The tomb of Mario Grossi (1894-1918) at Monumental Cemetery in Parma in an historical photo. Courtesy Museo Brozzi, Traversetolo (PR).

With the end of the hostilities of World War I, which caused an extremely high number of casualties, the phenomenon of turning war heroes into mythological figures took place, resulting in the erection of numerous monuments to the fallen in a great many Italian towns.

There were also many artists – often personally involved in military action – who were called upon to witness to the valor of Italian soldiers through their art.

In the monumental cemetery of Parma, the tomb of Mario Grossi (1894-1918) can be found, a lieutenant of the 268th Infantry Regiment, fallen in June 1918 on the front of the River Piave to whom sculptor Renato Brozzi (1885-1963) dedicated a very particular monument: the winged Victory standing on a column in memory of the soldier was a small scale “rough draft” for what became the war memorial in the town of Casarano, in the province of Lecce.

The smaller statue, now lost, depicted a winged Victory in the act of crowning the Fallen. With her right hand stretched out at the top with a curved arm she holds a laurel palm, while in her lowered left hand she holds an oak branch”. The work, still present in its monumental version in Casarano, is very similar to the solutions adopted in the most famous “angular Victory” modeled by Brozzi for the Town Hall in Traversetolo (PR) in 1923 and for the one placed by Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863-1938) on the bow of the ship Puglia at the Vittoriale in 1929.

For curious reasons related to this story, this decorative element of an individual burial became the subject matter of a collective monument strongly desired by the community of Casarano and was inaugurated on May 18, 1929.

An exemplary story in which art and piety mingle to give dignity to the topic of death.