About this lot

Description

the oval cameo depicting Guiseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) in profile, with bushy beard and moustache, and fine straight hair to the nape, receding from a broad forehead, wearing his signature (red) collarless shirt, with loosely tied scarf-bandana, and looped watch chain; contemporary inscription of the sitter's name on the back, and signed more firmly 'De Gaetano'; plain collet mount with no border, engraved 'Cannero 20th 8mo 1866'; plain pin and hook, also suspensory loop; length 5.0cm

Footnote: Other notes: Garibaldi was one of the heroes in the fight for Italian unification and independence. In the early 19th century the Italian peninsula was a mass of small states mainly under the rules variously of France, Austria or their own monarchies. After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, the Risorgiento evolved, growing in impetus but with many setbacks, striving along with the Carbonari for political and social revolution. Garibaldi was one of the giants championing a republic, along with such men as Giuseppe Mazzini and King Victor Emmanuel II. Garibaldi was born in Piedmont, then under French rule, and after a failed uprising in 1834, he fled to South America where he spent fourteen years in exile, fighting in different arenas and honing skills as a guerrilla before returning home. In 1860 he became a national hero with victory in Sicily, proceeding to the mainland and up to Naples. The unification of the peninsular happened piecemeal, but was felt complete by 1870-71. Garibaldi spent his last years back in Piedmont; his erstwhile fellow revolutionary, Massimo d'Azeglio, retired there too at a similar time to his villa at Cannero, on Lake Maggiore, dying in January 1866. Further research might reveal more of a link between the subject of this cameo and the inscription on the mount. The signature on the back of this cameo may possibly be that of Gaetano Sirletti. He, along with his brothers, Giovanni and Pietro, is known to have been an 'engraver' (a term that covered both metal work and gem carving, both intaglios and cameos), working in Rome in the middle decades of the 19th century. He had a workshop close to (and sometimes selling to) the Castellani workshops. Castellani are known to have produced for popular sale (along with their more famous pieces), cameos of political figures especially associated with freedom, from biblical David to George Washington - and heroes of the Risorgimento.

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