Vatican Museums

“Seated on legs solidly set apart, intent on mechanically undressing for an initiation ceremony, his face does not follow the physical act; on the contrary, looking ahead, under the veil formed by the cloth, is clearly absorbed in the contemplation of something else; the mystical act that is about to take place, the new life that is before him”. The journalist Carlo Scarfoglio thus described Neophyte in the catalogue of Basaldella’s first personal exhibition, organised in Rome in 1936. A young work and an explicit testimony to his inclination towards an economical and highly effective plastic rendering, this bronze entered the Collection in 1980 and is linked to an iconographic thread in vogue during those years, especially among the artists of the Roman School, for its implicit reference to magical and ambiguous atmospheres, consonant with the spirit that animated the group.