English Cemetery, Florence
Encyclopedia
The English Cemetery is in Piazzale Donatello, Florence, Italy.
Evangelical Reformed Church purchased land outside the medieval wall and gate of Porta a' Pinti from Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany
for an international and ecumenical cemetery, Russian and Greek Orthodox
burials joining the Protestant ones. Prior to that date non-Catholics and non-Jews who died in Florence could only be buried in Livorno
. Carlo Reishammer, as a young architectural student, first landscaped the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery, then Giuseppe Poggi
shaped it as its present oval when Florence became capital of Italy, surrounding it with great studios for artists, including that of Michele Gordigiani, who painted the portraits of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning
, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
ns, American
s and English buried here, the English
graves are of the majority as their community in Florence in the nineteenth century was the largest.
Many famous people are buried in the graveyard: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(in a tomb designed by Frederic, Lord Leighton), Walter Savage Landor
, Arthur Hugh Clough
, Fanny Trollope and her daughter-in-law Theodosia Garrow Trollope and three other family members, Isa Blagden, Southwood Smith, Hiram Powers
, Joel Tanner Hart
, Theodore Parker
, Fanny, the wife of William Holman Hunt
in a tomb he himself sculpted, Mary, the daughter of John Roddam Spencer Stanhope
in a tomb he himself sculpted, Louise, sister to Henry Adams, whose dying he describes in his 'Chaos' chapter in The Education of Henry Adams, two children of the Greek painter George Mignaty, whom Robert had paint Casa Guidi as it was when Elizabeth Barrett Browning died there, and Nadezhda De Santis, a black Nubian slave brought to Florence at fourteen from Jean-François Champollion
's 1827 expedition to Egypt and Nubia, while the French Royalist exile Félicie de Fauveau sculpted two tombs here.
Beatrice Shakespeare and Edward Claude Shakespeare Clench last descendants of William Shakespeare.
Giampietro Vieusseux, Swiss, the founder of the Gabinetto Vieusseux
of which John Ruskin
, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, and Robert Browning
were readers, is also buried here and likewise the Swiss historian Jacques Augustin Galiffe, who with Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi pioneered genealogical, archival research. Emily Dickinson
treasured a photograph of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb and wrote 'The soul selects her own society' about it, using lines also from EBB's Aurora Leigh. While Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a sonnet on Hiram Powers' sculpture The Greek Slave, which had been at the center of the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Isa Blagden and Theodosia Garrett Trollope, part East Indian, part Jewish, are models for Miriam in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, while George Mignaty's wife is model for the head of Hiram Powers' Greek Slave. The cemetery is famous, too, as the partial subject of Arnold Boecklin's Isle of the Dead
, from its burial of his seven-month daughter, Mary. In turn, the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff
made use of the painting for his Op. 29, The Isle of the Dead. The cemetery itself is a kind of encyclopedia memorializing the creativity of western culture, from America to Russia, from Scandinavia to Nubia, during Italy's Risorgimento.
, Greek
, Cyrillic, fraktura and Roman
scripts, and in many languages: Hebrew, Russian, French
, German
, Danish
, Romansh, English
, including passages of the Bible in their vernaculars, at that period forbidden to Catholics.
guidebooks and seen in early sepia photographs, particularly those taken by Hiram Powers' son, Longworth Powers, now in the Gabinetto Vieusseux.
The Comune of Florence recently allowed the Swiss Church which owns the 'English' Cemetery, to reopen it for burials, but only of cremated remains, not bodies.
History
In 1827 the SwissSwitzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
Evangelical Reformed Church purchased land outside the medieval wall and gate of Porta a' Pinti from Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany
Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany
Leopold II of Tuscany was the last reigning grand duke of Tuscany ....
for an international and ecumenical cemetery, Russian and Greek Orthodox
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
burials joining the Protestant ones. Prior to that date non-Catholics and non-Jews who died in Florence could only be buried in Livorno
Livorno
Livorno , traditionally Leghorn , is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of approximately 160,000 residents in 2009.- History :...
. Carlo Reishammer, as a young architectural student, first landscaped the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery, then Giuseppe Poggi
Giuseppe Poggi
Giuseppe Poggi was an Italian architect.A native of Florence, he received numerous commissions from the city's upper bourgeoisie for renovations of palaces and gardens....
shaped it as its present oval when Florence became capital of Italy, surrounding it with great studios for artists, including that of Michele Gordigiani, who painted the portraits of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Burials
Among the many Swiss, RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
ns, American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
s and English buried here, the English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
graves are of the majority as their community in Florence in the nineteenth century was the largest.
Many famous people are buried in the graveyard: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...
