In the Giardini della Biennale in Venice, among the pavilions, stands a sculpture in pietra di Vicenza that Mirko Vucetich presented at the 1942 Biennale and which is still there. It is called *Il Primo sonno* — the first sleep — and it is the same restraint that runs through his memorials: an emotion given a form instead of a caption.
It matters for the record because it puts Vucetich inside the official history of Italian art of those years, in the place where that history is written. And it is the one work of his in this group that a reader can see without an appointment: the Giardini are a public park, open every day, and the sculpture has stood there for more than eighty years.
Record researched and written by Luigi De Marchi for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
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