Il Palinuro di Arturo Martini
The last masterpiece of the Treviso master Arturo Martini and the first celebratory monument to a partisan in Italy, Palinuro depicts a young man kneeling on a beach washed by the waves. The image refers directly to Enea’s helmsman, from whom it takes its name: in Virgil’s account, Palinuro is overcome by the God of Sleep when he is almost at the coasts of Lazio and falls into the sea; after swimming for three days, he finally reaches dry land, but he is found by the local people who, mistaking him for a sea monster, kill him.
The life-size marble figure displays different levels of workmanship, with the right hand particularly finely finished down to the nail cuticles, while the facial features are only roughly sketched: the celebration of Primo Visentin, a specialist trainee at the University of Padua killed in an ambush on 29 April 1945, thus becomes a tribute to all those who sacrificed their lives for the Liberation. When Visentin was murdered (it is said from behind), he was ordering a group of fleeing Germans to surrender. He, like Palinuro, had just found his shore.
The work was commissioned by Elena Povoledo, the fiancée of the fallen man, the day after the tragic event.
Palinuro’s gaze, directed towards the ground in the first sketches, now lifts upwards, as if looking with hope “towards a brighter future”, in the words of Martini himself.
Originally intended for Primo Visentin’s hometown, the sculpture reached the University of Padua when the artist was already deceased: the pedestal on which it now stands, about 60 centimetres high, is therefore the work of another sculptor, the Carrara-born Aldo Buttini. On the front, at the upper band, is engraved the dedicatory inscription “PROSPEXI ITALIAM SUMMA SUBLIMIS AB UNDA”, taken from the sixth book of the Aeneid, meaning “I saw Italy from afar, raised on the crest of a wave”.
Today, in the Hall of Heroes, overlooking the new courtyard of Palazzo del Bo in Padua, the sculpture is displayed in honour of the students who fell in the war of resistance.
Palinuro was restored in 2022 thanks to the support of the Associazione Amici dell’Università di Padova.
