Angel of Grief

Listen first. Under the umbrella pines and the tall dark cypresses, the noise of Rome drops away. There is gravel under your feet, the soft crunch of someone walking a few rows over, and perhaps the call of a bird in the branches above. The air here smells of cut grass, damp stone and pine resin. And in front of you, a winged figure has collapsed across a marble altar. Its face is hidden in its arm. This is the Angel of Grief, and it is one of the most copied grave monuments in the world.

You are standing in the Non-Catholic Cemetery of Rome, which many people still call the Protestant Cemetery. For centuries, Catholic Rome did not allow non-Catholics to be buried in consecrated ground. Foreigners, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Jews and non-believers needed somewhere else. This quiet corner of the Testaccio district became that place. It sits against the ancient Aurelian Walls, which once defended the city, and next to a white marble pyramid built as a tomb in Roman times.

The angel was made by William Wetmore Story, an American sculptor who spent most of his adult life in Rome. Story was not only an artist. He trained as a lawyer in Massachusetts, he wrote poetry and essays, and he was the son of a justice of the United States Supreme Court. Then he gave up the law for marble. In Rome he became a central figure among the foreign artists and writers who gathered in the city during the nineteenth century.

The monument marks the grave of his wife, Emelyn. She died in 1894, after many decades of marriage. Story carved this angel for her in his grief. Its full title is long and very Victorian: The Angel of Grief Weeping Over the Dismantled Altar of Life. Story himself died the following year, in 1895. He was buried here, beside her, under the work he had made for her.

Now look closely at the figure. Most grave angels of that era stand upright. They point to heaven, or they hold a trumpet, or they look calm and certain. This angel does none of that. It kneels and falls forward. One arm lies across the top of the altar, and the head rests on it. The other arm hangs down loosely. The great wings fold and droop. This is not an image of comfort. It is an image of exhaustion... of someone who has cried until there is nothing left.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Walk slowly around the monument and notice how the angel's face is almost completely hidden. Story chose not to show the expression. Because you cannot see the face, you bring your own grief to it. Many people say this is why the sculpture affects strangers so strongly, more than a century after it was carved. It does not tell you what to feel. It simply shows the weight of loss.

The second surprise is how far this angel has travelled. After Story's death, copies and close imitations appeared in many countries. Versions of the Angel of Grief stand in cemeteries in the United States, in Canada, in Britain and elsewhere. One well-known copy stands on the campus of Stanford University in California. So the original that you are looking at now has become a kind of shared language for mourning, far beyond Rome.

Take a moment to look at the marble itself. It is white stone, but time and weather have changed it. You can see darker patches where rain has run down the wings and the folds of the robe. In places there is a grey or greenish film, and the edges of the feathers have softened. The cemetery cares for its monuments carefully, but outdoor marble always carries the marks of the seasons. Those marks make the angel look even more human.

Now lift your eyes and look around this part of the cemetery. The graves here are packed close together, stepped up the gentle slope toward the old city wall. You will see names in English, German, Russian, Swedish, Greek and many other languages. Diplomats, painters, students, nurses and travellers rest side by side. Many of them came to Rome for art, for health, or for love of Italy, and never went home.

Some of the most famous names lie in the older section, closer to the pyramid. The English poet John Keats is buried there. He died in Rome as a young man, and his gravestone famously does not carry his name. Nearby lie the ashes of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. In another part of the cemetery you can find the grave of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian political thinker. It is worth walking the paths to see how many different lives ended here.

You may also meet some residents with four legs. Cats have lived around the Pyramid of Cestius and the cemetery walls for a long time, and volunteers look after them. You may see one asleep on a warm tomb or walking calmly along a path. They are part of the life of this place. Please let them be, and keep your voice low, because this is still a working cemetery and people still come to visit their families.

Think for a moment about the man who made this angel. Story spent decades sculpting heroes and queens from history and myth, large figures meant for galleries and grand rooms. But many people agree that his most moving work is this one. He made it at the end of his life, for one person, in a garden of graves. It is private grief made public, and it is still honest.

Before you leave, stand a few steps back and see the whole scene together. The kneeling figure. The broken altar. The cypress trees rising behind it. The light coming through the pines and moving slowly across the wings. In the late afternoon, that light turns warm and gold, and the marble seems almost soft.

As you walk back along the gravel paths, you will hear the city again — traffic beyond the walls, a tram, voices from the streets of Testaccio. Rome continues outside. But here, a husband's sorrow for his wife has been kneeling in the same place for more than a century. Take one last look at the hidden face, and carry a little of this quiet with you.