Guglielmo Tell
When it comes to William Tell, the general consensus seems to be that he is a symbol of Switzerland’s patriotic national history. But a small monument in Ticino raises some questions.
Noah Businger
Noah Businger is a historian and a PhD student in Early Modern Swiss History at the University of Bern.
What is perplexing, however, is the location of the monument. Like all other areas of what is now Ticino, the Valle Onsernone was a subject territory of the Old Swiss Confederacy until 1798. The people of Uri, Schwyz and the other Confederates saw themselves as sons of Tell, but themselves ruled Ticino from Airolo to Mendrisio as foreign bailiffs. Ticino only became an equal canton of the Confederation in the 19th century. How did it come to be, then, that Tell of all people became a role model for the former subjects of the Confederacy?
First possible interpretation: Tell as an expression of national identity and patriotism
During the construction boom in Bern in the 1890s, Ermenegildo opened a subsidiary of his father’s business in the Swiss capital. Swiss national identity was already being carved in stone at the time. Wishing to project an image of prestige, the still young federal state was investing in significant buildings such as the federal palace. This construction activity attracted many artists to Bern, who decorated these iconic buildings with works that sought to promote a sense of national identity.
The young Peverada also participated in the Confederation’s competitive bidding processes. Up to that point, he had made a name for himself mainly through the romanticised depiction of social subjects, such as the hardship of daily life in the Valle Onsernone. In Bern, Peverada sought to branch out, turning his hand to patriotic motifs. In 1896 he presented his Tell sculpture at the national exhibition in Geneva, thereby following a trend as national-identity-building sculpture was very in vogue at the time.
From then on, erecting a monument to Tell meant expressing a certain national self-image. Peverada’s Tell appears to be a continuation of this trend. Yet the sculpture was only mounted on its base in Loco in 1965; before that, it spent a long time in the museum there. Was the purpose of the Tell statue in Loco really intended to express allegiance to the nation state with its supposed ancient Swiss symbol? Was that even necessary? Isn’t there more to Loco’s Tell than that?
Second possible interpretation: Tell as an international symbol of national independence
This clue initially leads us to the lakeside promenade in Lugano, where the only other Tell monument in Ticino, created by Vincenzo Vela (1829–91), has stood since 1856. At the time, Vela was one of the most famous sculptors in Switzerland and Italy. He had lived for a long time in Milan and later settled in Turin. But after fighting against the foreign rule of Lombardy by Austria in 1848, on the side of the Italian Risorgimento, which championed national independence and Italian unification, he was forced to leave the country.
Vela was commissioned to create his Tell by Giacomo Ciani, a hotelier and radical republican Italian immigrant. In Lugano, Tell appears without his son Walter and without the apple. Simply dressed and with his head lowered, Tell is holding the liberating arrow in the air. For Vela, too, Tell had symbolic significance as the marksman from Uri was a role model for the fighters of the Risorgimento. In him they saw the history of Switzerland staged and glorified as a universal example of national independence.
Is the Tell in Loco ultimately just a homage to Vincenzo Vela? Or did Peverada want to draw on Vela’s message and, through his sculpture at the end of the 19th century, commemorate all the romanticised wars of unification that had taken place in previous decades?
