Do you tend to see creative artists as marginally bizarre recluses, often barricaded inside ivory towers, muffled in their own genius? Do you believe they sip nectar in the happy hour and rely on ambrosia to put on weight? Well, sometimes. It can court shock and disillusion when you discover that, whatever their greatness, they still inhabit the human dimension and suffer from haemorrhoids, just like the most uninspired ones among us.

Little is known so far about Antonio Sciortino the person. Though the artistic genius of this great sculptor is beyond injury and his work has received major critical attention, both in his lifetime and after, his personal profile remains unfocussed and opaque, seen only through the frosted fogs of time and the dissonance of distance. He must have been a thoroughly secretive person, who protected his private life from all inquisitiveness and indiscretion, benign or malicious, the sort that brands the curiosities of others as crimes against humanity.

I have read many of the letters he wrote to his closest friend, and never does he expose even minimally the inner lining of his feelings or allows any personal marker to make an appearance, however fleeting and nervous. Everything about him may have been negotiable, except his determination not to share with anyone the code to his inner self. Not the person you would expect to see walking a brace of dogs.

On Sciortino’s stubborn silences, I remember my father remarking: “You never knew if he wanted to say nothing, or if he had nothing to say.” Someone else added that “Sciortino was privately a very taciturn person” unable to communicate – to the extent that when he took Vincenzo Bonello’s position as teacher of history of art at the government school of art, he gave it up almost instantly because of the anguish he suffered when it came to expressing himself in public. One of his earliest biographers, Arturo Lancellotti, tried to wrap in some elegance Sciortino’s compulsive mutism: “he who talks so little about anything, never speaks about himself.”

Rightly, Antonio Sciortino (1879-1947) nurtured a very high opinion of his own artistic stature and resented fiercely any criticism or any suggestion of insufficiency. These he invariably attributed, at best to ignorance, and at worse to envy and revanche. To his credit he had top achievements in various prestigious international competitions, of which he had won a number. In his heyday he received commissions from far and near. Though never becoming a household name in Europe, he had acquired a solid reputation in the international art world.

Convincingly or otherwise, Sciortino, who lived and worked in Rome for 36 years, boasted of being the most ‘modern’ sculptor of his times – even Giacomo Balla, he says, the world-renowned futurist artist of the inter-war years, had acknowledged that. In his autobiography, stumblingly handwritten in the third person shortly before he died and only published in facsimile, he elaborated on this: “The modern art of A. Sciortino is the true expression of the art of tomorrow, we say tomorrow because the modern artists of today in Europe they inspire themselves from the Primitives, Orientals, Assyrians, Indians, Chinese art and call it modern. They not express themselves from the present life. Sciortino being of inventive mind expresses himself from the war and in modern life of America.”

The sculptor’s Italian was hardly perfect, but his English was downright distressed. And his concern with his art being ‘modern’, as opposed to being timeless, fostered its own vulnerability. In art, the price to pay for modernism is built-in obsolescence.

Not difficult to see why Sciortino’s ego bruised excruciatingly when a Maltese newspaper carried a vitriolic attack on him by an anonymous correspondent accusing him of artistic incompetence and of shameless plagiarism. It is with this virtually unknown episode that I propose to deal, relying on unpublished autograph material. My father Vincenzo Bonello, art critic and historian, had taken Sciortino under his wing, and did everything in his power to advance his career, because he genuinely believed that, finally, Malta had an artist of truly international stature – the only really outstanding Maltese sculptor since Melchiorre Cafà.

Father kept Sciortino’s letters from abroad, and these I am translating, editing and releasing elsewhere, in an academic publication. Besides father’s letter archive, I had the good fortune of being allowed to make use of an unpublished manuscript copy of all the correspondence exchanged from November 1916 to October 1918, between Sciortino in Rome and the renowned ophthalmologist Lorenzo Manche, in connection with the Christ the King monument. This precious file is now kept by Louis Borg Manche.

