LAUSR

The talk of the town in Madrid during January 1919 was the unprecedented public response to the exhibit of a recently completed funerary monument by the young and relatively unknown Catalan sculptor Julio Antonio. Starkly lit in a darkened room in the Palacio de Bibliotecas y Museos, the monument was a study in pathos that depicted a grieving mother, señora La Portilla de Lemonier, kneeling over the lifeless body of her eleven-year-old son Alberto. Writing in El Sol, Ramón Pérez de Ayala reported that thousands of people, “desde el Soberano hasta los menestrales,” had braved the winter cold to view the “Mausoleo Lemonier. “La gente se arremolina y se estruja para penetrar hasta la famosa estatua. En ocasiones, la impaciencia provoca ligeros tumultos. Los guardias, que procuran en vano poner orden, contemplan con