(in a tomb designed by Frederic, Lord Leighton), Walter Savage Landor
Walter Savage Landor
Walter Savage Landor was an English writer and poet. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity...
, Arthur Hugh Clough
Arthur Hugh Clough
Arthur Hugh Clough was an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to ground-breaking nurse Florence Nightingale...
, Fanny Trollope and her daughter-in-law Theodosia Garrow Trollope and three other family members, Isa Blagden, Southwood Smith, Hiram Powers
Hiram Powers
Hiram Powers was an American neoclassical sculptor.-Biography:The son of a farmer, Powers was born in Woodstock, Vermont, on the July 29, 1805. In 1818 his father moved to Ohio, about six miles from Cincinnati, where the son attended school for about a year, staying meanwhile with his brother, a...
, Joel Tanner Hart
Joel Tanner Hart
Joel Tanner Hart was an American sculptor.-Life and work:Joel Tanner Hart was born near Winchester, Kentucky and was a sculptor of importance during America's antebellum years. As a young man, he worked as a stone-cutter, developing his skills as a sculptor...
, Theodore Parker
Theodore Parker
Theodore Parker was an American Transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church...
, Fanny, the wife of William Holman Hunt
William Holman Hunt
William Holman Hunt OM was an English painter, and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Biography:...
in a tomb he himself sculpted, Mary, the daughter of John Roddam Spencer Stanhope
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope
John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope is an English artist associated with Edward Burne-Jones and George Frederic Watts and often regarded as a second-wave pre-Raphaelite. His work is also studied within the context of Aestheticism and British Symbolism. As a painter, Stanhope worked in oil, watercolor,...
in a tomb he himself sculpted, Louise, sister to Henry Adams, whose dying he describes in his 'Chaos' chapter in The Education of Henry Adams, two children of the Greek painter George Mignaty, whom Robert had paint Casa Guidi as it was when Elizabeth Barrett Browning died there, and Nadezhda De Santis, a black Nubian slave brought to Florence at fourteen from Jean-François Champollion
Jean-François Champollion
Jean-François Champollion was a French classical scholar, philologist and orientalist, decipherer of the Egyptian hieroglyphs....
's 1827 expedition to Egypt and Nubia, while the French Royalist exile Félicie de Fauveau sculpted two tombs here.
Beatrice Shakespeare and Edward Claude Shakespeare Clench last descendants of William Shakespeare.
Giampietro Vieusseux, Swiss, the founder of the Gabinetto Vieusseux
Gabinetto Vieusseux
The Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G. P. Vieusseux, founded in 1819 by Giovan Pietro Vieusseux, a merchant from Geneva, is a library in Florence, Italy...
of which John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, and Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
were readers, is also buried here and likewise the Swiss historian Jacques Augustin Galiffe, who with Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi pioneered genealogical, archival research. Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
treasured a photograph of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb and wrote 'The soul selects her own society' about it, using lines also from EBB's Aurora Leigh. While Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a sonnet on Hiram Powers' sculpture The Greek Slave, which had been at the center of the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Isa Blagden and Theodosia Garrett Trollope, part East Indian, part Jewish, are models for Miriam in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, while George Mignaty's wife is model for the head of Hiram Powers' Greek Slave. The cemetery is famous, too, as the partial subject of Arnold Boecklin's Isle of the Dead
Isle of the Dead (painting)
Isle of the Dead is the best known painting of Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin . Prints of the work were very popular in central Europe in the early 20th century — Vladimir Nabokov observed that they were to be "found in every Berlin home." Freud, Lenin, and Clemenceau all had prints of it...
, from its burial of his seven-month daughter, Mary. In turn, the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
made use of the painting for his Op. 29, The Isle of the Dead. The cemetery itself is a kind of encyclopedia memorializing the creativity of western culture, from America to Russia, from Scandinavia to Nubia, during Italy's Risorgimento.
Inscriptions
The tomb inscriptions are in HebrewHebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, Cyrillic, fraktura and Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
scripts, and in many languages: Hebrew, Russian, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, Romansh, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, including passages of the Bible in their vernaculars, at that period forbidden to Catholics.
Closure
The Cemetery had to be closed in 1877 when the law forbid burials of bodies within city limits. Currently, research is being carried out on the burial records in England, Russia and Italy, these being published on the web. The library in the cemetery seeks books written by and about those buried here, and an emergency appeal is under way to restore the 'English' Cemetery in Florence after 125 years of neglect and abandonment to its former beauty described in Victorian eraVictorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
guidebooks and seen in early sepia photographs, particularly those taken by Hiram Powers' son, Longworth Powers, now in the Gabinetto Vieusseux.
The Comune of Florence recently allowed the Swiss Church which owns the 'English' Cemetery, to reopen it for burials, but only of cremated remains, not bodies.