Giuseppe Grandi

Place: Valganna

Born: 1843

Death: 1894

Biography:

Giuseppe Grandi was an Italian sculptor born in Valganna, Italy in 1843. He was taught by Vela at the Accademia di Brera and won the Canonica competition in 1866 with a sculpture called Ulisse. He then worked on a verist sculpture of Tabacchi at Turin before returning to Milan, where he joined the Lombard Scapigliatura school. He was a friend of Cremona and Ranzoni, and with them assumed a renewed anti-academist position and shared their common luministic research. He sought the luministic effects of painting in sculpture. One of his best-known works is the monument to Cesare Beccaria of 1871, along with the lesser-known paggio di Lara of 1873 and his Maresciallo Ney of 1874. In 1881, his initial design won a public competition to create a monument to the Five Days of Milan in piazza di Porta Vittoria in Milan. He died in 1894, before he could see his work inaugurated. The city of Milan has renamed a piazza after him.