Monuments Of Yesterday And Today - A journey through celebrations for future memory

Derived from the Latin monere, meaning to remind, a monument seeks to recognize, celebrate, and inform. It is the concrete manifestation of memory to be preserved for generations to come. Among the many equestrian monuments of the past, the Renaissance statue of the condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni by Verrocchio has a unique story to tell. With a stern scowl, it towers over Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, facing what is now the city’s civil hospital but was once the Scuola di San Marco, a religious confraternity. Colleoni had explicitly requested the Serenissima Republic to commission a bronze in his perpetual memory: upon his death in 1475, he left his inheritance to Venice on the condition of having “a statue in front of San Marco”. The Venetians, wary of such a’ blatant self-celebration, acted with cunning: they placed it in front of San Marco - the School, however, not the Basilica!

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966), the voice of the Russian people’s dissent - who went from being a “living legend” to a “relic of the past... a harlot to be eliminated” under Stalin - has her monument in St. Petersburg: “I drink to the house laid waste / to my evil life / to the loneliness of two... to the world, crude and cruel / to the God who did not save us”. According to the association "Mi riconosci?", which has mapped the national territory, sculptural tributes to female figures in Italy are scarce. Stereotypes are often celebrated: saints, rice-weeders, bathers, Madonnas, and mothers - among these, the monument to the Partigiana by Murer and Scarpa in Venice is particularly powerful - but women who actually existed are rarely remembered.

Due to “monumental oversight”, there is no statue dedicated to Trotula de Ruggiero of Salerno, the first female physician and gynecologist in Europe (11th–12th century). However, we find tributes to Nossis, the greatest poetess of Magna Graecia (4th–3rd century BC); Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso (1808–1871, Milanese writer, patriot, and Risorgimento revolutionary); Sicilian singer-songwriter Rosa Balistreri (1927–1990); the Tuscan poetess Dina Ferri (1908–1930), and Ilaria Alpi and Maria Grazia Cutuli, journalists killed in the line of duty (in 1994 and 2001). There is even one of Manuela Arcuri as a symbol of beauty and abundance (a controversial piece, removed and then reinstated in Porto Cesareo, Lecce - who knows if it is still there?), which took the place of a statue dedicated to the Fishermen’s Wives.

Anita Garibaldi remains the most represented woman. The artist Maria Lai created a public work for Grazia Deledda in Nuoro, while both Rita Levi Montalcini (1909–2012) and the “Lady of the Stars”, Margherita Hack (1922–2013), have their bronze tributes. The latter, created by Daniela Olivieri (artist name Sissi), stands in Milan, facing the Università statale. In the contemporary era, common objects have become the subjects of monuments: a spoon with a cherry on top in the playful work of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in Minneapolis, or Laurence Jenk’s “candies” made of plexiglass, bronze, aluminum, or Murano glass, which bring smiles to faces around the world. Ironically, but with deep seriousness, the non-violence knotted gun by Reuterswärd stands near the UN Headquarters in New York, its somber message thundering out. Unheeded.

Listenings:

G. F. Handel, Sinfonia from Messiah

Brusco/Bizzarri, Monumento (Video)