King Kamehameha 1st of Hawai'i (1736 - 1819). Of him, these words are remembered: "E 'oni wale no 'oukou i ku'u pono 'a'ole e pau." "Endless is the good that I have given to you to enjoy."
It all happened in 1998, when my wife, Grazia, received a letter from Hilo, Hawai'i. It was a time when people still wrote letters on paper, put them into an envelope, and shipped them at the Post Office. But the Internet already existed and the reason for that letter was that somebody in Hilo had seen my wife's website -- at that time she was dealing with statuary for a Florentine art gallery.
The story told in the letter was that in Hilo there was a statue of King Kamehameha that had been made in Italy and then shipped there some years before. But a tsunami had swept the place where the statue was kept, still inside its crate. Of course, the statue had suffered little damage and, some years later, in 1997, it had been erected in the seaside park of the town, thanks to the efforts of a local committee. The problem was that all the papers about it had been lost and nobody knew who had made it except, vaguely, that it came from Italy.
For Grazia, it was not a problem to reconstruct the story. The statue was cast in Italy in 1993 on a model created by the Italian artist Romeo Sandrin. Here is his page, and here an image of him:
The correspondence between Grazia and the Hilo statuary committee led to a trip all the way to there for the two of us (In the meantime, I had also been invited to give a talk in a conference on electron spectroscopy in Maui). And so we went: possibly the longest trip we ever took since the Hawai'ian islands are more or less on the opposite side of Earth from Italy. Of that long plane trip I remember the sensation of being born on a plane, having lived most of my life on a plane, and having eaten plane food all of my life. But we arrived there, and we saw the statue: here it is!! King Kamehameha in Hilo as interpreted by Mr. Sandrin.
We stayed in Hilo for a week, experiencing the traditional Hawai'ian hospitality, in many ways not unlike the Italian traditions. It was still a time when digital photos were not common, but perhaps it is best to avoid the deluge of imagery that's the rule nowadays. We took pictures, of course, but they must be buried somewhere in some box. It doesn't matter. In my mind, I remember a Hawai'ian friend placing a flower in my wife's hair and calling her "Hawai'ian maiden." Worth the whole trip.
The Statuary of King Kamehameha
(this text was written in 1998 and published in a blog that does not exist anymore. It is republished on "Chimeras" with some modifications.)Kamehameha was born in secret and buried in secret. But the life he lived was one of courage, wisdom, and justice. It was he who brought together the separate island chiefdoms, uniting them into one Hawaiian kingdom. Under his leadership, the people lived a peaceful and productive life.
(from "Kamehameha the Great", by Julie Stewart Williams, 1992)
The only portrait we have of king Kamehameha of Hawai'i was painted by Louis Choris, the official artist of the Rurick, a Russian exploring ship that landed in Kailua, Kona in November 1816. Another, similar, portrait was made by the same artist that year. Both are presently at the Honolulu Academy of Art. But those portraits are not the way Kamehameha is normally represented. It is more like this:
When Thomas Gould modeled the first Kamehameha statue, back in 1878, he made no attempt to portray the "real" Kamehameha. Rather, he produced an idealized figure of distinct Caucasian features. It may be that a truly Polynesian face could not fit the aesthetic ideals of Gould's times, or maybe Gould himself had mastered the Hawaiian concept of Aloha, and that therefore he considered that the actual race of the king was a matter of no importance. Be as it may, the subsequent replicas of the statue, although never exactly identical to the original, have maintained Caucasian features. Conversely, other artists felt that they could approach the subject in a freer manner, and attempted to show a more Hawai'ian Kamehameha.
Gould was a "neo-classical" artist, and it is not surprising that he found inspiration in Greek/Roman stauary for his Kamehameha. The actual source is clearly the "Prima Porta" statue of Octavianus Augustus, the Roman Emperor who reigned from 27 BC to 14 AD. This statue is at present at the Vatican museum, in Rome, Italy and is an ancient marble copy of an earlier statue in bronze, cast perhaps in 25 AD. Gould must have selected this statue because the majestically cast figure of the Roman emperor seemed to him suitable for portraying the Hawaiian monarch, and also perhaps because of a certain similarity in the histories of Augustus and of Kamehameha. Both had a turbulent time at the beginning, but afterwards they reigned for a long time in peace. Gould reproduced the general features of the Roman statue, including the weapon held in the left hand to indicate that battles and wars are over. However, with a slight turning upwards of the right hand's palm, he changed Augustus gesture of command into a gentler one of gift giving, or receiving, in the true Hawaiian Aloha spirit.
The statue stands at present at Kamehameha's birthplace in Kohala, Hawai'i. It was cast in Italy in 1879 and erected in the early 1880s. The initial idea was to erect the statue in downtown Honolulu, but a strange turn of events caused it to be placed where it is now. Here is the story as described by A. Grove Day in his "Hawaii and its people" (1953)
When the statue was being modeled, the residents of Kohala argued that it should be erected in Kamehameha's homeland, rather than in Honolulu as the legislative act provided. "You will see," they predicted; "the statue will still come to Kohala". The statue was shipped on the German bark "G.F. Haendel" of Bremen in September, 1880. The ship caught fire and sank off the Falkland Islands at the tip of South America. The statue was salvaged by a junk dealer and set up for sale on the beach at Port Stanley, but it found no buyer until the "Earl of Dalhousie" touched there on its way to Honolulu with a shipload of Portuguese laborers. Captain Jarvis risked £ 100 of his money and bought the statue. When he arrived in Honolulu, he sold it to the government for £ 175. A replica had been bought with insurance money and set up in Honolulu, and so the original was erected in Kohala. Thus the king returned to his birthplace after all.A replica of this statue was erected in erected in Ohau in 19th century is probably the best known of the statues of Kamehameha. It stands in front of Ali'iolani Hale in Honolulu. In 1969 another replica of was cast and placed in the National gallery in Washington. To date, Kamehameha is the only king to have been honored in this way. The statue was commissioned to the American artist Ortho Fairbanks and it was cast in Florence, Italy, by Aldo Marinelli, owner of Galleria Frilli (where my wife was working in 1998).
Gould's effort was a spectacular success. Even though, as we said, he made no attempt of an actual portrait, his statue has become the image of Kamehameha, one that even the casual tourist just landed in Honolulu can immediately recognize. This success is a tribute to Gould, and also to the unknown artist who modeled Augustus' statue two thousand years ago. However, whereas the Roman emperor looks a bit stiff and formal in his pose, the Hawaiian monarch is just perfectly at ease as he stands. The contrast of the shining clothes with the dark, muscular body creates a spectacular effect, and the king radiates a tremendous air of strength, power, and even a certain masculine sensuality. The figure with pointed hat, golden cloak, spear, and raised arm appears everywhere in Hawai'i as statues, portraits, stained glass windows, postal stamps, street signs, and T-shirts, almost as pervasively as Santa Claus in December in mainland US. Wherever they stand, the large bronze Kamehameha statues dominate the Hawaiian landscape and, in some respects, even the mind of the onlookers.
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