Allow me to construct this article into chapters, like a short novel.
Chapter One. When I first entered my office at the Cultural Institute two years ago, I saw an oval portrait of Garibaldi hanging on the wall. A young Garibaldi, with a reddish-blond beard, already with a “Nazarene” physiognomy that often leads to his face being fused with that of Christ in so many Risorgimento images.
The inventory states that the portrait is accompanied by an authentication. I thought of a document written by an antiquarian or an art gallery, and I asked that it be taken out of the Institute’s safe to see it. When they brought it to me, I realized that it was, in fact, not a simple authentication, but a handwritten letter from Garibaldi.
As a good philologist, I set about deciphering and transcribing it. The ink had partly faded, but the handwriting was clear. Here is the text:
New York, October 28, 1859
My portrait of which the Most Illustrious Gerosa was pleased, was taken by him, during my first stay in this city – G. Garibaldi
From this letter, we learn a few things. First, the name of the author – Gerosa precisely – is revealed, which otherwise would be unknown since no traces of a signature can be seen with the naked eye.
Second, it is clear that the painting should be dated 1850/51 since the document speaks of his “first stay” in New York. Garibaldi arrived in New York for the first time in 1850, greeted by the enthusiasm of the press. On July 30th of that year, the New York Tribune published the following news: “This morning the ship Waterloo arrived from Liverpool with Garibaldi on board, the man of world renown, the hero of Montevideo and the defender of Rome.”
The portrait cannot be later than 1851, when Garibaldi left for Peru. Insisting on Garibaldi’s presence in New York during the painting’s execution, the document also tells us that the portrait was done “in person” and not from other portraits. Compared to so many “hagiographically” elaborated Garibaldis, the portrait hanging in my office is thus based on a live study and testifies to a physiognomy probably very close to the real one. Finally, the portrait is not commissioned by Garibaldi, but wanted by Gerosa himself (“with which he was pleased”).
Third, the clarity of the writing makes it clear that the autograph manuscript is not precisely private, but is really a kind of “authentication,” intended for the owner of the portrait, who cannot be Gerosa, as he would not need to know that he is indeed the painter. I reread the autograph and thought to myself that I didn’t have any data to understand where that work came from, and who owned it after Gerosa. There are no records at the Institute regarding it.
Chapter Two (which apparently has no connection to the first). A few months ago, a delegation arrived at the Institute from Lendinara, a historic town in the province of Rovigo. They came to New York in the name of Adolfo Rossi.
Leaving for America in 1879, at the age of twenty-two, and with a small nest egg stolen during the trip, Rossi in New York gets by and does a little bit of everything to survive. He learns the trade of ice cream maker and then waiter, selling fans and sparkling water, until 1880, when Carlo Barsotti entrusts him with “Il Progresso Italo Americano,” which was born in competition with the “Eco d’Italia.” On those pages Rossi discovered his true vocation, beginning a long and successful career as a journalist that continued in Italy, where he returned in 1884.
The delegation came from Polesine to look for traces of that very first American sojourn. And the librarian of Lendinara, Nicola Gasparotto, enthusiastically tells me about Rossi’s articles, discovered in New York in the old issues of the Progresso. Some of those articles even constitute the first draft of the successful volume “An Italian in America,” published in 1892 by the prince of Italian publishers: Treves. A book followed in 1893, An Italian in America, equally brilliant in painting the merits and flaws of the new world, and its “economic” brutality, its intolerance, its frequent racism.
During that time, I was preparing the exhibition, “Pride and Memory. The Italian Emigration in the Americas,” scheduled to open soon at the Institute (on June 28th), and I told the delegation from Lendinara to send us materials about Alberto Rossi. Along with the documentation about emigrants as “objects” of migration — poor, suffering, illiterate — we also wanted to have proof at the Institute that Italians were able to be “subjects” of that epic exodus from the motherland. They had eyes to see, the heart and the spirit to judge, a voice to speak and write with. They adapted, but they were also able to change the world they landed in. Rossi is the example and emblem of the active and creative character of emigration: of the ability of emigrants to be protagonists of their destiny.
Chapter Three (linking the first two). It’s a done deal. They sent us Rossi’s objects from Lendinara: books, and even the uniform and sword from when he was named Minister Plenipotentiary for Italy in Buenos Aires. And I began to read his books with great amusement. I began with An Italian in America, and I got to the chapter where the author recounts about his meeting with Meucci.
Adolfo Rossi goes to see the inventor of the telephone also to get unpublished news about Garibaldi, who lived in the Meucci house in Clifton (Staten Island) between 1850 and 1851, and he tells of the mementos (or rather relics) Garibaldi left Meucci: “a shirt: the red shirt the General wore in the defense of the Roman Republic … a dagger with a solid silver handle … a bronze medal … a cameo with his portrait … a life-size portrait done by the painter Gerosa in 1851….”
I read it again in disbelief.
It’s true: a portrait, and the author is Gerosa. It is therefore about the portrait in my studio. With his eyes, that bearded young man inside a golden frame saw not only Garibaldi and Meucci, but who knows how many devotees who looked upon him with emotion! Its path to the Institute remains unknown, although it would be nice to know how it got there.
One fact is certain: the painting takes on an extraordinary charge because it evokes the memory — and I would almost say the presence — not only of Garibaldi, but of two other great Italians in New York: Meucci and Adolfo Rossi. That is why it will be displayed at the beginning of the exhibition “Pride and Memory”.
Pride and memory: they both vibrate in the Garibaldi image that reminds us of the powerful, unbreakable bond with the nation of all Italians abroad, then as now.
