International studio (51.1913/1914)

INTERNATIONAL
• STUDIO •
VOL. LI. No. 202 Copyright, 1913, by John Lane Company DECEMBER, 1913

HE ART OF C. S. PIETRO
BY JESSIE LEMONT
Some twenty years ago a young
Italian boy accompanied by a gentle
and pious mother, made almost daily visits to the
great cathedral in Rome. The vast interior, with
its long, dim aisles, the high-arched vaultings, the
many twinkling candle lights, the incense, the
music, the glow of the paintings, the serenity of
the sculptures filled the soul of the youth with a
desire to create something beautiful, noble,
exalted.
This early influence, perhaps, gave to the work
of C. S. Pietro the spiritual quality that renders it
significant and distinctive. From molding tiny
images in clay in early childhood, as the years
passed the young sculptor advanced in creative
work, and after having achieved success in his
home city, he moved in 1909 to New York.
It is unusual to find the work of a sculptor
through its entire scope possessive of qualities of
warmth and life; it is still rarer to find the whole
range of figure work of an artist expressive of the
subtle essence called personality. Character is
traced by lines; the shape of a hand is indicative
of individuality; the contours of the face reveal
temperament; the abundance and texture of the
hair suggests sensuousness or spirituality. Ob-
serve the subtle revelation of the hair in the trip-
tych of Watts entitled And She Shall Be Called
Woman, Eve Tempted and Eve Repentant. In the
Creation of Woman the gold of the woman’s hair
glows about her head like a halo or like the shim-
mer of the sun. Eve Tempted has hair that is
electric; it seems to crackle. The hair of Eve
Repentant flows over her fair body in soft waves
like the quiet rippling of waters.
The comprehension of texture and movement is
more difficult of exposition for the sculptor than
for the painter. It must be suggested entirely by
line and through the medium of hard substance.

Signor Pietro has the intuitive perception of these
values and has conveyed them both subtly and
strikingly. The portraits and imaginative con-
ceptions of this artist express mobility, change;
delicate shades of expression play over faces;
brows contract in fleeting lines of pain; shadows
lie in the hollow of the throat; smiles steal over the
curves of the mouth. These marbles are not rigid
forms of cold, unchanging beauty; they radiate
from their soft contours a pulsating vitality.
The studios at 402 Fifth Avenue present an
arresting variety and individuality of production.
The entrance hall is a large, bare room, empty save
for several heroic busts placed on pedestals far
apart so that each seems to be isolated and with-
drawn to itself.
There is a head of Mozart with high, intellectual
brow, large, dreamy eyes, sensitive nose and deli-
cate yet full lips—distinctively the poet, the
musician, the composer of those staccato harmon-
ies so in keeping with the knee breeches, silken
waistcoats, lace ruffles and periwigs of the arti-
ficial time that produced them. This youth might
have trod a measure with the ladies of Watteau;
might have moved among that picturesque and
dainty throng with the radiant mien and rapt face
of one who hears and follows the music of The
Magic Flute. The shoulders are erect, the head
thrown a trifle back, the eyes raised and wide with
their vision.
The lines of the head of Verdi are bolder, more
flowing, the features are more massive; the head
bends downward, the eyes are less open, the gaze
more inward, more introspective. Here is the
composer of the bigger harmonies; the listener to
sounds that swell and grow in power and rise in a
mighty, cumulative gathering of volume. This
listening head hears the melodies of Aida, the roll
of LaForza del Destino, the beat of the Requiem and
the soaring notes of the Inflammatus. This fine
head was cast in bronze for Mr. Maxwell, of the
Ricordi house.


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