Cimiterio Monumentale

It is the time of year when neighbors plant plastic tombstones and random tibias and skulls emerge from the grass. In Milan there is a cemetery like nothing to be found in the US. Angels, cherubs, weeping women and children, aged men, portraits of the departed, they all live together in the Monumental Cemetery. It is something of a survey of design styles, starting with elaborate Victorian ones, going up to recent times. This art nouveau angel has an air of'menace about her, with her pointed, enclosing wings. They are more like what you’d expect to see carrying a demon across the skies, and yet they are also vaguely heart shaped. Love, death and mortality all in a pair of wings.