Resumen de Una memoria pubblica difficile: il caso del monumento fiorentino a Bettino Ricasoli
The present essay aims to analyze the reasons behind the eighteen years (1880-1898) that Florence employed to inaugurate the statue of Bettino Ricasoli in Piazza dell’Indipendenza. The monumental consecration of Ricasoli, which at least apparently should not have provoked neither lengthy nor controversy for the undisputable patriotic merits of the baron, was an interesting example of the contradictions, divisions and perplexities that the definition of a public memory, in his relationships with contemporaneity, brought out. In this framework emerged a private place of memory, prepared by Ricasoli himself during his lifetime: the Castle of Brolio in Chianti.
