Inauguration of the staute "La spigolatrice" by Emanuele Stifano © italia2tv.it
A new public monument in the Italian town of Sapri depicts a female figure with an exceptionally well-defined rear end, and local women are outraged.
Many Italian women politicians are calling for the removal of a new public monument that depicts a woman with an exaggeratedly large and clearly transparent end to be taken down. The statue La Spigolatrice by Emanuele Stifano was unveiled this week in Sapri, Italy. The female Democratic Party politicians in Palermo said in a statement to the Independent that they had to "suffer the humiliation of seeing ourselves represented in the form of a sexualized body, devoid of soul and without any connection with the social and political issues of the story."
"The Gleaner of Sapri" is Mercantini's title for his poem "La Spigolatrice di Sapri," and the statue is meant to represent him. When an uprising against the Kingdom of Naples in 1857 goes horribly wrong and 300 people die, a farm laborer named the gleaner steps in to help Carlo Pisacane, an Italian revolutionary, but the poet doesn't take note of her bottom.
As if the statue were dressed in a transparent gown, every curve of the model is revealed. Stifano, on the other hand, denies any sexism. He wrote on Facebook, "I always tend to cover the human body as little as possible, regardless of gender." The statue, if given the chance, would have preferred to be "completely naked... simply because I am a lover of the human body." A statue of the apostle Bartholomew's martyrdom, depicted completely nude except for a flap of flayed skin hanging over his penis, may be seen in Stifano's Flickr account.
It was on the seafront, so I made use of the sea breeze to help move the long skirt and, as a result, draw attention to her body," she said. It's a moment of great pathos to highlight anatomy that shouldn't have been a faithful snapshot of a 19th-century peasant woman, but rather to represent an ideal of a woman, to evoke her pride, and to awaken conscience.
Various male dignitaries, including the former Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, were photographed at the opening festivities for La Spigolatrice. Several female politicians, including senator Monica Cirinnà and Democratic Party representative Laura Boldrini, have taken to social media to denounce the work and its sexualization of the poem's heroine.
Jean Dubreil