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"The girl driven mad by love" by Antonio Galli is an innovative work of art
at the beginning of the second half of the XIX century in Milan.
The sculptor, influenced by his contemporaries Alessandro Puttinati and Vincenzo Vela
made a work of naturalist taste and dramatic character.
At that time, the Induno brothers were experimenting a new way of painting
with contemporary subjects with pedagogic meanings and genre scenes.
The sculpture represents a woman, who shows, in her allucinated expression
to be victim of a mental illness.
The work was first exhibited at the Brera Exhibition in 1854;
a considerable critical debate arose.
The fact that beauty was no longer the dominant character
but pain and desperation, was criticised, among others, by Carlo Tenca.
Tenca was convinced that art should not represent minute or ephemeral feelings
but should be exclusively a vehicle of noble passions.
He ascribed the character of Galli's work to a moment of moral crisis
in the milanese sculpture, which affects the content.
Nevertheless, it was necessary to comply with the requests of a new bourgeois class
which was in search of a new, decorative art.
A review by Antonio Zoncada, published in the serie "Gemme d'arti italiane" in 1855,
offers an interesting interpretation of the subject of the sculpture.
The military epaulette on the ground and the pending medaillon on her breast
lead us to think that she is a woman who lost her beloved and has become insane.
The work of art could be this way read as a sculptural trasposition
of the famous character of the melodrama "Nina o sia la pazza per amore" by Giovanni Paisiello
very successful in Milan in the early XIX century.
The opera, italian version of the celebrated french comedy by de Vivetières
was performed in Paris in May 1786 for the first time
Paisiello's version was staged three years later in the palace of Caserta
with the libretto by Giuseppe Carpani.
It is the story of a young woman, Nina
whose father compels her to abandon the man she loves for a richer one.
When she sees the body of her beloved, injured to death during a duel against its rival
Nina becomes insane
The return of her beloved, who has survived
allows Nina to heal from her mental illness.
One of the main themes of the melodrama is madness
a literary and theatrical thopos
which had always meant incomunicability and distance.
Madness was considered, in the romantic age, as an excess of sensitivity
and one can recognize, in its irrationality,
a special contact and relationship with God.
Now, it is shown in its intrinsic value of mental deviation
and it becomes a subject full of dignity.
Love insanity was a fil rouge of other melodramas
such as the "Lucia di Lammermoor" by Donizetti or "The puritans" by Bellini
establishing itself as one of the favourite themes in the romantic age.
The expression of ephemeral emotions
already treated successfully by the Induno brothers
is proposed by Galli in his sculpture
which well represents the tendencies of its time.