Giuseppe Cassioli

Artist: Giuseppe Cassioli (Florence 1865-1942)
Title: Monumental Tomb of Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868)
Date: 1900-1902
Material and tecnique: white Carrara marble, Seravezza marble, gilding, mosaic 
Dimensions: 700 x 280 x 140 cm
Position: Basilica of Santa Croce, south aisle, between sixth and seventh bay

The composer Gioachino Rossini died in Paris in 1868 and was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery, but the Florentine City Council offered his wife Olympe Pélissier the opportunity to have him reburied in Santa Croce in the company of other illustrious Italians and started a public fund-raising initiative to erect a monument to him. His body was moved to Florence in 1887 and greeted with a solemn tribute to the beloved composer. 

A temporary plaque was placed in the church, but it took three competitions before a winner was found. The first call for tender, issued on 1 May 1897, highlighted the difficulties inherent in the project because the work was due to be erected next to Bernardo Rossellino's Monument to Leonardo Bruni, the prototype of the Renaissance tomb, without being overshadowed by it yet without being in a style so different as to disturb the harmony of the area. 

Despite such a daunting prospect, numerous competitors submited a design, an estimate and a 1:5 scale model, all of which were displayed in the Refectory, and the complexity of the choice is borne out by the difficulty encountered in choosing a winner.

The work, modelled by Giuseppe Cassioli, was translated into marble in the workshop of Carlo Niccoli in Carrara and finished in the Regia Officina delle Pietre Dure in Florence under the direction of Edoardo Marchionni.

Cassioli's references were the tombs of Bruni, Marsuppini and other Renaissance figures, but he updated his design by introducing the large standing figure of Music swathed in a sumptoous cloak and weeping at the foot of the sarcophagus. 

The theatrically melodramatic feel of the whole is accentuated by draped curtains opening to reveal a bust of Rossini in a clipeus on a gold mosaic ground, a secular focal point in place of the Madonna and Child in the Bruni monument. A garland on the plinth brings together three shields whose inscriptions tell us that Rossini was born in Pesaro on 29 February 1792, that his body reached Florence on 3 May 1887 and that he died in Paris on 13 November 1868. The monument was solemnly inaugurated on 23 June 1902.