VELA, VINCENZO. - Sculptor, b. at Ligornetto near Mendrisio in the Canton of Ticino on 3 May 1822, d. there on 4 Oct. 1891.
The first sculpture that brought the V. fame in Milan, where, as a boy, he had worked as a stonecutter on the Cathedral, but where he had also attended the courses at Brera as a pupil of Cacciatori, was the Spartacus (1847; Palazzo Litta). A success deriving also from the illustrative values of the theme, of clear significance in those revolutionary years. The Austrian government suspected as much, so much so that V., a volunteer in Switzerland against the separatist movement in 1852, after that warrior adventure of his, rather than return to Milan preferred to go to Turin. And there he remained until 1867, succeeding Gaggini as teacher of sculpture at the Albertina Academy.
Those Turinese years were the fifteen most fruitful for the sculptor who, having set out on a path in many respects similar to that of Bartolini, did not entirely elude academic forms even when he wished to express naturalistic conceptions. So much so that the greatest interest of his sculptures seems almost always to have to be sought in their prevailing illustrative interests. Thus in the Desolation that is in Lugano (c. 1852), thus in the characteristic group of the daughters of the Marquis Ala Ponzone (formerly in Cremona), thus in the images of the queens Maria Theresa and Maria Adelaide (1861) in the church of the Consolata in Turin, thus in the tomb of Antonio Rosmini that is in the church of the Crocifisso in Stresa, thus finally in what is considered his masterpiece: the Dying Napoleon in the castle of Versailles (1866).
After '67 V. withdrew again to Ligornetto, where he continued to work intensely until his death, evolving his own style in a sense ever more inclined to the pictorialism toward which so many of his pupils and followers in Piedmont and Lombardy had already oriented themselves. But the bronze bas-relief The Victims of Labor (1883) of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, which is a characteristic example of that evolution, despite the feeling and the beautiful breadth of composition, cannot be considered among the master's most successful works. Excellent are some of his portraits, among which the Tito Pollestrini of the Civic Museum of Turin and the Cavour in the Palazzo della Borsa in Genoa are most notable.