Immigrant Pride, Beauty and a New Identify Captured in Tile and Concrete: The Mosaic Markers of Francesco Constantino

Abstract

Francesco Constantino (1873 – 1943) was an Italian immigrant who settled in the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa in the early 20th century. A tile worker, he created many of the mosaics that once graced Tampa’s sidewalks and the homes of its wealthy. In the 1910s, he began to create mosaic tile-on-concrete markers for members of the city’s growing Spanish and Italian immigrant middle class, who desired memorials of beauty, but could not afford imported granite or marble. Constantino’s vibrant and unique style uses symbols both familiar and novel, and is further marked by a contrast in the use of religious symbols: in place for children, but rarely adults. This mirrors a rise in secularism among adults in the community, embittered by their perceptions of the role of the Catholic Church in their former poverty and need to leave their countries of birth. In Constantino’s work can be seen the history of a community, building itself up and defining who they would be in this new world, and this presentation will share both.