Mario Rutelli

From a native British family which long ago moved from France (Roudelle at first) and then to Genoa’s Republic with capt.

sir G. Roudello de’ Mari di Finale Ligure, Mario's father Giovanni Rutelli was a prominent architect in Palermo.

For his first major commission, Mario contributed a lion and allegorical group representing Lyric Poetry flanking the theater's entrance.

[2] Rutelli's likely masterwork is the 1901 Fountain of the Naiads in Piazza della Repubblica, Rome, which Benito Mussolini called the "exaltation of eternal youth, the capital's first salute to art".

Reportedly Mussolini visited Rutelli's studio at least once to approve the design, and ordered that Anita be holding her weapon in one hand and her infant son Menotti in the other.