on top of which the faces live in frowning isolation awaiting eternity”.

Seated or standing figures of cardinals are a recurrent feature of Giacomo Manzù’s work as from the mid-1930s and all the way through the postwar period, when his renown was reflected by his position as the major Vatican sculptor during the reign of Pope John XXIII. There has been a great deal of debate on his identity as a Catholic artist with a variety of critical observations from those who question his devout image and those who assert his spiritual inspiration but detach it from his faith, despite the fact that he was part of a strict Catholic family of humble roots. In any case, he gained the esteem of the upper echelons of the Church over the years and after numerous commissions. The exhibition of 2016-17 at Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome¹ shed some light on this complex relationship, from the threat of excommunication for the creation of the famous bas-relief panels of the Crucifixion in 1941 to the close dialogue with Cardinal Archbishop Loris Capovilla and John XXIII,² which gave his career enormous visibility. Unlike the works on religious subjects, however, the series of cardinals, which Manzù developed as a theme of formal experimentation of a long period, focuses primarily on the iconography of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the ritual magnificence of the liturgical vestments, whose formal and symbolical archaism is fully captured, especially in the context of the post-war years. 

Manzù attracted the attention of critics and especially of Cesare Brandi with the first presentation of a seated cardinal (Cardinale seduto, bronze, 1938, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna) at the 1939 Rome Quadriennale. 

Produced at the same time as the Cerruti drawing, this work can be seen as a response of formal synthesis both to certain forms of 19th-century realism³ and to the artist’s initial infatuation with Medardo Rosso. The fluting of the robes, which was to increase gradually in terms of synthesis and breath, is already indicative of a drive for simplification that can perhaps be traced back to the impact of seeing Cézanne’s paintings with his own eyes as well as a possible visual derivation from Tino di Camaino’s sculpture of Bishop Orso.⁴ Drawings of cardinals had already appeared with greater realism between 1935 and 1937 as illustrations in Bargellini’s periodical Il Frontespizio and in L’Orto. Drawings of the late 1930s were also discussed in the closing section of the major study of the artist’s work on paper published by Corrente with a sensitive and inspired introduction by Mario De Micheli.⁵ As the Milanese critic observed, “he acts inside the contracted circle of the subject” in a way that is “never evident”,⁶ avoiding a certain kind of celebratory rhetoric and employing graphic tools more suited to expressionist modulation, like pen, ink and wash, which makes it possible to obtain a slender line and plastic synthesis of the areas in chiaroscuro. With reference precisely to the drawing of a cardinal that appears as the first coloured plate in the volume, De Micheli wrote as follows: 

“Above a plane of tonal relief, the figure detaches itself and develops on its own account into defined and accentuated volume. The purplish, burnt patch expands vigorously over the paper not through the mere play of elementary chromatism or the intuitive rapidity of a fluid mass vibrating with colour, as Fontana is perhaps eager to suggest, but through the need to distance the figure from its plane of origin and isolate it in evident spatiality.”⁷ 

The Cerruti drawing is, however, comparable with others and especially the one with a dedication to the artist’s friend Elio Vittorini,⁸ where brush and pen alternate in what is evidently a portrait from life with possible retouching of the chiaroscuro at a later date. The Cerruti drawing, which shows a seated monsignor in a cassock, may also be a portrait or at least a sketch from life. In any case, it demonstrates a study of details of fashion or costume to be found also in the small bronze shown at the Quadriennale. 

In later decades and especially as from the mid-1950s, Manzù was to opt, however, for radical synthesis, transforming his prelate into a compact form, seated or standing, with the stiff, solid shell of the liturgical vestments affording no glimpse of the subject’s anatomy other than the head crowned with a mitre peeping out. In the seated version in particular, the prince of the Church is a single mantle enveloped by wide folds, fluted like columns, thus accentuating a single curve all the way from the seat to the pointed headgear, especially in the numerous photos taken in profile. This plastic invention with architectonic overtones was to enjoy a certain success as a model. 

Examples include the large monument to Cardinal Lercaro that Manzù created in 1953 for San Petronio in Bologna, applying a face with the prelate’s features to the same structure, and the large Cardinale of 1955 now in Ca’ Pesaro in Venice. Nor should we forget the great success of this theme in the Anglo-Saxon world, where a comparison was developed between these compact, impenetrable figures and the stylised anthropomorphic forms of sheet metal by the British sculptor Lynn Chadwick presented at the 1956 Venice Biennale.⁹ Indirect confirmation of a connection is provided by an article of Raffaele Carrieri in Epoca where the bronze cardinals are described as “stylised shapes of sheet metal on top of which the faces live in frowning isolation awaiting eternity”.¹⁰ 

Luca Pietro Nicoletti 

¹ Rome 2016-17a.

² Ibid.

³ C. Fabi, in Rome 2016-17, pp. 66-68.

⁴ B. Cinelli, “Manzù e l’arte sacra: un itinerario complesso”, in Rome 2016-17, pp. 28-39.

⁵ M. De Micheli, “Prefazione”, in Manzù 1942, np.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ibid., pl. 17.

⁹ Lanzafame 2018, pp. 193-213.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 201.