Italy is not rich in monuments dedicated to women.
Every new monument is seen as a glimmer of hope for a new, more progressive way of thinking.
All the greater is the outrage over the bronze figure that has just been unveiled in Sapri in the southern Italian province of Salerno.
It is reminiscent of the famous "Spigolatrice di Sapri" ("They were three hundred") from the poem of the same name by Luigi Mercantini, which is one of the most important patriotic testimonies of the Risorgimento.
A grain collector witnessed how the guerrilla fighter Carlo Piscane tried in vain in 1857 to instigate an uprising against the Bourbons. Three hundred men died during the survey. So the subject is serious; the poem is part of the curriculum in many Italian schools. From contemporary paintings we know what a field worker looked like at the end of the 19th century. The artist Emanuele Stifano, however, prefers to show his "Spigolatrice" as a kind of erotic model.
She wears a strapless, tight dress; there is a touch of nothing, and it presents itself to the viewer in a provocative, lascivious attitude. She looks like she wants to draw attention to her round and perfect bum, which would undoubtedly ensure a high place in any Brazilian beauty pageant. The notables who had traveled to the inauguration of the statue reacted disturbed. In the pictures that appeared in the press the next day, most of them look embarrassed, although some of them could not help but look delighted. Others put their hands on their hearts in a touch of patriotism, which only made the scandal worse.
The outcry on social media came promptly. There is talk of a “sexist slap in the face”, of “historical recklessness”. At a time when women are still struggling to be valued for qualities other than their physical appearance, and when rape and femicides are reported daily, the public space is spoiled with a symbol of anachronistic femininity, wrote very aptly a reader of the daily La Repubblica. A former senator demanded that the statue disappear again. The artist himself defiantly declared that he would have preferred to create a naked figure anyway, because the naked body is simply the most beautiful - in the future he will do that again. The community defended his work as a new tourist magnet.What kind of tourism do you have in mind?