Ernesto Biondi

Ernesto Biondi (January 30, 1855 – 1917) was an Italian sculptor who won the grand prix at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. In 1905 he sued the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art for breach of contract after they refused to display his Saturnalia. The New York Supreme Court ruled against him, stating that the museum director did not have the authority to initiate contracts without a vote from the board of trustees. Biondi preferred to work with bronze and often explored themes from ancient Rome or the Middle East.

Biondi was born January 30, 1855 in Morolo, near Frosinone Italy. He studied at Rome's Accademia di San Luca under Girolamo Masini. He first came to wide recognition in 1883, when one of his sculptures was exhibited at a national exposition in Rome. At the 1893 Chicago World's Fair thirteen of his works were displayed. He won the grand prix at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris for a sculpture that "commemorate[d] the triumph of health over disease" in Cisterna, Italy. Biondi also won a competition to design a work for the Republic of Chile to honor Manuel Montt and Antonio Varas. In her book The Italy of the Italians, Helen Zimmern, describes the work as depicting "two statesmen [who] are raised on high upon a quadrangular base of bronze, one sitting, and one standing. ... The life work and merits of the two legislators is expressed allegorically around a magnificent base rich in symbolic figures".

At the 1900 Paris exposition, Biondi also displayed his Saturnalia, which depicted 10 life-size figures. Each figure represented a different social class in Rome, from the gladiators and slaves to the patricians. All of the figures had an air of decadence. Many critics did not like the work. Lorado Taft, the preeminent American sculpture critic of his day, said the sculpture "epitomized cruelly. but not unjustly, the trend of contemporary sculpture in Italy, with all its misplaced effort and its incredible, if not to say fiendish, dexterity." However, Zimmern commented that "objections may be raised to it on the score of technique, but its cleverness is indisputable. ... The central idea inculcates that in the midst of revelry the great summons may come."

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