Funerary Monuments
The Staglieno monumental graveyard in Genoa is one of the biggest and most important in europe for sculptural abundance. The project has been entrusted in 1835 to Carlo Barabino and Giovanni Battista Resasco and ended in 1851. The long and numerous aisles are adorn by statues made by the greatest sculptor of the 20th century and Edoardo Alfieri is one of them.
Mele-Pasqua Grave (The wind blows)
Mele-Pasqua Grave (the wind blows)
1962
Bronze casting
Bronze sculpture made in 1962 to honor the late poetess and friend Emma Angelica Mele.
Emma Angelica Mele, fine and careful collector, committed to her friend Alfieri in 1961 to create a sculpture for the family grave.
Alfieri wrote in 30/10/62, that “This sculpture is unusual in the landscape of funeral sculpting because the client committed the work under this circumstance: it must be original, far from the usual funeral canons, inspired by the total freedom, a work felt without any concession to traditional convention”.
The statue is realized in bronze and in the result you can feel the futuristic root, the movement is the true protagonist of the work.
The sculpture is called “the wind blows” and it’s inspired by a passage of the gospel where Jesus, talking to Nicodemus, says “the wind blows wherever he wants and you can hear his voice”.
The work was criticized by the acceptance commision for the gravestone in Staglieno called the “Marmisti”, they said to the artist “Staglieno is not a modern art gallery, it’s a place where people came to mourn their loved ones”.
De Luca di Pietralata-Valente Grave (Lovers Grave)
De Luca di Pietralata-Valente Grave (Lovers Grave)
1963
Bronze casting
Lovers Grave is made in bronze and Luserna’s stone.
This tomb in the Staglieno cemetery, it’s called “Lovers Grave” and was commissioned by the architect Claudio Andreani.
This sculpture is inspired by the olive tree and was made to mourn the premature departure after a car incident in 1959 of the couple Livia De Luca di Pietralata and Carlo Valente, they died the 23th February in 1959 the day before their weddings.
Here the two lovers will be hand in hand forever.
The grave is floating thanks to two branches and it’s built to simulate a house and it presents all around the side a continuous intertwining of olive branches that embrace the two figures of the lovers on the side, even the roof is refined although it’s not visible from the ground.
EDOARDO ALFIERI
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Stefania and Silvana Maisano
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EDOARDO ALFIERI 