Giuseppe Grandi (1843-1894) was the sole sculptor in the celebrated reactionary group known as the Scapigliatura, the other members being primarily painters and writers.Grandi was to be the first sculptor to break-down the realist treatment into chromatic masses, much as the painters had done. This painterly effect and dramatic play of light and shade was first truly exploited by Grandi in his Beccaria.
His career was established when, at the age of seventeen, he won the 1860 competition for the monument to the publicist and political economist the Marchese Cesare Beccaria-Bonesana. The final bozzetto was presented in 1869, and it is of this that bronze casts were later made. The marble was not completed until the following year and installed in the homonymous square in 1871. The original marble statue, damaged in the last war, is today restored and in the Galleria di Arte Moderna, and a bronze replica stands in the Piazza Beccaria. The present cast is probably a bronze version of the modello for the monument, and displays the dynamic handling of material which was to be so admired by later Impressionist sculptors such as Medardo Rosso and Paul Troubetzkoy. The bronze casts of the Beccaria are consistent with the bozzetto and show small variations to the marble, notably in the folds and creases of the sitter lost in the translation into marble. Grandi's innovative desire to render his subject human is shown in the relaxed, untidy appearance of Beccaria, but nevertheless rendered vivacious and memorable by the bold handling of light and mass.