“Watch over her”, eternity sculpted in marble September 1, 2026
With “Veiller sur elle”, published in 2023 by L’iconoclaste, Jean-Baptiste Andrea recounts the destiny of Mimo, a young Italian sculptor, caught between art, love and political upheaval. Prix Goncourt 2023, this 592-page novel explores with finesse freedom, creation and the bonds that resist time.
In an abbey in Piedmont, an old man watches over a sculpture. Life has already taken away a large part of those around him. The years have changed faces, displaced families, turned Italy upside down. He remains with a Pietà whose history still bears the traces of a love, an ambition and an entire existence devoted to art. It is from this old age, on the verge of disappearance, that Jean-Baptiste Andrea opened “Veiller sur elle”, Prix Goncourt 2023.
Michelangelo Vitaliani, known as Mimo, had a childhood that was the opposite of this image. Born in poverty, deprived of his father, entrusted to a sculptor at a very young age, he arrived in Pietra d’Alba with a body marked by slenderness and a narrow future. His small size attracts ridicule. His birth places him far from the families that govern the region, despite the fact that he has hands capable of understanding stone and transforming it. The workshop is his first territory of freedom. Under the dust of the marble, Mimo discovers a material that resists and yet allows itself to be tamed. He learns to look at a block differently, to look for a still invisible shape in its veins. Sculpting requires patience, precision and an ability to remove without destroying. This relationship with the material accompanies the entire trajectory of the character. His talent ends up attracting attention and recognition brings him money, fame and prestigious orders. She also approaches the powerful and the compromises that accompany power. Andrea builds her character in this whirlwind. Mimo still carries the poor boy behind the famous sculptor. He keeps the memory of the humiliations and the desire for revenge. His ambition has a part of grandeur and a part of blindness. His artistic rise fails to transform him into a morally impeccable character. Success brings him new responsibilities and forces him to look at his own choices. In the middle of this trajectory appears Viola Orsini. She belongs to the aristocracy of Pietra d’Alba. His name gives him an enviable place in Italian society. His family has wealth, land and connections. Viola receives a privileged education, but her intelligence prevents her from being satisfied with the destiny planned for her. She wants to understand the world, to learn it too.
Sculpting life
This desire took on a particular resonance in the Italy of his time. A young woman from her background can have considerable privileges and remain locked into family conventions. Viola refuses this contradiction. She searches for sciences, books, aviation, ideas, etc. In a word, his imagination goes beyond the framework in which we would like to contain it. The meeting with Mimo then creates an unexpected closeness.
Their social difference is immediately striking. He comes from poverty. She belongs to the aristocracy. Yet something brings them together with a strength that resists circumstances. Both live with a form of constraint. Mimo fights against her origin and her body. Viola fights against the rules of her environment and the limits imposed on women. Andrea takes the time to build it. Love comes through friendship, complicity, fascination, arguments, separations and everything in between. Mimo and Viola experience other lives, other encounters and other obligations too.
Their bond, however, retains a singular place. It is this fidelity which gives the novel much of its emotion. It also gives the title its depth. “Watch over her,” Viola first recalls. The formula, however, contains another presence which is that of the Pietà, this mysterious sculpture around which the story is organized. The woman and the work end up coming together in Mimo’s memory. Watching then means remaining close to a presence that has become fragile, protecting a story against erasure, preserving something precious when time has already begun its work. The construction of the novel reinforces this impression.
Mimo knows what it contains and the reader must wait. This expectation allows Andrea to transform a historical fresco into an intimate story. 20th century Italy gradually arrives in the lives of the characters. Fascism takes hold, political violence spreads across society, power relations harden. Mimo, who has become a recognized artist, finds himself close to the regime. The novel then takes a darker turn. Artistic success meets politics. Individual ambition meets History. Mimo discovers that prestige has a moral price. His proximity to power forces him to deal with a reality that goes beyond his workshop. The character thus gains depth and lucidity. Artistic genius does not eliminate weaknesses, much less contradictions. Mimo can be admirable in his talent and fragile in his choices. His journey reminds us that social success in no way constitutes an absolute victory. Viola, for her part, carries another form of combat. She seeks to preserve her autonomy in a society which still largely defines the place of women through the family and marriage. His intelligence is a force of resistance. His desire for knowledge accompanies his desire for freedom. Time passes between them without being able to erase what unites them. But the sculpture constantly returns as a metaphor for this resistance. Mimo works with a hard, old material, full of veins and cracks. He cannot impose any form on it.
The Pietà waits
He must deal with his limits, because his art consists of revealing a figure hidden in matter. His own life works in a comparable way. “Watch over her” is a generous or too generous book. The almost six hundred pages allow Andrea to explore several historical periods, to multiply the characters and to develop the trajectories of Mimo and Viola. This abundance produces beautiful moments, but it also leads to some lengths. Certain scenes carry their emotion with an insistence that leaves less space for the reader’s interpretation. The style, however, remains driven by a real desire to tell stories. Andrea creates narrative, accessible literature, committed to the pleasure of reading.
By Amadou KÉBÉ
