A tribute, or rather two, by the people of Monza to Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Yes, because there are two statues depicting the Hero of Two Worlds in the city, one in the square named after him in front of the Tribunal and the other at the Boschetti Reali. And the statues boast a somewhat articulated history.
It was June 3, 1886 when the work by Ernesto Bazzaro (1859-1937) was inaugurated in Piazza Isola (today precisely Piazza Garibaldi).
The Carrara marble sculpture depicting Garibaldi, the first made in all of Italy after the condottiero's death in 1882, was commissioned to pay homage to the hero of the Risorgimento by the then City Council to Bazzaro, an artist close to the Milanese Scapigliatura movement, who won the specially announced competition, receiving the praise of the adjudicating commission composed of such illustrious figures as painters Bianchi and Borsa, sculptors Grandi and Barzaghi, and critic Archinti.
Bazzaro, as well as the Monza artist Eugenio Baioni, participated in the 1923 competition for the creation of the war memorial in Piazza Trento e Trieste, which was won, however, by Enrico Pancera.
The statue was paid for thanks to the spontaneous offerings of the Monzese and remained in Piazza Garibaldi until 1912, when it was considered to be in an "obvious state of decay" and it was decided, therefore, to replace it.
It was at that point that the second statue was born, an identical copy of the original and made in 1914, again by Bazzaro, but in bronze.
This new statue was placed in 1915 in place of the marble one, and it remained on the pedestal in Garibaldi Square until 1934, when it was moved to the Boschetti Reali where it still stands today.
And the original marble one? The Bazzaro statue was left in the courtyard of the current Olivetti Institute at 12 Via Lecco until its restoration and final repositioning on the new pedestal in Piazza Garibaldi in 2013.