Sciortino nurtured a very high opinion of his own artistic stature and resented any criticism or any suggestion of insufficiency

The Manche dossier helps to put right some misunderstandings about the Christ the King monument. It proves conclusively that Sciortino donated this masterpiece to the nation, charging no fees for his work. He only asked for refund of the costs (£2,500). On the initiative of Manche, the organising committee voted a £50 gratuity for the sculptor, of which he left £5 to his sister, the signorina Maria. Even getting the reimbursement of the costs from Malta exasperated Sciortino no end: “My experiences of working with Malta are out of this world.” Expert scalpellini sent from Italy mounted the monument.

Another widespread misconception refers to the figure of Malta at the base of the monument as a late afterthought. The file contains three unpublished photographs of the consecutive models prepared by Sciortino for approval by the committee. The leaning figure of Malta already appears from the very first concept. These photographs, better than anything else, document the progression of Sciortino’s aesthetics from a rather conventional model to a highly superior final creation.

Those two batches of letters provide some background to the episode I am recounting. The Maltese paper il-Ħmar had in its issue of the April 3, 1926, carried a long article blistering Sciortino, and to a lesser degree, his protector Bonello. My father thought it right to mail a copy of the paper to Sciortino in Rome. Il-Ħmar, a semi-satirical paper, aimed at instructing the working classes and at promoting the use of the Maltese language; it represented the marginal legacy of Manuel Dimech.

But we must take a step backwards. In a previous private letter, dated August 23, 1925, Sciortino had shared with my father his disappointment at a Maltese young man who had been sent to Rome to study sculpture, but had got nowhere, spectacularly. In Sciortino’s words: “So, after all I have done for him, our friend (?) has now hurled himself against me. That is so wrong, as I know all that he does not want should be known in Malta, and I will say it. He was admitted to the Roman Institute following my warm recommendations. During all the time he stayed here, he always remained stuck in the class where they copy plaster casts, and it is a shame on me for having recommended him so vigorously.

“After he left Rome, I went to see the exhibition of the students of the institute where they study, and looked around to see his work, but, to my surprise, I found his work in the class of the plaster copies. This class had eight or nine students who reproduced the cast of Silenus, and his was among the most mediocre.

“I then asked the teacher of that class, and he replied that he is a testa di c., brimming over with presumption, and that he did well to leave. We have to keep in mind that these pupils are nothing but young students with low expectations, as it is rare that one (of them) achieves success, even after having completed the courses of sculpture from real life, but he never managed to reach the real life class.

“Perhaps he will be boasting about having attended the Museo Artistico Industriale, but that is not for noteworthy artists, only for decorators, and is frequented by children who cannot attend other daily schools – all artisans. At the English Academy, the only place he drew from life in the evening classes, he came last in the competition for Englishmen. I do not know if this is enough – this is the great artist from Malta.”

Nowhere does Sciortino mention the name of this bleak inadequate. He assumed that Bonello would instantly know who he was referring to – there would only have been one Maltese hopeful studying sculpture in Rome with Sciortino at that particular time.

To be fair to Sciortino, another three Maltese students who, at different times, went to Rome to learn sculpture, had been welcomed and assisted by the master right through their studies; two became excellent artists and well known: Vincent Apap and George Borg. The third one, a certain Caruana sent to Rome by Bonello, but not better identified, is to me totally evanescent.

Sciortino has some good words for him in 1926, and thought he showed promise, he then disappears completely from the scene – he either gave up art, or died young, or emigrated from the island. I would be grateful to any reader who could fill me in with more details of this promising sculptor Caruana who went to Rome and then marched with brave resolution into absolute nothingness.

The article against Sciortino and Bonello by Giosafat in Il-Ħmar starts off by singing the praises of Fra Diegu, and of the committee that had raised funds to erect a monument to his holy memory. The committee had wanted to give all Maltese artists a chance to try their hand at the monument and to invite international artists too, to ensure a worthy outcome.

