ANZAC MEDAL
Carlisle Ref # 1914-18-1
Page 132

Dora Ohlfsen was born as Dorothea Ohlfsen-Bagge in Ballarat, Victoria in 1867.

During World War I she became a Red Cross nurse in Italy. The Fascist government were patrons of her work and she produced a large relief portrait medallion of Mussolini and a war memorial, Sacrificio, at Formia, in 1924-26.

Ohlfsen was commissioned by Mussolini to design this memorial because her art studies had been solely in Italy and she had nursed Italian soldiers during the war. This is the only work of its kind in Italy to be made by a woman or a foreigner.

Dora Ohlfsen designed this medallion while she was working in Rome. It was manufactured in England. Ohlfsen returned to Australia in 1920 to promote the sale of the medallion “in aid of permanently disabled Australian and New Zealand soldiers”. The obverse shows the figure of Australia crowning her dead son with laurel