SESSION: Unstable Monuments. Nation, States, Spaces, and Conflicts in Public Sculpture, 1811-1947
Between 1811 and 1947, two opposing yet simultaneous forces reshaped the global political landscape. On the one hand, centrifugal movements of imperial fragmentation unfolded in Latin America and Asia; on the other, centripetal movements of national unification emerged in Belgium, Italy, and Germany. Sculptural monuments played a pivotal role in these transitions, serving as tools of state-building, identity formation, and contested memory. Far from being neutral, they became sites of both cohesion and conflict—symbols intended to unify nascent nations or uphold crumbling empires while often exposing deep ideological, regional, or ethnic tensions.
This session invites scholars to examine the complex functions of public sculpture— busts, statues, equestrian figures, allegorical groups—in nations undergoing processes of unification, fragmentation, or colonisation between 1811 (the independence of Venezuela and Paraguay) and 1947 (the independence of India). In addition to capital cities, we encourage contributions focused on regional centres, small towns, and marginal or (post)colonial settings. How did monuments negotiate the tensions between local pride and overarching national narratives? What happened when the unity they symbolised proved fragile or illusory?
Rather than considering monuments as fixed repositories of memory, this session draws on recent scholarship in iconoclasm, visual politics, and memory studies (e.g. Alex von Tunzelmann, Fallen Idols, 2020; David Freedberg, Iconoclasm, 2021; Erin Thompson, Smashing Statues, 2022; Dan Hicks, Every Monument Will Fall 2025) to reflect on how monuments have been reinterpreted, displaced, defaced, or destroyed. What can the history of their construction, endurance, or removal tell us about shifting ideas of nationhood, resistance, and justice?
We welcome interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives. Contributions may address monument relocation and transformation, iconoclastic acts, competing commemorative agendas, unrealised sculptural programmes, regional artistic vocabularies, and tensions between official and counter-monumental forms.
Session Convenors:
Alberto Pirro, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History – Department Michalsky (Rome)
Session Speakers:
Anna Riera Mora, Imperial College London
Negotiating Loyalty and Nationhood: Antoni Sola’s Monuments between Empire and Independence
Antoni Sola (1780–1861) was a sculptor born and trained in Barcelona. In 1803, he was awarded a grant by the Junta de Comerç to pursue his studies in Rome — a city he would never leave and where he was eventually buried. His career in the Eternal City was remarkable: a disciple of Canova, a friend of Thorvaldsen, a sculptor for the Papacy and for influential Roman families such as the Torlonia, Prince of the prestigious Accademia di San Luca, and Director of the Spanish artists in Rome.
In this paper, we aim to explore in depth two of his works of urban decoration: the Daoíz and Velarde group in Madrid and the statue of Ferdinand VII in Havana, both executed during the 1830s. We are particularly interested in these two sculptures because of their socio-political implications, especially regarding their patrons, dates of execution, contemporary criticism, and changes of location.
The first sketch of Daoíz and Velarde dates from 1822; however, it was not until several years later that Sola obtained royal permission and support to complete the group. The patriotic theme—two soldiers swearing to defend the city to the death—required a favourable historical and political context. It is also worth recalling that in 1825 Ferdinand VII denied Antoni Sola the “civil purification” required for official recognition.
Cuba’s history explains why it became the country with the most monuments dedicated to Spanish monarchs, among them the statue of Ferdinand VII (currently located on O’Reilly Street in Havana). The story of who commissioned the work and the artists who refused to undertake it offers a clear reflection of Spanish colonial policy overseas and of the unstable political situation that Spain experienced throughout the nineteenth century. The relocation of the monument from Plaza de Armas to other sites, and its eventual replacement by the statue of Manuel de Céspedes, stands as one of many cases against an iconography representing Spanish colonialism.
Ciarán Rua O’Neill, University College Dublin
Hibernia in Stone: Nationalism, Empire, and the ‘Maid of Erin’ Monuments in Ireland, c.1880-c.1922
Between the 1880s and the early twentieth century, Ireland experienced a dramatic increase in public sculpture, reflecting its turbulent political climate. In Dublin, this ‘statue-mania’ culminated in grand urban monuments such as John Henry Foley’s nationalist Monument to Daniel O’Connell (completed in 1883) and John Hughes’ imperialist Monument to Queen Victoria (1903-8). Both works incorporated Hibernia–the classically inspired feminine personification of Ireland–to embody opposing visions of the country’s political destiny. Beyond Dublin, however, smaller provincial towns, such as Skibbereen and Ballina, erected monuments centred on ‘Maid of Erin’ figures, vernacular interpretations in stone of Ireland’s personification largely carved by local masons.
This paper examines these lesser-studied provincial monuments, particularly in relation to the Local Government Act of 1898, which expanded local representation and intensified debates around Home Rule, as well as commemorations of the 1798 Rebellion. In comparing these works with the Dublin monuments, it reveals how communities negotiated local identity within a colonial framework, using the ‘Maid of Erin’ figure to articulate ideas of nationhood, resistance, and civic pride.