“The fatal misfortune of this country is that we always produced men great in wisdom and in other virtues, but also persons given to intrigue and who are charlatans, with the result that a member of the committee appeared before it, acting like a proficient travelling salesman, loaded with a sheaf of papers (magazines and images) which spoke about the Maltese sculptor Toni Sciortinu from Rome, the same one who did the Christ of the (garden of the) Biskuttin [this garden in Floriana is popularly referred to as il-Biskuttin, or Fuq il-Biskuttin - possibly buskett/buskettin /biskuttin?]. He then proposed that this monument be executed without any competition (in other words, take whatever comes) to be modelled by Toni Sciortinu of Rome, at any price he would care to ask.

“It was here remarked that the friars already had two proposals by Italian artists who charged half what Toni Sciortinu was asking for. Some members of the committee protested and a certain monsignor [Paolo Gauci?] then mentioned several incidents he had come to know of when he had formed part of the committee for the Redentur tal-Biskuttin and added that this sculptor (Sciortino) ‘had given them no end of bitterness (imrar) to swallow’.”. This provoked great chaos in the committee and some insults were hurled at the monsignor for having revealed confidential information ‘that would break the eggs in the basket before they could be placed under the hen (qroqqa)’, and the sitting had to be disbanded”.

A Maltese newspaper carried a vitriolic attack on him by an anonymous correspondent accusing him of incompetence and plagiarism

Here Giosafat is being quite ungenerous with the truth. The friars did indeed have proposals for a monument to Fra Diegu by two Italian sculptors – Vincenzo Balestrieri and (Domenico?) Spampinato from Catania, which would have cost considerably less than Sciortino’s – but these were for busts, not full-figure memorials. Later, in 1930, the remarkable self-taught Roman sculptor Giuseppe Tonnini, (1875-1954) had also been approached.

With leaden irony, Giosafat adds that: “Sciortinu is competent and capable, honest in his work and fair in the price he asks, and this is all stated in the newspapers that Ċensu Bonell submitted to the committee. Now I want to see if this same Sciortinu is of the calibre that has been described by the same Bonell, as God gave me eyes to see and a brain to reason with, as I am not the idiot those who have an interest to nail me think or wish me to be.

“I would therefore like to mention that as I was proceeding to Sliema [by ferry boat], in the shop window of The Central Library, in St Mark Street [Valletta], I saw an engraving that shows a beautiful Christ, modelled in bronze by the renowned Italian sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi, a statue of the most grandiose majesty, positioned in a way that inspires veneration, and placed on a pedestal only some two feet high, as if on a tomb.

“I was amazed to see it, as I believed it to be the ‘Christ by Sciortinu’ which we have in the Biskuttin garden. But when I observed it closely, I concluded that it was not, as both the hands are hanging down, and are whole! Unlikely that this world-renowned Bistolfi copied the statue of the Biskuttin, or that Sciortino stole a copy of that one – so what is the matter here?

“It is important that this committee should make clear in the papers under what pretext of justice it excluded from the competition Maltese artists, among who the very Sciortino Ċikku [Fracesco Saverio, brother of Antonio] who is working as a sculptor in Canada, an artist who qualified in Rome, it excluded Dwardu Galea, a sculptor and architect graduated from the academies of Rome, and various other Maltese sculptors who are in Malta, and who studied to earn a living, and value their own self-respect and honour, and expect the [acknowledgement of the] rights of artists to show their ability on every occasion that presents itself.

“These Maltese artists have already given evidence of great works and are therefore worthy to enter a competition as, after all, this Toni Sciortinu never frequented any real academy which has a regular course of sculpture in Rome, except an English academy, which is nothing but a free school for the exercise of the arts.

“This is all the more so in that anatomical perfection is instantly seen to be lacking where this Toni Sciortinu is concerned. It is enough to see the colossal errors that exist in the figure of Christ, and even more so, in the figure of Malta underneath, whose arms look like two paddle oars for racing boats (palelli tal-firilli) one longer than the other, without mentioning others. If this Toni is so renowned, and does not plagiarise, he does not need to fear his own brother, apart from others, in a competition.”

