Easily the most striking monument in Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Cemetery, the huge bronze angel that marks the gravesite of railroad magnate H. K. Porter has received much popular acclaim but little scholarly attention. Mistaken and contradictory information about the monument appears online, such as an attribution to American sculptor Brenda Putnam despite the fact that it is clearly signed “Enrico Buti.” Usually dated c. 1900, a photograph of it exists from 1893, which also establishes that it was originally in marble, not bronze. This paper will attempt to tease out the truth behind this noteworthy sculpture by tracking its origin to Italy, where an almost exact duplicate in marble exists in the Milan Monumental Cemetery. This version is an award-winning sculpture titled The Angel of Evocation created by acclaimed sculptor Enrico Butti (correct spelling) in 1879. Determining how a reproduction of the work ended up in Pittsburgh by 1893 can contribute to a larger investigation of the transnational movement of Italian cemetery sculpture.
About the presenterElisabeth Roark
Elisabeth Roark, Professor of Art History at Chatham University,received her M.A. and Ph.D at the University of Pittsburgh and has taught at the University of Tennessee and Converse College. Her research addresses pre-1900 American art, especially portraiture, artist imagery, and cemetery sculpture. Roark edits Markers: Annual Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies. Publications include the book Artists of Colonial America and articles in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, American Art, Italian American Review, and Nineteenth-Century Art.