Sculptor L. Orengo 1881
The funeral monument of Caterina Campodonico, also called "The Peanuts Seller", is one of the best known and beloved by common people. As recorded in the inscription on the base, composed in Genoese, Caterina employed all her own savings - money earned in a life spent selling peanuts and cakes during the traditional fairs or feasts - in this funeral monument, which was completed when she was still alive.
This monument has a great importance because it reveals social values of the people of the time and their view of death. Caterina shows her peanuts with the same pride of the rich businessmen, who show from their tombs the symbols of their professions. In doing so she, a simple and poor woman, witnesses a very interesting sharing of values with the dominating class, also confirmed by the choice of the sculptor Lorenzo Orengo, who was the most important artist of the Bourgeois Realism, greatly sought after by the member of the middle class.
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