AURELI (AUREL), CESARE. - Sculptor, born and died in Roma (1844-1923). His most significant works are the statue of Card. Massaia (1893) in the church of the Franciscans at Tuscolo, near Frascati; in Roma, the St. Tommaso—sculpted for the Jubilee of Leone XIII—intended for the Vatican Library; the group of St. Giovanni Battista de la Salle (1903) in S. Pietro; the group Galileo e Milton (1912), which A. donated to the University of Roma; the model for the monument to St. Alfonso Maria de' Liguori (erected in 1923 in S. Agata dei Goti); and the statue of St. Cecilia in the church of the same name.
Among his writings on art, the most interesting are: Il soprannaturale, supremo ispiratore delle arti belle (from Gli studi in Italia, 7 [1884], pp. 1-54); Arte popolare o di genere (from the Giornale arcadico, 6th series, 2 [1907], pp. 337-53); Il tipo di Gesù Cristo nell'arte sacra (Roma 1907); Dello scopo supremo delle Arti Belle (ibid. 1878); and Sul realismo nelle arti belle (from Gli Studi d'Italia, 1 [1878], pp. 1-21), in which A. sets forth his artistic theory, which, between academic classicism and mystic-idealistic currents, proposes as the artist’s end the “search for beauty in truth.”