Amadeo Avogadro always gets memed for that one ghastly portrait. Was he really considered ugly by his contemporaries?

[u/rubiscodisco]

When talking about Amadeo Avogadro, historical Italian chemist, he is most often depicted by that one portrait where he looks like a goblin. Was that just a bad portrait or was he really considered notably ugly by people who met him?

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[u/Propagandist_Supreme]

I cannot answer your question but I could find at the least three busts of Avogadro online - one contemporary, undated yet probably made during or just after his second tenure as a professor of physics (1833-1850), marble one by Luigi Cauda at the University of Turin's Galleria dei Dotti sculpture gallery, and two posthumous ones - one made of bronze by Pietro Canonica in 1911 housed at the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in Milano, and the other made of. . . something. . . by Emilio Musso and installed in the public park Largo [Nino] Marinone in Vercelli, Piedmonte in 1956. All three busts show less exaggerated if still distinct features compared to the linked "portrait".

Cauda's bust: https://dimages2.corriereobjects.it/files/main_image_mobile/files/fp/uploads/2024/09/17/66e99c2d5e5a6.r_d.306-421-10861.jpeg

Canonica's bust: https://www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/assets/immagini/liv2/OA310RL/SC/OA/ST070/00/OA_ST070-00226_IMG-0000590014.jpg

Musso's bust: http://himetop.wdfiles.com/local--files/amedeo-avogadro-s-bust/Amedeo%20Avogadro%27s%20bust%2C%20Vercelli%2C%20Italy%20%283%29.JPG

[u/rubiscodisco → u/Propagandist_Supreme]

Nevertheless a brilliant answer to the question behind my question, namely, "did he really look Like That^TM ?"

Thank you very much, good sir!

[u/gerardmenfin]

In addition to the busts mentioned by u/Propagandist_Supreme, it should be noted that, according to Avogadro's biographer (and fellow scientist) Icilio Guareschi in 1901 (cited here in the commemorative book Onoranze centenarie internazionali ad Amedeo Avogadro (24 settembre 1911)), this drawing, done in Turin by C. Sentier of Litografia Doyen in 1856, was "made from the death mask taken from the corpse of Avogrado, who died at the age of 80". Guareschi also said that "anyone who knew Avogadro knows that the bust by Canonica also reproduces his physiognomy well, at a less advanced age." The fact that the portrait was made from a death mask of an elderly man and "recreated" as a younger one, may explain his rather strange appearance here.

• Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. Onoranze centenarie internazionali ad Amedeo Avogadro (24 settembre 1911), 1911. http://archive.org/details/TO00983484.

[u/Propagandist_Supreme → u/gerardmenfin]

Interestingly in that citation of yours is yet another bust of the man, on page 106.

Sentier's handywork with that deathmask-derived portrait overshadowing other depictions of the man is quite something.