Portrait of the Lawyer Giuseppe Pugliese 

Filippo Cifariello sculpted this bronze bust, titled *Portrait of the Lawyer Giuseppe Pugliese*, during an era defined by Italy’s complex negotiation of its national identity after unification. It's impossible to overlook the performative aspect of this man's image, the mustache, the lapel flower, the assured gaze. In many ways this is a sculpture about power; about class. It also reveals the intimacy between artist and sitter. Cifariello and Pugliese both hailed from the province of Foggia. This work, like much portraiture of the time, engages in what we might now call myth-making, contributing to the construction of a national and cultural identity rooted in very specific ideas about masculinity and social standing. It compels us to consider whose stories are told, whose faces are immortalized, and what values are being upheld in the process.