Memory of the World Register

MEMORY OF THE WORLD REGISTER Cimitero di Porta a’ Pinti cosidetto Cimitero “degli Inglesi” (Florence's ‘English’ Cemetery, its archives, and its Mediatheca) (Italy) Ref N° 2010-44 PART A – ESSENTIAL INFORMATION 1 SUMMARY Florence’s cosmopolitan Swiss-owned so-called ‘English’ Cemetery, its archives and library of books by and about the international and ecumenical persons buried between 1827-1877, nobles, artists, poets, servants, serfs and slaves, British, Swiss, American, Russian, Scandinavian and others, with inscriptions in Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Cyrillic and fraktura letters, and in most European languages, including Rumantsch, distils into a small space and fifty years of time a dense history of Florence, of Europe, of the world. Many of these persons participated in the Peninsula and Waterloo battles against Napoleon, many were friends of Florence Nightingale and Henri Dinant, many worked ardently for the Abolition of Slavery (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Frances Trollope, Richard Hildreth, Hiram Powers, Theodore Parker, with the ex-slave Frederick Douglass visiting their tombs), against the employment of children in mines and factories (EBB, Frances Trollope, Southwood Smith), many for the rights of women and many for the freeing of nations such as Greece and Italy under foreign oppression (EBB, Walter Savage Landor, Hiram Powers, Theodosia Trollope, Isa Blagden, Giampietro Vieusseux, the son of Ferenc Pulszky, the husband of Mary Somerville). The burial registers and accounts are meticulously hand-written in French by the Swiss owners, the archive thus being simultaneously chiselled on marble and inscribed on enduring rag paper. The tombs are sculpted by the leading nineteenth century Italian, English, American and Russian sculptors. The restoration is being carried out through research in diaries, guidebooks, engravings and photographs of the period and through work/study by Romanian Roma who are skilled, but mainly illiterate, craftspeople under the supervision of experts in an alphabetization programme. The Romanian Roma were themselves slaves from the Middle Ages until the nineteenth century when Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe being influenced by Frances Trollope and Richard Hildreth’s anti-slavery novels) was translated into Romanian. The Cemetery is memorialized in Arnold Böcklin’s Island of the Dead and in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony on the painting. It is a place dense with meaning. 2 DETAILS OF THE NOMINATOR 2.1 Name (person or organisation) Julia Bolton Holloway, Custodian, President, ‘Aureo Anello’ Associazione Gerardo Kraft, President, Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera, Florence Mario Marziale, Pastore, Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera, Florence 2.2 Relationship to the documentary heritage nominated Julia Bolton Holloway is the ‘English’ Cemetery’s Custodian, Director of its Mediatheca ‘Fioretta Mazzei, President of the Aureo Anello Association, Professor Emerita, archivist, and editor for Penguin of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh and Other Poems. Gerardo Kraft is President of the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church in Florence which has owned the Cemetery since the acquisition of its land from the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1827. He has been Honorary Swiss Consul and his family have lived in Florence for generations while maintaining their Swiss citizenship. 1 Mario Marziale is the Pastore of the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church in Florence, has published on the church’s history, and is an archivist. 2.3 Contact person (s) Julia Bolton Holloway 2.4 Contact details (include address, phone, fax, email) Julia Bolton Holloway ‘English’ Cemetery P.le Donatello, 38 50132 FIRENZE, ITALY (39) 055 582608 (phone and fax) [email protected] http://www.florin.ms http://www.ringofgold.eu 3 IDENTITY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE DOCUMENTARY HERITAGE 3.1 Name and identification details of the items being nominated Florence’s ‘Cimitero di Porta a’ Pinti cosidetto Cimitero “degli Inglesi”’, the Swiss-owned so-called ‘English’ Cemetery, its archives, and its Mediatheca. 3.2 Description This documentation demonstrates the ongoing conservation and digitizing of the materials and the documentation of that process, in marble, on paper and on the Web. Training under experts takes place on the premises in restoration work on the tombs and of books and archival documents. Accessibility to the materials is both in situ and virtual in the form of physical visits by persons from worldwide to the Cemetery and its Mediatheca and virtual visits on the Web at http://www.florin.ms , http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com and http://www.ringofgold.eu. Scholars, photographers and artists using the materials are required to present a copy of their work for the Cemetery’s archives. Descendants voluntarily present relevant materials, for instance, photographs of the medals of the Crimea that are sculpted on a tomb and which still