The Desterrado is undoubtedly the crowning moment of 19th century sculpture. Partially executed in Rome in 1872, as a boarding school exam, Soares dos Reis would finish it already in Oporto. The plaster was modeled with a view to the realization of the marble piece, in which the sculptor also played an active role. If the general sense of the sculpture is romantic – inspired by the verses from Alexandre Herculano’s Tristezas do Desterro – a classicism that shapes the figure’s pose and goes back to Ares from the Museum of Thermal Springs in Rome, coexists with a subtle naturalism present in the modeling of the body. But it was Joseph Perraud’s Despair, from 1861 (Musée d’Orsay), exhibited at the 1869 Salon with great success and acquired by the French state that same year, that Soares dos Reis saw and that most deeply inspired him.
The figure of a young man, seated with his hands intertwined and supported on bent knees, his head hiding his face, with hair similar to that of O desterrado, assumes an undeniable influence on the latter beyond the absolute merit it reveals. The intensity of this sculpture is expressed by the contrast between the dynamism of the figure, articulated in two intersecting oblique axes, and the gaze fixed on the ground, which presents an interiority where another time echoes. The interlaced hands, the foot resting against the leg, or the contracted lips are other signs of the restlessness of this wounded consciousness he alludes to. Replica by Susana Correia
