After writing articles on the theory of mural painting and the reappraisal of Byzantine art as one of the prime examples of inspiration for contemporary artistic creation, Sironi used mosaic language for two monumental works: L’Italia corporativa (Corporative Italy ) and La Giustizia tra la Legge e la Forza (Justice between the Law and Power).
The mosaic L’Italia corporativa, conceived for the Milan Triennial VI in 1936, was created in a workshop by the Salviati company in Venice. Unfortunately, the completion of the entire work suffered delays and only the central panel was displayed at the exhibition; in the following year, 1937, the whole assembled mosaic was exhibited in Paris for the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques Applied to Modern Life.
The preliminary temperas enhance their force in the final result due to the
fragmentary nature of the mosaic, bearing witness to how really suitable this language is to express the synthetic purposes of ‘modern’ monumental decoration.
Perhaps as early as the end of 1936, Marcello Piacentini brought Sironi into the project for the decoration of the Milan Law Courts. The painter conceived La Giustizia tra la Legge e la Forza, his only mosaic still in its original position on the back wall of the courtroom of the First Division of the Court of Assizes. The execution was entrusted by Sironi to Giuseppe Salietti (1905-1988), who, in his Ravenna workshop, transformed the artist’s cartoon in collaboration with Ines Morigi Berti (1914-2014).