Monumental. Four newsstands up for tender and new masterpieces revealed
Cocco: “Five years of intense protection and promotion activity of this extraordinary open-air museum which led to the decision of a new way of assigning the newsstands and to the discovery of extraordinary works of art thanks to the mapping work of the artistic curator”
Milan, 6 April 2021 – Artistic discoveries, increasingly profitable collaborations, actions to protect cultural heritage, maintenance and decoration of the cemetery and care of the arboreal heritage. There are many projects and innovations at the beginning of 2021 for the Monumental Cemetery which, since 2016, has been at the center of an important process of valorisation, promotion and protection promoted by the municipal administration.
Five years that have allowed the achievement of important results, such as the installation of security cameras along the external perimeter, which took place in 2017 thanks to A2a, the decision to establish an artistic curator supported by two specialized cataloguers, the recovery projects of the vaults and the static investigations of the Famedio, thematic walks and shows for children and teenagers, up to the launch of a dedicated website in 2010.
2021 opens for the Monumentale with a positive balance. "With the aim of enhancing, protecting and promoting this extraordinary place - declares the councilor Roberta Cocco (Digital transformation and civic services) -, we have had five years of intense activity, reaching the goal of 2019 thousand visitors in 100. We had many events scheduled in the two-year period 2020-2021 which unfortunately slowed down due to the ongoing health emergency, but internal work never stopped and, indeed, allows us today to present two important innovations. The first concerns four newsstands that have become available again: we are evaluating the possibility of assigning them with a public procedure, as an alternative to the method used up to now, the scrolling of waiting lists, while still safeguarding the position of those in the rankings through the attribution of a right of first refusal. The second, the extraordinary discoveries that occurred during the mapping of the works carried out by the artistic curator Sergio Rebora".
The four funerary monuments (newsstands) of the highest value declared invalid and therefore available again are ex Valdani, ex Coulliaux, ex Bardelli and ex Pozzi, whose total value exceeds one million and 400 thousand euros and which in the next few months could become protagonists of a public tender. The last assignments took place in 2020 (former Fucigna newsstand) and in 2018 (Moretti newsstand) for a record value of 900 thousand euros.
The discoveries
The general mapping of the burials carried out by the curator Sergio Rebora has revealed an unpublished work by Leonardo Bistolfi, the greatest Italian sculptor active between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the following century, present at the Monumentale with ten other works including " The dream” (1900), created for the tomb of Erminia Vogt Cairati. The rediscovered work was performed for the noblewoman Elisa Friggieri Melato, mother of the prose actress Maria Melato, considered by critics to be second only to Eleonora Duse. Dated 1927, the monument consists of a large bronze bas-relief depicting the deceased in full figure, standing, as if it were a pictorial portrait.
The work carried out by the two cataloguers, on the other hand, has brought to light unknown sculptures and paintings or no longer visible for some time, which also escaped previous catalogs and inventories. For example, the “Dall'Acqua” aedicule, located inside the Necropolis, designed by Carlo Maciachini. As already known in 1886, a monument belonging to the same family, the famous stele of Antonietta Milesi Gabrini, sculpted by Antonio Canova in 1816, was moved inside the building from Villa Milesi in Vanzago. However, another monument has never been mentioned. significant, that of the children, originally located on the west elevation in the Monumental itself.
The delicate marble cross is the work of the sculptor Lorenzo Vela, Vincenzo's brother, author – among other works – of the decorations in the Hall of the Charity Commission of the Savings Bank of the Lombard provinces, the Ca' de Sass.
But important discoveries have also occurred during the curator's reconnaissance inside storage spaces where sculptural parts or decorative elements of monuments were located, removed at the time from their original positions for various reasons. Here was found a pair of masterpieces by Adolfo Wildt, one of the authors most loved by visitors to the Monumental, which represents the artist's self-portrait and the portrait of his wife Dina. These are the marble versions originally placed on the monument designed by Giovanni Muzio for the Wildt spouses, later removed and replaced by bronze castings, more resistant to bad weather and environmental degradation. Of the two sculptures, other versions conserved in private collections are known.
While waiting to be able to fully resume the activity of thematic visits, walks and initiatives aimed at tourists and Milanese people, it is always possible to consult the dedicated website to discover all the beauties contained within the open-air museum.
Updated: 06/04/2021