Hosmer had begun working on a sculpture of Beatrice Cenci—a young sixteenth-century woman, whose devastating story and the mythology that enveloped it had become an icon for antiauthoritarian Italians, fomenting the ideas of the Roman revolution. Beatrice’s father, a violent and depraved nobleman, had raped her repeatedly. When the papal authorities to whom she reported the crimes did nothing to protect her and to serve punishment, Beatrice took her salvation into her own hands. Together with her brother and stepmother, she hired two assassins to murder the abuser. They attempted to poison
...more
