Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno, Genoa - Italy

"We are ignorant of the beyond, because this ignorance is the condition of our own life. Just as ice cannot know fire except by melting and vanishing."


Jules Renard 

Dancing with death, life is represented by a woman, reluctant she tries to escape, but here death is triumphant ...

Staglieno is not just a cemetery, it is also an art memorial. The cemetery became more famous because of the quality of its art than the people who were buried there. After its opening to the public in 1851, the Ligurian aristocracy of the era competed in outdoing one another’s self-glorification by commissioning sculptures of themselves in hyper-realist detail. Their vain legacy represents the model of taste and behavior of the ruling classes of the time.

The art of the cemetery is closely tied with the emergence of the Realist art movement in the 1850s. 

At the beginning of the 19th century the cemetery art became to be questioned. The artists explored their darkest fantasies producing statues that were disturbing, sometimes even erotic.