A CHAINED VICTORY

Like a secular protective goddess, the statue of Vittoria del Piave by the Jewish sculptor Arrigo Minerbi is placed under a star-painted sky in the Torre della Vittoria, just built in 1928.
On the tenth anniversary of the battle of the solstice on the Piave, the mayor, also a Jew and Fascist, Renzo Ravenna, without the need for any competition, had assigned the task to Minerbi.
That woman in gilt bronze took up the profile of a contemporary diva of silent cinema, Lyda Borelli, in a sinuous Art Nouveau style, and going further back in time to the classic Nike model. D’Annunzio would also have liked it so much that later the poet would have wanted a similar example for the entrance to the Vittoriale.
The battle had determined Italy’s victory in the First World War but at the cost of sacrificing the lives of thousands of young people.
A chapel was therefore dedicated to their memory, a sort of sacred enclosure, closed by an iron gate, also in Art Nouveau style, designed by Carlo Savonuzzi and executed by the students of the Ferrara industrial school.
Victory is not triumphant but sorrowful, she is winged but tight in her own embrace, there is a patriotic symbolism but at the same time the realization of the sufferings that have cost for that heroism so understood.
The war will not end there and the dead a few years later will also be those of the fighters of the war of liberation, and the walls will thus become a photographic wall of ceramic images on wooden panels in memory of all the fallen for freedom.

Test & Photos by FERRARA LOVELY PLANET