DAL ZOTTO, Antonio - b. 1841 Venezia, d. 1918 Venezia

Italian sculptor. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, then moved to Rome to study with Pietro Tenerani. In 1864, the young artist received the commission for the funeral monument of the Giulay family. In the same year he won the Grand Prix of Rome. From 1870 he is professor of anatomy at the Scuola Veneta d’Arte, and from 1879 professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice.

In 1880 he executes the bronze monument to Titian in Pieve di Cadore, the birthplace of the artist. Three years later he produces the monument to Carlo Goldoni, the greatest playwright of the eighteenth century. The capabilities demonstrated in the commemorative sculpture are probably the basis for the commission for the portrait of Victor Emmanuel II, commissioned for the ground floor of the tower of San Martino. He continued his activity in the production of marble and bronze portraits dedicated to great political, literary and artistic personages, the last monument representing the Doge Sebastiano Veniero in Venice (1907).

Dal Zotto was one of the active promoters of what would become the International Art Exhibition of the City of Venice.

Monument in Honour of Carlo Goldoni

Venetian sculpture in the 1880s cannot stand up to comparison with painting, confined as it was to dignified academic practice. Its greatest successes can be seen in the showy but unsuitable monuments springing up in the open spaces of the city. Antonio Dal Zotto, hailed in his youth as the great hope of sculpture, never went beyond superficially pleasing works. Even so, his monument to Goldoni in Campo San Bartolomeo managed to avoid the run-of-the-mill eulogy, and thanks to its freedom from rhetoric it has an aesthetic reason for being on public view in Venice.

The picture shows a small bronze version, the monument was erected in Campo San Bartolomeo in 1883.