Funerary statue of a woman and her lover kissing passionately, Monumental Cemetery of Milan

Statues of the Monumental Cemetery of Milan

This collection of images is dedicated to the statues and sculptures of the Monumental Cemetery of Milan, a visual journey through funerary art photography that probes sculpted matter.

Stone, marble, bronze, iron… Cold, hard, almost hostile materials… yet in the Monumental Cemetery of Milan they have found a soul. They lent themselves to welcoming the souls who rest here. They let themselves be shaped by expert hands to keep alive the memory of departed loved ones and to give meaning to the lives of those who still inhabit this world. Photographing these vibrant petrified emotions is a photographic project that began at the Monumental Cemetery of Milan but that I intend to continue elsewhere.

Funerary art: angels, mothers, children and the eternal farewell

Walking through this photographic gallery means recognising the themes that recur in the funerary art of the Monumental Cemetery of Milan. Angels are everywhere: not the serene ones of Renaissance paintings, but tense, fallen, kneeling figures — angels that carry the weight of grief as if they were human. Children appear with a frequency that wrings the heart: little girls with their toys, children walking, small figures clinging to the skirts of marble mothers. The gestures of the hands are a language of their own: hands clasping, hands stretched toward the sky, hands brushing in one last caress. And then there is the couple — the theme of love that survives death, celebrated with a frankness that is at times surprising, as in the passionate kiss of the work I called Passion. Every sculpture in the Monumentale is a text to be read, and photography is the tool with which I have tried to translate it.

Purgatory monument with an aeroplane's contrail in the sky

Detail of a despairing statue with its hands on its head

Statue with its hands raised toward the sky

Angel reaching its hand toward a bunch of flowers

Statue of a woman in the act of a caress

Gecko resting on the surface of a statue

Stone angel touching the ground with its hands

Statue of a sturdy-figured mother and child

Statue of a father holding his son in his arms

Angels watching a figure emerging from the earth

Detail of two stone hands clasped together

Detail of a sculpted woman holding the deceased by the hand

Statue of a child clinging to his mother

Statue of a mother holding her lifeless son in her arms

Funerary work depicting a figure in tears

Statue of a little girl praying on a gravestone

Statue of a monk and a child walking together

"The Weeping of Flowers", a funerary sculptural work

Korner mausoleum, architectural detail at the Monumental Cemetery of Milan

Bernocchi mausoleum, funerary monument of the Monumental Cemetery of Milan

Consoling statue bending over a stone soul

Statue of a figure waiting to ascend to heaven

Statue of a guardian angel embracing a woman

Sculpture of two angels in love, embracing

Funerary statue of a figure slumped over a block of stone

Figure of a desperate man with his hands in his hair

A wisp of vapour that seems to emanate like a spirit from a statue

Funerary work of a mother nursing her baby

Funerary gravestone of the Fossati family

Statue of a little girl with her toys, a doll and a rag dog

Statue of an elderly woman lighting the flame of a votive candle

Detail of two hands passing Charon's coin, Monumental Cemetery of Milan

The Monumental Cemetery of Milan: an open-air museum

Inaugurated in 1866 to a design by the architect Carlo Maciachini, the Monumental Cemetery of Milan is considered one of the most important examples of funerary architecture in Europe. It is not simply a burial ground: it is an open-air museum that gathers more than a hundred and fifty years of Italian sculpture, with works by artists such as Giannino Castiglioni, Adolfo Wildt and Lucio Fontana. The mausoleums of the most influential families of the Milanese bourgeoisie — from the Bernocchi to the Campari — are genuine masterpieces of Art Nouveau, Symbolism and nineteenth-century realism. Every monument tells a story: who the deceased was, what the family wanted to remember, how Milanese society conceived of death and remembrance. To stroll along these avenues is to walk through the history of Milan.