by Greek art. In the same year Sciortino worked on Les Gavroches, a work which continued to improve his reputation. Depicting three poor children, the bronze sculpture is inspired by the Victor Hugo novel Les Misérables, in which Hugo describes the life of three poor street urchins living in the streets of Paris in the time of the French Revolution of 1848. This sculpture was brought to Malta in 1907 and is considered to be Sciortino's first masterpiece. The original is preserved at MUŻA, while a replica is exposed in the Upper Barrakka Gardens. The mould of the statue is today at Buckingham Palace, a gift which the Government of Malta gave to Princess Elizabeth II in the name of the Maltese people when she visited the islands in 1951. Sciortino's fame emerged from the Italian capital and spread to other artistic centers in Europe. Antonio Sciortino won several international competitions that made his name known in America, Russia, Japan and South Africa where some of his best works are located. His participation in international exhibitions raised interest in Rome and in the Royal Academy of Arts in London. This success led to his appointment in 1911 as director of the British Academy of Arts in Rome, a position he held for twenty-five years. In 1905 Sciortino won the competition for a monument to Sir Adrian Dingli, which was unveiled in April 1907 in the presence of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in the Mall Garden of Floriana. A little while later he was given a commission for a sculpture representing Il lavoratore (The worker) for the Casa del Popolo in Rome. In 1909 Sciortino worked on "Irredentism" which was exhibited in Venice. It is an allegorical representation of Italy, completed with the sentence from Dante's Inferno "sì com'a Pola, presso del Carnaro / ch'Italia chiude e suoi termini bagna" (as in Pula, near Kvarner, which closes Italy and wets its borders). Writing in Vita d'Arte, art critic Ettore Cozzani defined it a "strana idea in forma non cattiva" (weird idea in not a bad form). Until the year 1910 Sciortino worked on two more statues, Germinando un'idea and Remorse, which both reflect the influence of Auguste Rodin. During a visit to Paris, Sciortino worked a bust of Leo Tecktonius, an American composer and pianist. This work impressed Rodin, who asked him to create a model for him and