#below the statue there's a painted tile with a line by a famous poet who describes the workers coming back from the fields (and it says

[no-passaran]

Some recent events made me remember this article I read some time ago about the monuments dedicated to women in Italy.

I think at this point everyone interested in feminism has more or less heard the numbers of the gap between monuments dedicated to men and those dedicated to women (other genders aren’t counted), but to me the most interesting part of this article is the one that comes after that, towards the end, when it talks about how (and not just how many) these statues are.

I translated the article to English for anyone who is interested:

In Milan there are only two, in Turin none, in Rome you can count them with one hand. In all of Italy there are 148 or little more statues in public spaces dedicated to women. These are the ones that the association of art historians “Mi riconosci” has managed to map through research and signs. Figures usually representing someone anonymous and often far way, in their representation too, from reality.

To give an idea about the proportion to male monuments that celebrate rulers, statesmen, writers, politicians, fallen soldiers, musicians, poets and philosophers, it’s enough to go up the Pinicio, in Rome: three female busts (Grazia Deledda, Saint Catherine of Siena and Vittoria Colonna) against 226.

To all the gender gaps —which include also the one in the female toponymy that counts only 8 to 9 streets out of every 100 dedicated to women—, this monumental one adds as well. In 2019 already, from Turin, a campaign was started called “Monumental oblivion”. But it’s not only the number that marks the difference.

There are many Virgin Marys, Victories, Glories and allegories but there are few, actually very few, statues that represent real women or literary characters: there are some Maria Montessori, Elena di Savoia, Anita Garibaldi, Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso. [But] Elsa Morante or Rita Levi Montalcini are missing. Almost half are anonymous collective figures: an array of rice weeders, wives of, laundresses, migrants or partisans, generally implied.

Most of them are dedicated to care or hospitality jobs, physically hard-working professions, devoted to sacrifice, often mothers next to their husbands or awaiting their return, while no one remembers employees or scientists for now, waiting for the statue of Margherita Hack in Milan (where there are 125 men).

“Public space cannot be considered neutral” explains Ludovica Piazzi, art historian and promoter of the research “and nowadays it’s an androcentric space as is confirmed, not only by the absence of women, but by the huge disproportion among male and female authors of the monuments: among the 120 works with certain attribution, only 5% has been made by women, another 5% saw collaboration between male and female authors, while the remaining 90% is signed by men”.

And even the gaze, according to the researchers, is male. “This is the monument to Victory that we went to see every day... and I dreamed it also at night!” said, not by chance, Titta [a boy] in Federico Fellini’s Amarcord, in adoration of the roundness of the statue in Piazza Ferrari in Rimini.

Like the gleaner [=one who gathers the grain left after reaping the field] in Sapri, with her gluteus defined, barely vailed with an imperceptible cloth, branded as a sexist sculpture, there’s the laundress in Bologna, completely naked, on her knees and immersed in a tub, symbol of purification that throughout the years has caused controversy, or the one in Massa with her dress lowering under her breasts.

Or Rosalia Montmasson, the only woman in the Expedition of the Thousand, portrayed in Ribera next to her husband Francesco Crispi: him fully clothed and wearing a coat, and her in a petticoat and with all body details in plain view. And even more so, in Acquapendente there’s a statue dedicated to Ilaria Alpi and Maria Grazia Cutuli, both journalists, both murdered, both portrayed one next to the other, completely naked.

But, underline the curators of the dossier, "in this, as in many other cases, the female figure is often stereotyped: many statues have sensual attitudes or are characterized by coy details, aspects that detract from the portrayed subject. One thing is a naked allegorical figure, another is a real person or a collective female figure: in this case the sexualization of the work can be more offensive. Art history full of nudes, it is not a matter of censoring, but of giving dignity to the representation that today we make of women chosen to be celebrated and remembered".

Full article (in Italian): La Repubblica.