in the possession of the family. We share our materials with other organizations such as the Waterloo Committee for use in their publications. Members of the Aureo Anello Associazione present books to the library relevant to the Cemetery, etc., in particular books by and about the persons buried here. An important facet of the collection is the many translations and editions of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese. Hungarian, Czech), that we now possess. We give in this packet a numbered copy of our own hand-bound bi- lingual limited edition in English and Italian of EBB’s Sonnets and Ballads which include her anti- slavery poems and which raises funds for the restoration of tombs. Research has also been carried out on Lord Leighton’s sketches for his design of her tomb, sketchbooks which are to be found at Leighton House Museum, the Royal Academy Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and which include his design of the Exodus harp with the broken slave shackle. We exhibit the ‘Florence in Sepia’ photographs, the rare books and first editions by persons buried here, and the pieces of Roman, medieval and Renaissance pottery we find in our soil. These are shown in a room with limited lighting for their preservation. 2 4 JUSTIFICATION FOR INCLUSION/ ASSESSMENT AGAINST CRITERIA 4.1 Is authenticity established? Careful contemporary and later documentation exists on the premises for each of the 1,400 burials and for the remaining 700 tombs. In Tuscany in this period the churches rather than the State were responsible for the registration of births, marriages and deaths. Duplicate records are held in the Guildhall Library, London, for the Anglican burials in the Cemetery and in St Petersburg for the Russian Orthodox burials. We have collated our entries with these with the help of scholars. The entire schedatura of the monuments is being compiled for the Belle Arti. By their very nature this material, whether in stone or on paper, is about authenticating burials. 4.2 Is world significance, uniqueness and irreplaceability established? In a small area of land, now an island in the midst of Florentine traffic, monuments were erected and documented concerning the memory of many international and ecumenical figures who shaped history in their own time, their ideals continuing into the future. Thousands visit the Cemetery, including the American ex-slave Frederick Douglass, Arnold Böcklin painted it in Island of the Dead, Sergei Rachmaninoff composed music it, Franco Zeffirelli filmed it in Tea With Mussolini, many scholars and artists work within its oval beneath its tall cypresses. It was abandoned for a century, its fine garden put to weed killer, the tombs vandalized, but both the tombs and the garden are now being restored in a ten year project. The archives are being carefully studied in relation to the monuments. A library was established collecting books by and about the persons buried here. Six thousand persons, on the web and as physical visitors to the Cemetery, have signed its petition that it remain open, that it be restored and that it be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 4.3 Is one or more of the criteria of (a) time (b) place (c) people (d) subject and theme (e) form and style (f) social, spiritual and community significance satisfied? (a) The ‘English’ Cemetery represents the memorializing in marble and paper of a half century (1827- 1877), as if frozen in time. It documents an important era in Italy’s history, the Risorgimento, in English history, the Regency and Victorian periods, in European history, the Napoleonic era, and in world history, the Colonial presence (b) The ‘English’ Cemetery is, in a sense, the world and its meanings gathered up into one small, dense place, an ‘Island of the Dead’ in Florence, a Cemetery which originally lay just outside the wall and gate known as the Porta a’ Pinti, first built by Arnolfo di Cambio with his sculpted stemma of the lily and the cross, using the stones from the Ghibelline ‘towers of pride’ for the Guelf walls of common defence, then rebuilt by Michelangelo Buonarotti to fortify the city against the Medici. It is thought that this artificial hill was erected as an Etruscan tomb and it is situated on the road leading toward Etruscan Fiesole, the gate being originally called the Porta Fiesolana. The hill was further built up with rubbish dumped over the medieval wall, resulting in many shards of hand-painted maiolica ware being collected from its soil. These have been identified and catalogued by Marino Marini of the Uffizi Gallery as Roman, medieval, Renaissance and modern, at the urging of Timothy Wilson of the Ashmolean Museum, and which include several pieces with the crutch, the emblem of the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, founded by Dante’s Beatrice’s father, Folco Portinari. We have the complete documentation between Giuseppe Poggi and the Swiss owners at the Risorgimento concerning the Cemetery’s restructuring, with the destruction of the medieval/Renaissance wall and the changing of its shape to an oval surrounded by Parisian-like boulevards.

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