Data sheet
Name: Monument for Giovanni Norsa
Location: field 2, no. 14-16
Author: Giulio Branca (scultore)
Execution date: 1881
Giovanni Norsa (1813-1881) was a wholesaler born in Milan, son of the Mantuan Aron Cervo Norsa. He owned a palace in via Montenapoleone and 250 hectares of land leased outside Porta Ticinese. He married a Catholic, Carolina Berini widow Tirelli, who already had a son, Luigi, buried in the same monument. According to the epigraph on the monument he studied the Latin classics and the fine arts.
Carolina commissioned the work called “Apotheosis of the soul” in Carrara marble for the tomb of her husband in 1881 by sculptor Giulio Branca (1850-1926), who was born in Cannobbio but moved to Milan to study at
Brera Academy. The funeral monument is decorated with two medallions of the spouses, one of which has disappeared. Branca created about four hundred commemorative monuments, funerary monuments and portrait busts. Among his most important works is Rosmunda at the Alboino banquet, exhibited in Turin in 1880 and which received a prize at the International Exposition in Amsterdam, and the Carpi tomb (field 4, no. 81-83) which is in this cemetery.
