Mother

Achille Alberti (1860-1943)
1916, Marble

The work, made of Carrara marble, depicts a woman, half-length and looking upward. The robe descends from her shoulders and under her breast, supported by her left hand, while her right arm is bent behind her torso. The hair is rendered in two large locks that descend to the nape of the neck, in a synthetic and stylized manner, while the facial expression is intense. Achille Allberti was born in Milan in 1860, he studied with Pietro Magni (1816-1877) and Riccardo Ripamonti (1849-1930) at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where later he became a professor. Enthusiastic about the humanitarian populism of the Neapolitan Achille D'Orsi (1845-1929), he carried out social themes with diligent virtuosity, achieving international fame. In 1900 he participated in the Universal Exhibition in Paris and made many funerary monuments in Milan's Monumental Cemetery. While he gave evidence of his eclectic aspirations in the large statues on the façade of the Milan Stock Exchange building (built by L. Broggi in 1901), vaguely Michelangelo-esque, he tended toward simplification of modeling in an effort to suggest a hieratic character to his compositions, as in the case of The Mother in this collection. In 1930 a retrospective exhibition of his works was held at the Pesaro Gallery in Milan.