Winged Victory of Brescia


The Winged Victory of Brescia is a bronze statue from the 1st century AD housed at the Capitolium of Brescia, where it was discovered in 1826 along with. The work is one of the symbols of the city of Brescia.

History and description

Initially believed to be a Hellenistic work executed around the mid-3rd century BC by a Greek master and later reworked in Roman imperial times, based on studies conducted in the early 19th century, the statue was recognized as a pastiche, meaning an assemblage created in Roman times, likely after 69 AD, based on a previous Hellenistic casting. The new restoration by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure has established that the statue was cast in the 1st century AD in a local foundry and is not an assemblage of different statues but was created to be a "Winged Victory." The reference model is identified as the Afrodite Urania of the "Cyrene type," meaning the goddess conceived in that specific variation of posture found in the statue discovered at Cyrene. Other details, such as the torsion of the torso and the positioning of the arms, are similarly derived from Greek works of the 5th–6th century BC. The figure wears a chiton fastened at the shoulders and a himation that wraps around the lower limbs. The left leg is slightly raised, as it is believed the foot rested on the helmet of Mars; to complete the work, a silver and copper damascening was placed on the head to adorn the hair. In Roman times, wings were added to transform the work into the goddess Victoria; similar works were present in Rome and Constantinople in the imperial forums. After centuries of oblivion, the work was discovered on the evening of July 20, 1826, partially disassembled and carefully hidden in the western cavity of the Capitolium between the temple and the, along with many other bronze pieces, including a, likely to prevent it from being melted down for weapons during invasions by barbarian peoples. This explains its exceptional state of preservation.
With the advent of World War I, the Victory, along with numerous other works of artistic and cultural heritage, was transferred to Rome by order of the government as a precaution to keep them safe from the front lines. After the conflict, Senator was appointed Undersecretary for Antiquities and Fine Arts, tasked with ensuring that the masterpieces moved to Rome were returned to their original locations; Molmenti personally oversaw the transport and return of the Victory to Brescia, which took place with a solemn celebration in April 1920.
The statue was loaned and exhibited from November 1948 to March 1949 at the Kunsthaus Zürich museum for the event exhibition titled Kunstschätze der Lombardei. 500 vor Christus, 1800 nach Christus.
According to early studies, a hypothesis was formulated about how the statue arrived in Brescia. According to this hypothesis, the statue was transported to Rome at the behest of Augustus after the death of Cleopatra in 29 BC and then donated directly to Brixia as a sign of political goodwill, perhaps on the occasion of the city being granted the title of Colonia Augusta. The work was then transformed into Nike after the Second Battle of Bedriacum, which marked the triumph of Marcus Antonius Primus, lieutenant of Vespasian, over Vitellius. It was Vespasian himself, after the battle that enabled his rise to the throne, who ordered the monumental renovation of the forum and the Capitoline temple of the city, and it was assumed that the statue's transformation from Aphrodite to Victory occurred on this occasion. The goddess's posture would have changed from the vanity of gazing at herself to the act of writing a dedicatory inscription with a stylus on the shield of Ares, which was later lost, while two large feathered wings were mounted on her back.
The consensus on the previous hypothesis, which had long been predominant, weakened following further investigations conducted using X-ray fluorescence. The analyses revealed no significant differences between the wings and the body of the statue, an homogeneity that likely indicated the work was created in a single constructive process. The sculpture was analyzed and studied by Edilberto Formigli and Andrea Salcuni as part of a research project by the Institute of Archaeological Sciences of the Goethe University Frankfurt. In July 2018, the work was entrusted to experts from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, assisted by specialists from the Sapienza University of Rome; the statue underwent restoration and was the subject of a joint interdisciplinary study involving archaeologists, scientific consultants, engineers, and restorers.
After the restoration, a structure—designed by Spanish architect Juan Navarro Baldeweg who also redesigned its display—was created at the Capitolium to house the monument, equipped with a new earthquake-resistant base.

The Winged Victory of Brescia in the world

In popular culture

Philately

The Victory of Brescia was the subject of a series of stamps of the Kingdom of Italy, created by Alberto Repettati, for the third anniversary of the victory in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. The series, printed by the Turin paper securities office, was issued by Italian Post on November 1, 1921, and also in the Italian colonies of Eritrea, Libya, and Italian Somalia.On the occasion of the restoration, on November 21, 2020, the Ministry of Economic Development issued a new stamp, printed by the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, depicting the statue in a stylized graphic by Paolo Tassinari.

Civic image

On the occasion of the "First International Air Circuit," the first Italian aviation event held from September 8 to 20, 1909, between Montichiari and Ghedi, the Winged Victory of Brescia was used as a civic symbol in informational and promotional materials related to the event. A similar example was the use of the statue's image in illustrations for tourism promotion of the city of Brescia by the ENIT.

Literature

dedicates a chapter to it in his work Voyages historiques et littéraire en Italie.
Giosuè Carducci celebrated it in the Alcaic ode Alla Vittoria, written in May 1877, included in the Barbarian Odes, and inspired by two visits the poet made to Brescia, the first in the summer of 1871 with, the second in October 1876.
Gabriele D’Annunzio was reverently fascinated by the Victory and celebrated it extensively throughout his life: it appears in the sonnet dedicated to Brescia, included in ', the second book of the ', and it inspired him so much that he depicted it in the novel Forse che sì forse che no.
The magazine Topolino dedicated a comic story to it in issue number 3391.

Numismatics

A detail of the statue's face is depicted on the reverse of the first coin in the 2023 Italian Republic numismatic collection, issued on February 20, 2023, and dedicated to the cities of Bergamo and Brescia as for 2023.