In concluding, this paper also considers these sculptures in the iconoclastic climate surrounding Irish independence and the establishment of the 1922 Free State, when both imperial and nationalist monuments were defaced, removed, or destroyed, including the ‘Maid of Erin’ in Bandon, torn down by British ‘Black and Tan’ forces in 1921. By recovering these overlooked provincial sculptures, this paper situates Ireland’s ‘statue-mania’ within broader debates on the politics of public memory and the unstable meanings of historic monuments.
Leonardo Regano, Università di Roma Tor Vergata
From the Stadio dei Marmi to the Capannelle Fire Brigade Stadium (1940): New Perspectives on Monumental Sculpture as a Vehicle of Fascist Propaganda
This paper examines the sculptural cycle created in 1940 for the Stadio delle Scuole Centrali Antincendi in Capanelle, Roma, a site largely overlooked in studies of twentieth-century Italian sculpture. The cycle includes ten monumental marble statues depicting athletic subjects, executed by young, then-unestablished sculptors – Silvio Olivo, Alessandro Monteleone, Alfio Castelli, Clemente Spampinato, Alcide Ticò, Ettore Colla, Coriolano Campitelli, Salvatore Cozzo, Coriolano Campitelli, Renato Rosatelli, and Benso Vignolini – who engaged with the formal language of the Stadio dei Marmi in the Foro Mussolini, a project already underway but not yet completed. The study addresses the central question: how did fascist monumental sculpture translate the theories of the “New Man” into institutional contexts beyond nationally celebratory monuments? To answer this, it combines archival research, visual analysis, and typological comparison, situating the Capannelle sculptures within the broader network of public art and architecture under fascism. The analysis demonstrates that the statues functioned as visual models for workers, embodying discipline, vigilance, and dedication to public service. While the Stadio dei Marmi presented an idealized athletic body celebrating the nation, at Capannelle the imagery was rendered as a concrete, professional body, reflecting the daily work of the Fire Brigade, and transforming the athlete into a symbol of institutional duty and corporate identity. By examining the cycle in its entirety for the first time, this paper offers a new interpretation of fascist monumental sculpture, showing how figurative arts conveyed the theories of the “New Man,” formulated by Benito Mussolini, within the regime’s educational and institutional practices. This study contributes to a broader understanding of how fascist visual culture shaped professional identity, complementing scholarship focused primarily on nationally oriented monuments.
Noah Randolph, Temple University
Claiming Independence/Claiming Columbus
In 1844, the Dominican Republic declared independence from Haiti, becoming the first nation to do so from an American country. Six years later, the Dominican historian Antonio del Monte y Tejada urged the creation of a monument to mark Christopher Columbus’s importance to the new country. In 1887, on the anniversary of their independence from Haiti, that monument was erected in Santo Domingo: Columbus atop a pedestal, on which an indigenous Taino woman kneels with a quill in hand, writing the inscription on the base: “Ilustre y Esclarecido Varón Don Cristóbal Colón.”
This paper examines this monument, as well as Faro a Colón, a monumental lighthouse erected in 1931 to house his remains, to examine how Columbus monuments have been important tools in the crafting of dominicanidad and in the eschewing of their indigenous and Black roots since independence. Monumentally claiming Columbus has served to grant the Dominican Republic a cultural proximity to Europe and the United States, while paradoxically being held as an anti-colonial reclamation of Columbus from Spain. Crucially, I consider the ways in which the monuments functioned as a proxy for the state-sanctioned anti-Black violence of the Trujillo and Belaguer regimes that declared Dominican heritage as racially superior to that of their Haitian neighbours. Finally, I will look at artist Joiri Minaya’s 2021 covering of the first Columbus monument as an un-monumental gesture, and at the local response that reveals the divisiveness the privileging of European heritage still creates in the Dominican Republic.
Marla Elisabeth Heid, Freie Universität Berlin
Unmaking Unity: Artistic Interventions at Hamburgs Bismarck Monument
Erected in 1906, Hamburg’s Bismarck Monument monumentalised the figure of the “Iron Chancellor” as the embodiment of national unification and imperial might. Looming over the city, the monument’s granite bulk translated the ideology of permanence into stone, an embodiment of national unity and imperial confidence. Yet, over a century later, the monument’s material endurance has made it a fault line in Germany’s contemporary memory culture. Once conceived as a centripetal symbol of unity, it now stands at the intersection of conflicting narratives about nationhood, colonialism, and historical accountability.
In recent years, the monument has become the focus of an intense public dispute: a costly restoration project sparked criticism for perpetuating imperial glorification, while artists and activists called for its critical reframing. The subsequent competition for its recontextualisation invited artistic proposals to address the monument’s colonial entanglements and to open it to agonistic forms of remembrance. Engaging with theories of counter-monuments (James E. Young), this paper argues that these current interventions transform the monument from a representation of unity into a field of contestation. Rather than removing or preserving it as a fixed heritage object, the recontextualisation process performs a slow, collective unmaking of its original ideology—turning the monument into a site where conflicting temporalities and memories coexist. By tracing the Bismarck Monument’s trajectory from imperial consolidation to postcolonial critique, the paper reflects on how the politics of restoration and reinterpretation mirror broader struggles over the meaning of history, cohesion, and justice in contemporary Germany.