Cemetery sculpture between the 19th and 20th century

From stone to eternity. Art beyond death

The Sant'Anna Cemetery is not only a place of memory and recollection, but also a true open-air museum, where Italian sculpture and that from other European countries finds one of its highest and most significant manifestations.
It houses works by artists who have shaped the sculpture scene in Trieste and beyond, highlighting the interaction between tradition and innovation, between local and international influences.
Initially, no particularly significant artistic presence can be identified in Trieste, which is why, at least in the early stages of development, the wealthy bourgeoisie had to turn to neighbouring regions to commission works of art to adorn their city residences or to create sepulchral monuments for their family tombs. Originally, the presence of a large group of Veneto artists with a clear neo-classical imprint can be seen, including most certainly Antonio Bosa (1777-1845) and his two sons, Francesco (1803-1870) and Eugenio (1807-1875). There is a gradual detachment from neoclassicism and an initial timid adherence to Romantic styles. The Venetian sculptor Luigi Ferrari (1810-1894), who created the de Reyer Tomb for the Trieste cemetery and whose Angel of Resurrection is often associated with the sculpture of Hope by Pietro Magni (1817-1877) from Milan, created for the Sartorio Gobbi family's funerary monument, is certainly part of this scene. The symbolist movement began to establish itself in Europe, with a definite influence coming from the stylistic innovations of Art Nouveau and the erotic realism of Auguste Rodin. The only work by Denmark’s Rudolph Tegner (1873-1950), created for the Hummel Radivo Tomb, represents a very early approach to symbolist-type sculpture, which in the Italian context reached full maturity with the art of Leonardo Bistolfi (1859-1933), a sculptor from Lombardy who created the Sospisio Bourbon del Monte Tomb for the Sant’ Anna Cemetery. With the establishment of the Industrial College in Trieste, the foundations were laid for the setting-up of a group of young Trieste artists. The sculptor Giovanni Depaul (1825-1919), who dedicated his time to teaching from 1863 to 1906, played a primary role. His pupils were Romeo Rathmann (1880-1961), Giovanni Mayer (1863-1943) and Giovanni Marin (1875-1926) from Trieste. Initially, the young artists decided to continue their training in the nearby Brera and Venice academies, but a new generation began to emerge that decided to go abroad, with the intention of immersing themselves in a more cosmopolitan cultural context. This was definitely the case with Ruggero Rovan (1877-1965) from Trieste and Antonio Camaur (1875-1919) and Alfonso Canciani (1863-1955) from Friuli, whose teachings laid the bases for the strongly geometric and textured artwork that characterised the work of his pupil Marcello Mascherini (1906-1983), as opposed to the allegorical-symbolic art of Franco Asco (1903-1970).