The lion has always been a test, a challenge for artists and sculptors of all times.

A theme that has maintained its evocative force, of courage, royalty, protection, over the centuries. There are testimonies from ancient times, from the fifth century. BC in Sri Lanka at the Sphinx of Giza of the III century. B.C; from column-bearing lions that protected the entrances of medieval churches to Marzocco by Donatello to Daniele and the lion by Gian Lorenzo Bernini; from the four nineteenth-century lions of Trafalgar Square, the work of Edwin Landseer to the recent fifth lion, flaming red, by the multimedia artist Es Devlin, created with the support of Google Arts & Culture.

Often placed at the entrance to churches, palaces, bridges, with the symbolic function of guardianship, it has never lost its power and its centrality within the history of art.

This also happened in Brescia, the Lioness of Italy , thanks to the sculptor Domenico Ghidoni (1857 - 1920) and to an important client in the context of the urban updating which became necessary, in the 1880s, after the construction of the station railway.

Two monumental lions for the Lioness: this is the idea of Antonio Tagliaferri , the architect in charge of the design of the current Piazza Repubblica and a leading cultural figure in the city, very close to Giuseppe Zanardelli. The realization of the sculptures was entrusted to Domenico Ghidoni who imagined two gigantic figures, one standing and one seated , enthroned on the two turrets of the Porta's profile. Davide Lombardi , one of the main suppliers of stones for the Vittoriano in Rome, was in charge of procuring the blocks and a local stone was chosen so that this work could be "all Brescia". But something didn't go right and the two giants remained unfinished and never seen. Until today.