Umberto Pinzauti – Vase: “Welcome Spring…”

Umberto Pinzauti

(Florence 1886–Ravenna 1960) 

Vase: “Welcome Spring…” 

Circa 1915 

Bronze with wooden base, h 27.3 cm 

Inscription in centre of vase: Ben venga maggio e l gonfalon selvaggio, ben venga primavera che vuol l’uom s’innamori (Welcome May and the flowering boughs, welcome Spring so that man falls in love). 

On side of base: Paying tribute to the President, united youth offers this with affection. Signed on base: Pinzauti 

Provenance: Rome, private collection 

Attentive to the impact of Viennese Liberty, in 1909 he carries out the pictorial decorations of the newly–built small villa–cum-studio of Galileo Chini, in Florence. These are the years to which one can ascribe the bronze vase, where the vibrant sensuality of the lines and the poses of the figures in high relief stands out, not immune to a graphic insistence in the hairstyles, with a debt to the new Secessions, and a sketchy synthetism in the faces and limbs. The intense and sensual dance of the figures is in dialogue with Poliziano’s famous verses, spread across the centre of the vase, recalling the Florentine rite of love, Calendimaggio, during which the young men offered a flowering bough – il gonfalon selvaggio – to their loved one. From the twenties he moved towards monumentalism, conserving a delicate softness that bathes his works in a suffused and melancholy tonality. From the end of the decade he is in Ravenna, appointed chair of sculpture at the local Academy of Fine Arts. Among his works that can still be seen in Ravenna are the allegories of Fame and Glory at Palazzo del Mutilato in today’s Piazza Kennedy.