Valente Celle Tomb, 1893, The Staglieno Cemetery, Genoa - Italy

Valente Celle Tomb, 1893,

The Staglieno Cemetery, Genoa - Italy

Sculptor: Giulio Monteverde

( 1837 -1917)

The funeral monument called “Eternal Drama” represents a real Dans macabre, the futile attempt of life to escape the inevitable embrace of death. The sculptor Giulio Monteverde underlines, in this sculpture, the contrast between the sensuality of the beautiful young woman who personifies Life (caught in the moment in which , wearied by the vain struggle, she is about to surrender herself to the terrible spectre who has chosen her as his prey) and the rigid impassiveness of Death which seizes her.

Staglieno owes its popularity and historic value not only to the fame of the great personalities who rest there but, avove all, to its many sculptural and architectural monuments which share the same area creating a variegated harmony. Althought still unfinished, the cemetery was officially inaugurated on January 1, 1851. Giovanni Battista Resasco was entrusted to continue the original project of his master, the architect Carlo Barabino (1768-1835).

The architecture of the cemetery reveals the same Neoclassic style of many representative Genoese buildings of that period, such as the Carlo Felice Theatre and the Palazzo dell'Accademia. The plant of the original nucleus is quadrangular; in the run of the years the cemetery spread up to include the surrounding vegetation, creating a very picturesque fusion with the natural environment.

The artistic languages of over a century, from Neoclassicism to Realism, up to Symbolism, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and on, are here displayed and they find their interpreters in a school of sculptors whose works are known far beyond the regional and national borders. Nietzsche, Guy de Maupassant, Mark Twain and Elisabeth of Austria (the famous Empress Sissi) are some of the many great historic and literary scholars, travellers, artists and philosophers who were deeply fascinated by Staglieno and left written testimonies of their impressions.

Photographer and Narrator: Carlo Natale. Visit his photoset to see many photos and sculptures from this cemetery.