Data sheet
Name: Treves Aedicule
Location: field 2, no. 141-142
Author: Ettore Ximenes (scultore)
Construction date: 1906
Giuseppe Treves (1838-1904), son of the chief rabbi of Trieste Sabato Graziadio Treves, joined the Fratelli Treves publishing house in 1870, founded a few years earlier by his brother Emilio. The publishing house was the first to publish the books of the major writers of Italian Verismo, such as Verga, Negri and De Amicis, as well as works of already famous authors like Pirandello and D’Annunzio. His wife Virginia Tedeschi (1855-1916), known by the pseudonym Cordelia, published numerous short stories and novels for children that soon became very popular, inspired by the writings of De Amicis.
After the death of her husband in 1904, his wife commissioned the sculptor Ettore Ximenes (1855-1926) to build an aedicule, completed in 1906. Ximenes, of Sicilian origin and residing in Rome, had a brother who illustrated the first and very popular Italian magazine ” L’Illustrazione Italiana” published by the Treves. Ximenes had already built the monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi in Largo Cairoli in Milan. Arch. Augusto Guidini, who had worked on the architectural part of the monument to Garibaldi, collaborated in building the aedicule in Art Nouveau style.
Ximenes created a beautiful bronze high-relief band around the whole aedicule representing scenes from the publishing house, with Giuseppe and Virginia working with D’Annunzio, Verga and De Amicis to the right of the entrance. On the other sides of the aedicule one can recognize the workers and the innovative process of reproducing and printing illustrations. The architectural part, in Bardiglio di Carrara marble, is enriched with Art Nouveau floral decorations on the corners, on the entrance and along the sarcophagus-shaped upper part of the aedicule.
