| About Augusto Rivalta
(b Alessandria, 14 March 1837; d Florence, 14 April 1925). Italian sculptor. After studying in his home town, in 1859 Rivalta moved to Florence and became active in the Risorgimento. He then began to devote himself to sculpture, with monuments to the heroes of the struggle for Italian independence eventually becoming his speciality. He won his first important commission, the monument to Camillo Benso, Conte di Cavour (1865; Florence, Pal. Banca d'Italia) for Turin, in competition with his former teacher Giovanni Dupr?; following this he was accepted as a member of the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence. Rivalta's direct treatment of contemporary figures brought him many commissions for both funerary monuments and portraits. The form of his funerary monuments ranges from the simple, two-figure Ghighanii monument, with its calm nobility, to the affecting seven-figure relief of the Raggio monument (both marble; Genoa, Campo Santo di Stagliano), the latter an example of Rivalta's virtuoso skill at exact details. His seated portrait of Giovan Battista Niccolini (bronze, 1864; Rome, G.N.A. Mod.) is a good example of the economy of expression he sought in his works. Among his best-known sculptures is the Return from the Post (terracotta; Florence, Pitti), the statue of a young woman in a long dress and feathered hat, who attentively reads a letter as she walks. Here the verismo style that Rivalta used in his monuments is tinged with a more indulgent enjoyment of surface textures, a tendency he continued in a number of small works, such as the Dancing Faun (Bucharest, Rome, G.N.A. Mod.) and the Nymph on the Shoulders of a Centaur (Florence, Pitti), the latter inspired by the work of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.
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