Sculptor G. Moreno 1894
The monument, which was made in 1894, is a variation of the theme of the bourgeois sorrow: the family members don’t assist their loved one on his death, they simply celebrate the memory of him after his death, by gathering together at his tomb during a visit to the graveyard. In the high part of the tomb, an inscription says: “The affection towards the deceased is the religion of the heart”. In such a culture which considered the death a part of everyday life, a visit to the graveyard was one of the most common rituals, because of the certainty of a connection between the community of the dead people and the one of the living people, and of the permanence of the familiar bonds even after death. In the tomb, the deceased Carolina receives a kiss from a little girl, probably her granddaughter, held up by a young woman, maybe her mother or her elder sister, whose face is marked by the pain; on the right of the pedestal, an older man, probably her husband, stands aloof, almost absent-minded, staring at the ground. In this monument, the most intimist tones and the aspects relating to the psychological introspection converge onto the style of the bourgeois Realism: virtuous as he is when it comes to technical aspects, Moreno seeks to work out a “quantitative” description of reality, focusing on each single detail of the faces, the clothing, the accessories and the hairstyles.
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