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Cemitero Monumentale Milano
Justiceiro
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Cemitero Monumentale
During a trip to Northern Italy for New Year's I finally fulfilled a long held ambition to visit Milan's Cemiter Monumentale (monumental Cemetery). I'll have to go back, because it was -3 and I simply didn't have the heart to explore the whole thing. Additionally, the sky was washed out white and the light was bad. Still, it's a cool place.
Lot's of cemeteries have "monumental" gravestones or ornamentations. What makes the Monumentale different is its scale and its originality. In many cemeteries, if you wander around you find the same figures represented frequently- the vast majority of the sculptures, which are in stone, marble, and bronze, at the monumentale are unique objects.
This is a cemetery that holds Milan's industrial bourgeoisie. Many of the families who commisioned these monuments were extremely wealthy, some of the names, such as Campari, even a non-Milanese can recognize. Often the monument indicates how the family attained that wealth, such as that above of a glassmaker.
The Human figure is holding a plane propeller, so I imagine the deceased was involved with aviation.
The Campari's reproduction of the Last Supper
What really surprises me is the fact that many of these sculptures are, far from being the trite happy angels kitsch one might expect to see in such a place, rather serious works of art.
Often they are serious meditations on death, decay, and the transience of life. Such as the one below, where a young woman attempts to escape the grave, and death with his scythe who seems to be dragging her back. Notice the vegetation, the earth itself, reaching out to entagle her in her mortality.
My travelling companion didn't care for this at all. She thought too many of the monuments focused on death, and pain, and were expressions of the unhappiness of the bereaved or the discomfort of the recently departed. I don't agree- to me they seem to call upon the viewer to reflect that, hale and full of life as they are, the fate of all men is the same- and inescapable.
Also interesting was the frank sensuality conveyed in many of the statues. I suppose the idea is that death is the necessary counterpart of life and fecundity.
During a trip to Northern Italy for New Year's I finally fulfilled a long held ambition to visit Milan's Cemiter Monumentale (monumental Cemetery). I'll have to go back, because it was -3 and I simply didn't have the heart to explore the whole thing. Additionally, the sky was washed out white and the light was bad. Still, it's a cool place.
Lot's of cemeteries have "monumental" gravestones or ornamentations. What makes the Monumentale different is its scale and its originality. In many cemeteries, if you wander around you find the same figures represented frequently- the vast majority of the sculptures, which are in stone, marble, and bronze, at the monumentale are unique objects.
This is a cemetery that holds Milan's industrial bourgeoisie. Many of the families who commisioned these monuments were extremely wealthy, some of the names, such as Campari, even a non-Milanese can recognize. Often the monument indicates how the family attained that wealth, such as that above of a glassmaker.
The Human figure is holding a plane propeller, so I imagine the deceased was involved with aviation.
The Campari's reproduction of the Last Supper
What really surprises me is the fact that many of these sculptures are, far from being the trite happy angels kitsch one might expect to see in such a place, rather serious works of art.
Often they are serious meditations on death, decay, and the transience of life. Such as the one below, where a young woman attempts to escape the grave, and death with his scythe who seems to be dragging her back. Notice the vegetation, the earth itself, reaching out to entagle her in her mortality.
My travelling companion didn't care for this at all. She thought too many of the monuments focused on death, and pain, and were expressions of the unhappiness of the bereaved or the discomfort of the recently departed. I don't agree- to me they seem to call upon the viewer to reflect that, hale and full of life as they are, the fate of all men is the same- and inescapable.
Also interesting was the frank sensuality conveyed in many of the statues. I suppose the idea is that death is the necessary counterpart of life and fecundity.
Cave ab homine unius libri
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ann
(and who whinges at -3C???)
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The pictures are fascinating - The artwork is quite impressive.
Your discussion reminds me of some phrases found on a tombstone by William Least-Heat Moon in his book "Blue Highways"
"Stranger pause, as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you shall be.
Prepare for death, and follow me!"
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
Cheers, Jase
Jase // www.stonesque.com
Can't help ya' with a favorite or a pick for the contest. I sux at that.
Thanks for sharing your journey.
"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." - Dorothea Lange