“If really we want to place young heroeswhether they are men or women no longer matters, let’s do it while respecting the historic places of Padua” he claims Vincenzo Tinè, superintendent of the artistic and architectural heritage of Venice, Belluno, Padua and Treviso. This is how he expresses himself on the matter to the hypothesis of introducing a female statue in Prato della Valle: a request that already at the end of January 2022 had been deposited in the City Council of Padua after an explicit request from the citizens themselves, after a petition had collected thousands of signatures. And the superintendent’s response is a clear no: «As we agreed together with the culture councilor Andrea Colasio, the citizens and those who proposed this initiative must take note of the missing statues among those present in Prato della Valle they are not voids that we need to fillit is rather a question of a political gesture that had a logic at the time and that we want to continue to have. They are not vacant positions, they have been deliberately removed” explains Tiné. «And now what do we want to do? – he asks – The imitations of eighteenth-century statues with modern values totally out of context? I don’t think that’s the case.”
The commitment of the administration
Il the right place will be found, but it is not the one proposed in Prato. And it is a line of thought also espoused by the councillor Colasio: «In the city many had deluded themselves that there could be a positive response, today we reiterate the total infeasibility of the thing. It won’t be long until the citizens’ wishes regarding which figure to choose for the statue are made official, from there we will also proceed with the choice of place. But the investment by the Municipality was there and we are ready to proceed.” The councilor remembers the commitment that the administration has made not only towards the citizens of Paduabut towards all women who, through art, would be represented.
The proposer
And even the person who first proposed the initiative agrees, Margherita Colonnello, councilor with responsibility for combating gender violence: «We have full confidence in the superintendency regarding the word given to citizens and the administration. We do not want to distort the historical panorama of Prato della Valle with a statue of a woman not from the eighteenth century? We we can only accept Tinè’s specific and final opinion, but we then ask that they choose where to put itbecause it is a work that demonstrates the willingness of a city, and of a society, to rewrite history with female protagonists within it.”
