Coming Home: "The Piccirilli Factor" Premieres in Massa

On Tuesday, August 4, The Piccirilli Factor: Italian Sculptors and the City Beautiful Movement will have its European premiere in the gardens of Villa Rinchiostra in Massa — the city where the story of the Piccirilli begins.

"Con altra voce omai, con altro vello / ritornerò poeta..."("With another voice now, with other fleece, I shall return a poet...") — Dante, Paradiso XXV

Dante wrote those lines dreaming of a return to the city of his birth. The Piccirilli never suffered his fate. Theirs is not a story of abandonment or exile, but of opportunity managed with intelligence and grace — the freedom to produce, and to enjoy life, on both shores of the Atlantic. From Massa the family moved first to England, and ultimately to New York, where the six brothers earned recognition as sculptors in their own right and became the carvers of choice for the most prestigious artists of their day: Daniel Chester French, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Paul Bartlett, among others. Yet throughout their lives they kept a foothold in the old country. In the rearview mirror of their Bronx studio there was always the Tuscan landscape, the family home in Massa, and the Apuan Alps, where the precious Carrara marble continued to sustain their work.

Throughout the production of this film I maintained continuous contact and collaboration with the city of Massa, and with a collegial group of collaborators who contributed greatly to the research. I am especially grateful to Silvano Soldano, who helped me reconstruct the origins of the Piccirilli family in Massa, the context of their lives there, and the circumstances that ultimately led the family to emigrate.

I will be in Massa on August 4 for the screening, organized by the Comune di Massa and the Biblioteca Civica Stefano Giampaoli as part of #BibliotecaFuoriPorta – Estate 2026, beginning at 9:15 PM. It is an honor — a true privilege — to share the completed film with the people of Massa and the region. The film returns where the story began.