I was stuck in a Saturday morning traffic jam in an avenue in the suburbs of São Paulo when, casually, I looked to the other side of the avenue and saw him for the first time. Amidst buses and trucks, half hidden by the smoke of exhaust pipes, I caught a glimpse of a Roman Soldier. He gazed at the ground, a little downcast, as if oblivious to everything surrounding him. That sight fascinated me, it looked like something out of Suetonius or from the novels of Robert Graves. With a lot of difficulty, I managed to make my way there and, half an hour later, I stopped in front of the lot where, among lions, nymphs, the Venus de Milo, garden leprechauns and cherubs, stood the enigmatic Roman Soldier. Now his gaze seemed more ironic, with ashes on his lips as if laughing of himself, to find himself in such improbable company.
I was for the first time in the strange Garden of Stone, the former atelier of the sculptor Gildo Zampol, colleague of Brecheret and Emendábile in the Lycée of Arts and Crafts, assistant of the renowned Di Giusti and Armando Zago and disciple of the great Eugênio Prati.
A great sculptor of São Paulo, with works all over the country and all over the city. With busts of the presidents Getúlio Vargas and Tancredo Neves, sculptures representing Time, the Greek Venus and the Gladiator. From his hands came from a Monument for the Constitutionalist Soldier of the 1932 to a revolutionary project for the Square of the See in São Paulo.
This was an incentive to my curiosity. After that day I made several excursions in the city to visit the works of Gildo Zampol. In the cemeteries, parks and squares where his works stand, I spent many good hours and many moments of reflection.
I ended up by bringing home the bust of the Roman Soldier with his smile of ashes and countenance of shadows and a Doric column to place him.
I can see him through my French windows right now, a guardian of the memory of this city of so many artists. There he is, silent and attentive amid the plants of my little garden; a soldier finally back to his honorable condition of sentinel. His mysterious smile and his gaze of shadows don’t seem so ironic anymore, he seems to look at me from very ancient times, an impassible and eternal witness to Ancient Rome, to a still garden and to a once great city.
