"In 1924, the artist Nancy Cox-McCormack recounted her experience sculpting the bust of Benito Mussolini..."

"... in an article for The New York Times Magazine, 'When Mussolini Poses.' While posing, Mussolini was surrounded by opulent gifts, she wrote, including a music box that 'played only the Fascisti marching song.' The verb 'to pose' was first recorded in the mid-14th century. Its earliest definitions, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, include to propose a theory or question, to arrange an object or, like Mussolini, to assume a position for a portrait. When someone poses for a portrait, he or she presents an 'idealized' version of him or herself, 'often as a person of culture, fashion or erudition,' the lexicographer Grant Barrett said. But people 'posing' in life may be pretending to be someone they’re not to impress or deceive others. A character in a film reviewed by The Times in 1943, for example, was 'posing' as a millionaire’s long-lost daughter...."

Writes Sarah Diamond, in "A Pop, Dip and Spin Through the History of ‘Pose’/Though the word 'pose' is associated with voguing, it is less a part of the vocabulary and more a part of the movement" (NYT).

Speaking of words — and I'm glad the NYT publishes these essays about individual words — I see that the sculpture in question is called a "bust" and a bust, in sculpture, is just the head and the neck. How do you "pose" with just your head and neck?

Cox-McCormack's sculpture was, indeed, only a depiction of Mussolini's head and neck. It was not the arms-across-chest pose he was famous for:

By the way, what is "the Fascisti marching song"? It can't be "Faccetta Nera" ("Little Black Face"). That was written in 1935, and McCormack wrote about Mussolini's music preference in 1924. Is it "Giovinezza"? Based on the write-up at Wikipedia, I must presume that was the song the sculptor heard during the bust-posing.