Leonardo Bistolfi

Who was Leonardo Bistolfi?

Leonardo Bistolfi was an Italian sculptor, an important exponent of Italian Symbolism.

Bistolfi was born in Casale Monferrato in Piedmont, north-west Italy, to Giovanni Bistolfi, a sculptor in wood, and to Angela Amisano.

In 1876 he enrolled in the Brera Art Academy in Milan, where his teacher was Giosuè Argenti. In 1880 he studied under Odoardo Tabacchi at the Accademia Albertina in Turin.

His first works, executed between 1880 and 1885, show the influence of the Milanese Scapigliatura. In 1882 he sculpted L'Angelo della morte for the Brayda tomb in the Turin cemetery known as the Cimitero Monumentale, and in 1883 he produced a bust of the painter Antonio Fontanesi for the Accademia Albertina: these works show a turn towards Symbolism which the artist was never to abandon.

From this time until 1914 Bistolfi produced many busts, medals and portraits of prominent figures including the Piedmontese painter Lorenzo Delleani, the kings of Italy Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, the criminologist Cesare Lombroso, the writer Edmondo De Amicis, and the publisher and journalist Emilio Treves.