signed on the base on the right: G. Tonnini and inscribed on the right: BOZZETTO DELLA STATUE / DI S. FRANCIS / NEL MONUMENT DEL / PIAZZALE LATERANSE / SCULTORE - TONNINI 

On the back, on the base, registration of the FOND: ART. LAGANA' / NAPLES

Reference bibliography: Mostre e concorsi, in “Per l'arte sacra”, July-August 1926, n. 4, p. 190; C. Mezzana, Il monumento a San Francesco dinanzi al Laterano, in “Arte sacra”, July-August 1927, n. 7-8,pp. 221-223; F. Giorgi Rossi, Monumenti e lapidi, in A.Cambedda, L. Cardilli Alloisi (edited by), La capitale a Roma: città e arredo urbano 1870-1945, Rome 1991, p. 192; N. Cardano, Per una storia dei monumenti celebrativi a Roma dalla prima guerra mondiale agli anni '30, in Idem, pp. 221-222; J. S. Grioni, Il monumento romano a San Francesco d’Assisi: pregevole opera di Giuseppe Tonnini, in “Lazio ieri e oggi”, 2004, p. 291; N. Cardano, Esquilino e Castro Pretorio: patrimonio storico-artistico e architettonico del Comune di Roma (Quaderni dei Monumenti), Rome 2004, p. 85; E. Federico, Il monumento a San Francesco d’Assisi, in AA.VV., Mura di Roma. Memorie e visioni della città, Roma 2018, p. 127; S. Santolini, Tra paesaggio e architettura. Il progetto per i giardini di via Carlo Felice, in A. Cremona, C. Crescentini, S. Santolini (edited by), Raffaele de Vico. Architetto e paesaggista. Un «consulente artistico» per Roma, Roma 2020, pp.217-224: 219-221, fig. 7.

The historical-artistic interest of this bronze sculpture by Giuseppe Tonnini, a sculptor from the Marches active in Rome, is to be connected to the history of the capital and its monuments in a period of particular urban ferment of the twentieth century. It is one of the rare known fusions of the sketch of the famous monument to San Francesco d'Assisi, located in the square in front of the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano and a few hundred meters from that of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, near the green area designed by the architect Raffaele De Vico. The monument to the Umbrian saint was erected at the instigation of the "International Committee for Honors to Saint Francis of Assisi on the VII Centenary of his Death", founded in December 1921 by the historian Francesco Pennacchi. The objective of the Committee, chaired by the Vicar General Basilio Pompilj, was to spread the Franciscan message as much as possible, not only through the creation of works of art and publishing activities (such as, for example, the periodical "Frate Francesco"), but also with the organization of pilgrimages to Franciscan places from all over Europe.

A special "History and Art Commission" was appointed to accept the monument project and follow its work, which could count on the collaboration of important personalities of the Capitoline artistic policy such as Pio Piacentini, Antonio Muñoz, Manfredo Manfredi and the Marches Alessandro Bacchiani and Adolfo De Carolis. The latter in particular was in close contact with Tonnini, as is well documented by the correspondence of the "Fondo DeCarolis" in the archives of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. Some of the letters preserved there are particularly valuable for reconstructing the creative process that led the artist to create several sketches before reaching the final result. Already on 12 December 1924, Tonnini wrote to the painter of the same age asking him to convene a meeting of the commission «[…] having, passing over the wishes of the Clients, made a new sketch of a modern intonation I would say almost pictorial, which meets the sympathy of those who have seen it , therefore Manfredi, Barluzzi etc. [...] you will forgive me thinking of my desire to do a job that can have the greatest approvals and give the least possible pain» [1]. However, this sketch was discarded: the artist then set to work to create the third and final version – from which the casting in question was taken – for definitive approval, which arrived in November 1925. «Dear De Carolis» – he wrote again to his friend – «my sketch of the Monument to San Francesco has been fully approved by the Artistic Commission of which you are so much a part; only Zanelli, having been unable to come, but having seen the sketch a few days earlier, sent Barluzzi the letter of which I am enclosing a copy, a letter, as you can see, very flattering for me»[2].

After obtaining the consent of Pope Pius XI, the construction site was then started with the aim of inaugurating the monument within the year of the celebrations. However, some controversies slowed down the works, as had already happened before then for other Roman monuments (think, for example, of Mario Rutelli's Fountain of the Naiads in Piazza della Repubblica): due to the continuation of a "discussion on the shape of the dress with which Tonnini dressed the Saint, which is the classic one very different from the tunic of conventuals», the work was revealed to the public only on May 26, 1927 (figs. 1-2).

Fused at the Officine Laganà in Naples, the sculptural group consists of a total of six figures: behind the Saint, in fact, the artist represents five friars, each immortalized in a different attitude. On the stairway of the tuff base you can read a dedication epigraph, on the front side, and the verses of the XI canto of Paradise in which Dante celebrates San Francesco, on the left and on the back side. The arrangement of the figures and their mimicry give the monument a certain theatrical inflection, which was enthusiastically greeted by the critics of the time [4]. The sculpture made famous even the model Tonnini used to represent the Saint: Francesco Toppi (fig. 3), one of the most requested models of Anticoli Corrado, a village known for the collaboration between the inhabitants and the hundreds of artists who stayed there between the 19th and 20th centuries.

The "pictorial" accent of the second sketch of which the artist spoke in the 1924 letter to De Carolis gives way here to harmonious shapes and solid volumes, thus approaching the trends of sculpture contemporary to him. These characteristics, also appreciable in the sketch in question, in fact reveal some tangency with the deco taste, which in Italian sculpture of the 1920s was expressed above all through the search for the balance between the natural datum and the accentuation of geometric values. In representing the Saint in an ecstatic moment, Tonnini therefore insists on the symmetrical rigor of the composition, giving a momentum to the gesture of the arms raised to the sky with the palms facing the Basilica of San Giovanni.

Manuel Carrera

May 2023