Below is a photo of a famous tombstone monument, in the likeness of the deceased who is laid to rest there, Caterina Campodonico. She was a peasant nut-seller who saved all of her money in life so that she could be buried at the Cimitero Monumental di Stalieno in Genoa (or Genova, as the Italians call it). The quality of the monument is striking, but even more impressive is that this cemetery has hundreds upon hundreds of such sculptures with wildly varying themes, from family death bed mourning to the deceased being carried to the heavens by angels, to ships caught in tempests at sea.
The cemetery was commissioned by Napoleon in 1805 (who then ruled Northern Italy), but not opened until 1851. Upon his visit there, Mark Twain remarked:
“... We shall continue to remember it after we shall have forgotten the palaces. It is a vast marble collonaded corridor extending around a great unoccupied square of ground; its broad floor is marble, and on every slab is an inscription—for every slab covers a corpse. On either side, as one walks down the middle of the passage, are monuments, tombs, and sculptured figures that are exquisitely wrought and are full of grace and beauty. They are new and snowy; every outline is perfect, every feature guiltless of mutilation, flaw, or blemish; and therefore, to us these far-reaching ranks of bewitching forms are a hundred fold more lovely than the damaged and dingy statuary they have saved from the wreck of ancient art and set up in the galleries of Paris for the worship of the world.””
Stewart and I stopped by enroute back from Nice, and although the grounds have fallen into some disrepair, the statuaries are still quite impressive.
