Bust Of Napoleon Bonaparte, Sculptor Vincenzo Vela

Bronze bust of Napolone signed on the back. The same bust can be found in the Swabian castle of Porto Recanati

Vincenzo Vela (Ligornetto, May 3, 1820 - Mendrisio, October 4, 1891) was an Italian-Swiss sculptor. He was particularly influenced by the formal research of Lorenzo Bartolini and the romantic painting of Francesco Hayez. Between 1844 and 1846, he obtained the first private commissions, including the monument to the Bishop of Pesaro Giuseppe Maria Luvini from 1845, kept in the atrium of the civic palace in Lugano. In 1847, he went to Rome, where he met Pietro Tenerani. Then, back home, he participated in 1848 as a volunteer in the Sonderbund war and after the first Italian war of independence against Austria after the defeat, he designed two of his most famous masterpieces. , the Spartacus (1847, plaster model, 208 cm, Museo Vela) now kept in the atrium of the civic palace of Lugano: one of the revolutionary icons of the 19th century, and Desolation, presented to Brera in 1851. In 1852, he moved to Turin where he taught sculpture at the Albertina Academy and Gabriele Ambrosio (1844-1918) was one of his students: after having sculpted a marble statue of Gabrio Piola in Milan in 1854, placed at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, he devoted himself to the construction of the monument through his friend and poet from Trentino. funeral of Gaetano Donizetti, erected in 1855 in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo. In its many festive productions, the Monument to the Sardinian army bishop of the years 1857-1859 is to be remembered, commissioned from him in 1856 by a committee of Milanese patriots and placed and inaugurated on April 10, 1859 in Piazza Castello in front the Palazzo Madama.