Ch. 7 - THE FACCANONI MAUSOLEUM (1907)

The funereal theme emerges from the production of Sommaruga in close relation, if only through his clients, with the theme of the typology of villa or mansion. As it was fairly common for Milanese architects to devote themselves to funereal work, it is by no means anomalous that Sommaruga also accepted these commissions. It is further confirmation that he was well-inserted in the profession.
In his production, the series of designs and works of tombs, funeral shrines, mausoleums, and cemeteries represent a close-knit sequence alongside the equally close-knit sequence of villas and mansions (between 1896 and 1917).
The Faccanonis (and the Alettis, the Biffis, the Comis, the Salmoiraghis, and the Cirlas) therefore appointed the same architect who had created the stage for the private rites of their everyday life on earth and the public symbols of their social qualifications, to perpetuate, in a tangible and lasting way, their fleeting mortal glories.
Sommaruga is certainly not exempt, in this funereal architecture, from a heaviness of form, common to almost all the contemporary Italian and foreign cemeterial and commemorative production. But what we can define as the common “mausoleum tendency” finds in Sommaruga a less redundant interpretation that is more sensitive to values of light, color, and the environment linked to the different quality and contrast of material used as well as the relationship of the work with the surrounding landscape. The distribution of mausoleums and shrines in the space within the cemetery limits is not by chance, but according to precise plans, almost of micro-town planning. The areas available were subject to intervention with a logic not unlike that of the land to be divided up in expanding cities at the time. The tombs replace the houses in a hypothetical garden city or in a residential area of the middle- and upper-middle class. The orographic condition of the land is almost always exploited for scenographic purposes, so with the use of steps, terraces, open spaces, grottoes, and belvederes (Verano cemetery in Rome, Staglieno cemetery in Genoa) picturesque routes are created that are very similar to the “promenades” of spa resorts. Only the type of vegetation, for reasons of decorum, is kept within less blatantly lush limits and as more suitable for a place of prayer and meditation. The bungalow is replaced by a tomb or mausoleum and while domestic privacy is protected by gardens and enclosing walls, the grief of the individual or family group is still on public display. The cities of the dead are consequently modeled on those of the living.
If more often than not cemeteries represent the background for a picturesque sequence of shrines and mausoleums, it is sometimes the latter that impose themselves due to their strong presence. From a contained object it may become, especially in the case of small cemeteries (such as Sarnico) the container, or at least subordinate the surrounding space.
The term “mausoleum” comes from the name of the funeral monument of Mausolus who had a gigantic tomb built in Halicarnassus in the 4^th century BC, later considered one of the seven wonders of the world. According to a reconstruction, the Mausoleum had a square plan and a high footing which supported a pyramid with 24 steps, seven meters high.
In the history of funeral architecture, many of the best-known representatives of Italian modernism took part in this sector. The instrument of the competition, although with its limits, had a widespread application, including for works for cemeteries. There is a distinction to be made between cemeterial and funereal architecture: the former refers to the actual cemetery and the latter to what is contained in it (chapels, tombs) and tends to underline the profound difference existing between the various social levels of the client, public and private, overseeing the work and the different symbolic attributes that each gives to the project in question. The simultaneous presence of a public component and of a private one will therefore represent the main characteristic of cemeterial architecture. The progressive prevalence of one of the two components, the private one, will lead, during the 20^th century, to an increasing personalization of the funereal monument according to a logic of displayed exhibition and the more or less magniloquent search for everlastingness. In this way, the “private” individual had safely found the means for his own proud display. The cemeterial building, on the other hand, was an actual container of these monuments and took on the function of a stage set and picturesque backdrop where this lay and positivist ritual could take place.
Thus there was a sort of competition-integration between the two components that had as their common denominator the concept of “monumental” and it is precisely from this point of view that the cemetery was to make its presence clearly perceivable on an urban scale, moving compositions and symbols from the private sphere.
The cemeteries of the Liberty period highlight this dialectic relationship and coherently follow in the wake of the eclectic architecture of the end of the nineteenth century. They are, in any case, numerically limited and their history is often that of late works, modified projects, and missed possibilities.
The mausoleum is a grandiose monumental tomb built by the Faccanoni family in 1907. This “mausoleum trend” in the Liberty style by Giuseppe Sommaruga, which was already emerging in the Biffi tomb in Galliano, latent in the Casnati tomb and re-emerging, at the end of his curriculum, in the other mausoleum of the Salmoiraghis in Lanzo d’Intelvi, finds its most accomplished formalization in SARNICO.

 In “Il Liberty in Italia” by E. Bairati/D.Riva
Laterza, Rome 1990

The Sarnico mausoleum

Its image dominates that of the cemetery, annulling its scenographic background. The imposing funereal construction, against a hill, in the small cemetery of the lakeside town, interprets the secessionist concept of the Hellenistic reinterpretation in a modern key with a sort of natural violence (rock against rock). This work has been defined by Nicoletti as having a “sinister fascination (…) apparently inspired by the Maya pyramid and with an internal disintegration, almost symbolizing that of death”.
In this secular and almost pagan monument, nothing sacred appears (the image of the cross emerges from a triumph of cupids or in the iron gate to the entry of the burial niches). Prayer and silent meditation are banned and replaced by incredulous stupor, reinforced by images, such as that of a grinning skull, with a strong visual impact. The effect of power is not given here to symbols that have been confirmed and coded, of the historicist repertoire, but to an architecture that combines calculated effects from stage design accompanied by the different rendering of light deriving from the materials used and their different treatment.

RUSTIC ASHLAR WORK alternates with SMOOTH ashlar work. Sommaruga used almost exclusively materials from the surrounding areas:

• the base is in stone from Val Seriana;
• the large mass of the monument is made from stone from Brembate;
• the steps are from Sarnico stone;
• the background of the upper floor is made from “simonia” stone;
• the gate to the crypt is made of wrought iron and bronze;
• the lamps are made of wrought iron.

All the wrought iron decorations were made, following Sommaruga’s designs, by the firm of Bardone e Alziati of Milan. The internal decorations were done by Tiziani of Milan. The frieze of cupids was sculpted by Ambrogio Pirovano of Milan.
The documentation is in the Archives of the Municipal Technical Department of Sarnico.
The mausoleum is currently in a fair state of conservation.
In funereal constructions, Sommaruga’s art is asserted even more fully, perhaps because it has a freer personality, less subject to opinions, modifications, and particular circumstances of other buildings.