Antonio Sciortino

Antonio Sciortino (Ħaż-Żebbuġ; 25 January 1879 – 10 August 1947) was a Maltese artist, considered Malta's foremost sculptor of the twentieth century.

[1] Despite his stable residence in Rome, Sciortino maintained strong connections with Malta, where he was commissioned several public monuments, and where its bronzes where later acquired by the Fine Arts Museum.

Sciortino enrolled at the Valletta School of Arts, where he studied drawing under the established painter Lazzaro Pisani and modeling and sculpture under Vincenzo Cardona.

He also attended the evening classes at the British Academy and at the Scuola Serale Preparatoria alle Arti Ornamentali at the Museo Artistico Tecnologico.

With the statue Studio di Donna (1904) Sciortino moved away from the usual representation of the female figure by contemporary French sculptors, towrds an adaptation inspired by Greek art.

The mould of the statue is today at Buckingham Palace, a gift which the Government of Malta gave to Princess Elizabeth II in the name of the Maltese people when she visited the islands in 1951.

In 1905 Sciortino won the competition for a monument to Sir Adrian Dingli, which was unveiled in April 1907 in the presence of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in the Mall Garden of Floriana.

This monument, made of granite and bronze, is 7.5 meters high and represents the poet in an act of meditation sitting on a tree trunk wearing the Ukrainian national dress.

For three whole years Sciortino was mesmerized by the thought, planning and modeling of this vast and imposing monument which was to be known as the Temple of the British Empire to the Unknown Hero.

The statue of Christ the Redeemer is a bronze figure 3.5 meters high that dominates on a granite pedestal and expresses the majesty and greatness of a king.

[7] On commission of the people of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Sciortino had to complete a monument for the Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov to be erected in Rostov-on-Don.

He worked on a bust of Carmen Sylva on a stetina of the royal family of Romania and created an imposing monument commemorating the proclamation of Brazil as a Republic.

Between 1931 and 1936, in preparation for an exhibition by the American Art Commission, Sciortino completed a number of works of different artistic forms and subjects – in all twenty-one pieces of sculpture in plaster, bronze and marble.

Among these we find Lindbergh on Eagle, Courage of Future Generation, Arab Horses, In the Jungle, Detachment of the Soul from Humanity, Speed ', Madonna protecting Navigators, Dangerous Sport, Consolation, Late, First Kiss, Laughing, Surprised, Smiling and others.

Finally the exhibition could not take place due to the death of the chairman of the commission Frank Pedry, the economic recession that America was going through, and the international political events.

Of interest is the loyalty to England; this when compared to many Maltese art students, who in the last years that Sciortino was in Rome were going to study there on scholarships granted by the Italian government – most of them actually felt a great attraction towards the fascism and to Italy.