Like his elder brother, Leonardo, Ernesto Bazzaro studied at the
Brera Academy in
Milan, which he attended from 1875, winning the
Luigi Canonica Prize in 1881. As a participant in the lively scene of the
Scapigliatura movement, he was an attentive observer of the renewal in the plastic arts led by
Giuseppe Grandi. He made a name for himself in genre sculpture as well as monumental and cemetery sculpture, obtaining important commissions including the monument to
Giuseppe Garibaldi in
Monza in 1886 and, twenty years later, the monument to
Felice Cavallotti in Milan. His works received acclaim in exhibitions in
Italy and abroad, and he won the Principe Umberto Prize in 1888 with his plaster group
The Widow, which, after being executed in marble, won awards at the international exhibitions of 1889 in Paris, 1892 in
Munich and the national exhibition of 1892 in
Palermo, where it was purchased by the Ministry of Education. From 1905 to 1908, he sat on the Milan City Council in the ranks of the
Unione Partiti Popolari which comprised socialists, radicals, and republicans. An exhibition was devoted to Bazzaro and his brother at the Galleria Centrale d’Arte in Milan in 1917, and, three years after his death, a retrospective was held at the Società per le Belle Arti ed Esposizione Permanente. ==References==