Giosafat ends with an exhortation: he hopes that all the distinguished members of the committee, including its president, who is also president of the Courts of Law (Sir Arturo Mercieca), will be inspired by the virtues of truth and justice. We want to follow their example in these days when Bolshevism is invading the whole world. “I hope the example is set, and that the seed of insubordination is trampled underfoot by those who have a duty to do so.”

Someone at Il-Ħmar (if the writer was the editor Guliermu Arena, he died a fortnight later) inserted a rather confused footnote to Giosafat’s equally confusing final paragraph, sticking out for Sciortino: he (the editor) was in favour of competition, but if the monument was awarded to Sciortino, a Maltese, the least one to blame would be Sciortino himself, and therefore Giosafat should have treated him better.

The statue that Giosafat refers to, allegedly plagiarised by Sciortino, would be the Christ Walking on Water by Leonardo Bistolfi (1859-1933), of which two exemplars survive, one shown at the 1899 Venice International Art Exhibition, and the second placed on the sculptor’s tomb in the Cimitero Monumentale of Casal Monferrato. The resemblance between Bistolfi’s Christ and Sciortino’s is undeniable, but could hardly be more superficial. Bistolfi’s emphasis is on the ethereal weightlessness of Christ walking on the water, while Sciortino, on the contrary, stresses the ponderous monumentality and the elegant gravitas of the anointed King of Heaven. Two masterpieces in their own right that owe each other nothing, except mutual admiration.

Bistolfi, a recognised European virtuoso of that outcrop of naturalist-symbolist sculpture that bridged the 19th and the 20th centuries, worked in a world in which art nouveau held sway; he certainly influenced many, including Sciortino, the way most great artists somehow or other influence their contemporaries and their successors. But the charge of plagiarism is something altogether unwarranted and demeaning. If anything, as Dennis Vella has pointed out, Sciortino’s Christ the King echoes more distinctly the central figure in the sprawling monument to Jan Hus in Tyn Old Town Square, Prague, inaugurated in 1915, than anything else. This, again, does not even remotely suggest that Sciortino plagiarised its creator Ladislav Saloun.

In truth, Giosafat was neither the first nor the only one who accused Sciortino of plagiarising Bistolfi’s Christ. Eight years earlier, on October 10, 1918, Prof. Manche had written an embarrassed letter to the sculptor in Rome to warn him of the damaging rumours circulating in Malta against him. “Here it is opportune to say a few words about an incident, which is: that someone has obtained a lithograph from some illustrated journal, showing Christ by the sculptor Bistolfi, which resembles the one of our monument, and people gossip that your Christ is a copy of the one by Bistolfi (which I believe is in Venice). I and Vassallo [architect Andrea] have seen this Christ and it is not at all identical to the one made by you, but resembles it; we have answered these people: Bistolfi is a great sculptor, and if Sciortino made something similar, we should be proud because our Christ is therefore a work of art, and not, as some wanted to demean it when it was unveiled, saying that it does not represent Christ.

“As a friend I wanted to inform you of this incident which raised a furore among those who are not our friends, who are, however, very few.”

Sciortino answered on October 30. He rejected vehemently all accusations of having plagiarised his friend Bistolfi: his enemies are simply jealous and ignorant. Thank God, he never had to copy anyone. In style and character the two monuments are completely different. There are many standing figures of Christ, and to the uninformed, they all look the same. Did Bistolfi copy his Christ from others before him?

A tradition orally handed down in the Manche family has it that the committee had already opted for the first Sciortino bozzetto, but then someone remarked that this copied Bistolfi’s Christ too closely. The sculptor was asked to prepare a second version, without being told why. It was only in 1918, well after the unveiling of the monument, that Manche repeated to the sculptor the rumours then circulating.

(To be concluded)