The tower of the rebellious “Grand Master”

An isolated segment of the Aurelian Wall, today visible at the centre of Piazza Fiume, was incorporated into the studio/home of the Roman sculptor Ettore Ferrari, who lived between 1845 and 1929. A child of artists, a follower of Mazzini and a republican politician, he has been described as “an artist with political beliefs somewhere between Mazzini and Garibaldi”, and someone with a controversial and multifaceted personality.

Ferrari established himself as a commemorative artist, and many of his creations depicted the great protagonists of the Italian Risorgimento, but he was, first and foremost, politically involved in the events surrounding the democratic and republican movement at the end of the century. He was a public administrator, a teacher, and affiliated with Freemasonry, and from 1904 to 1917, was called to hold the position of Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy at Palazzo Giustiniani and Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite.

The Porta Salaria studio was the setting for political meetings and heated democratic conventions. In 1897, Garibaldi’s expedition to Greece was planned within these walls. At the same time, secret meetings were organised here with the Roman Carboneria [secret revolutionary society] and representatives of the Universal Republican Alliance, whose aim was to keep the revolutionary republican ideal alive. In this context, he founded a publication, Lux, which addressed political and esoteric issues. With the approval of the law against secret societies in 1925, Ferrari was under constant police surveillance, then denounced and reprimanded on the charge of attempting to reorganise Freemasonry.

Apart from their artistic and commemorative value, Ettore Ferrari’s works often met with opposition for their political, anticlerical and anti-monarchical connotations. The statue dedicated to Giordano Bruno, erected in 1887, became the symbol of free thinking and an open challenge to the Church and the Pope: it took a good 13 years of demonstrations, clashes between those who were “pro-Bruno” and those who were “anti-Bruno”, arrests, the resignation of the City Council of the time and Pope Leo XIII’s threat to abandon Rome, before it was placed permanently in Campo de’ Fiori.

The monument to Giuseppe Mazzini had to wait as long as 1949, the birth of the Italian Republic, to find a location, and to accept the censorship ordered by the Holy See, which deemed some allegories irreverent. An equestrian statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, destined for Rome, was actually “exiled” to Rovigo because it was considered disrespectful to the united monarchy: in the sculptural composition, in fact, Garibaldi held the Savoy Crown beneath his stirrups.