VELA, Vincenzo
Swiss sculptor, active mainly in northern Italy. He was born in the village of Ligornetto in Ticino, where a museum today collects much of his works. Advised by his family to become a stonemason, he joined his brother Lorenzo, a sculptor, in Milan in 1834. There he learned as an apprentice and attended the Academy of Brera. He worked in the marble sculptor corporation of the Duomo di Milano.
His first commissions came in the 1840s. His early works, influenced by Realism, provoked interest and praise from the public as well as critics and got him his first acknowledgements.
In 1847 he moved to Rome, where he executed one of his most famous work, the Spartacus now at Ligornetto. Six years later he moved to Turin, to teach in the local Accademia Albertina. His other notable works include the monument to the Sardinian Army and that to the painter Antonio Allegri, best known as Correggio.
Versatile and extraordinarily sensitive to the ideas and styles of the times, which he at times anticipated and influenced Vela represents the evolution of Italian art in the second half of the 1800’s: a journey that goes from classicism to verism.
He returned to Ligornetto in 1867, where he had built a house-museum where he could live and work, but also where he could show the public his work. In Ticino, Vincenzo Vela was active in politics (he was elected to the Grand Counsel) and culturally. He died at Mendrisio aged 71. His work is on display at the Vela Museum; others can be found in Lugano, Bellinzona, Airolo, as well as Milan and Turin.
