Maria Francesca Delmas died at the age of 25 during a road accident on May the 13th, 1908. The sculptor Orengo has broached with originality the typically symbolist theme of the shattered young life, a very common theme in the funerary sculpture. He also connected it with the theme of the mourning, transposing it in an absolutely lay dimension: a naked male figure, which has been sculpted according to the Rodinian style, supports the semi naked body of his young fiancée and he kisses her for the last time: it’s a very sensual scene. The awareness of the death’s ineluctability fills the monument with melancholy and softens in a elegiac way the intensity of the drama expressed by the strong hug with which the boy seems to hold his fiancée.
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Keywords:
Staglieno Cemetery
Delmas
Orengo
Settore A Porticato Inferiore
symbols
women