Neoclassicism and local artistic tradition in the sepulchral monuments of the Certosa cemetery in Bologna during the napoleonic era and the restoration I monumenti sepolcrali del cimitero della Certosa di Bologna in età napoleonica e di restaurazione fra tradizione artistica e neoclassicismo

In advance of the edict of Saint-Cloud (1804) which forbade burials inside towns, the suppressed monastery of the Carthusians monks of Bologna was transformed into a vast cemetery in 1801 and complied with the most modern instances of sanitation. After a heated debate on whether to put all social classes together in one burial place extra moenia, the Municipality of Bologna resolved the dispute by overcoming the existing Enlightenment-Jacobin egalitarianism: the wide open fields were reserved for the burial of ordinary people, while the wealthy (nobility and the newly rich bourgeoisie) were able to bury their dead in the costly monumental sepulchres in the arches of the Renaissance cloister. The growing number of monuments soon meant that the Bolognese cemetery became the richest exhibition of Italian Neoclassical art and consequently a destination for many Italian and foreign travellers. This situation promoted activities of writing and engraving which focused on the monumental works and their illustrious dedicatees. From 1815 on, the Municipality and the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna promoted the prestige of their cemetery by enlarging and embellishing it and initiating a methodical quality control of the artistic work produced for its enrichment. The interest of these institutions also contributed to the evolution of techniques for executing the monuments. During the Napoleonic era, in line with the great local classical-naturalistic tradition of painting and “quadratura” of Bologna, the sepulchres were predominantly decorated by painters. This phenomenon, perhaps unique in the world, ended with scagliola and gypsum sculpture being favoured over painting in the middle of the 1810s. One reason for this reversal in trend can be found in the problems of conservation which the painted tombs, located outdoors, presented only a few years after they had been made. Another reason is evident in the slow change in taste of the Bolognese towards Neoclassicism, which was strongly supported by the vice-secretary of the Academy Pietro Giordani after his arrival in Bologna in 1808. Nevertheless, the sculptors proposed works which though revealing a certain adhesion to the Neoclassical funerary models by Antonio Canova from an iconographic point of view were still strongly related to the style and detailed technical elaboration typical of the late Baroque Bolognese tradition. They were made according to the local custom, from gypsum, stucco, scagliola or terracotta, poor materials, typical of a city far from any marble quarries. They were easily perishable and cont