Butti, Enrico

Born in the family of a hereditary sculptor; his father, uncle, cousin and ancestors worked with marble. At the age of 14 years (in 1861) he went to Milan, where he enrolled as a sculptor and teacher at the Academy Brera Pietro Magni , subsequently worked as an apprentice with him, as well as Francesco Bartsagi , Hugo Zannoni and other masters; At first he lived in poverty. At the National Exhibition in Milan in 1872, presented his first work, a marble sculpture of Raphael; two years later, his statue of Eleanor d'Este was praised by critics. In 1879, he exhibited a tombstone in Brera to the Cavi-Bossi family, for which he received an award from Prince Umberto. For the next exhibition, he completed work on the sculpture "Time" for the tombstone of the Borgia family, as well as tombstones for the families of Gerrini and Galbyati, symbolically depicting the bonds of the brotherhood. These tombstones were erected at the Monumental Cemetery in Milan . The statue of the miner of his work ( Il Miniatore ) was also exhibited in Brera, then was installed at the Dusseldorf cemetery ^[2] . Among the public monuments created by him, the most famous are the statue of General Sirte, installed in a public park in Milan, and the monument to Italian unity, created for the Vittoriano monument in Rome. In 1891, he created a tombstone for the funeral chapel of the Kasati family.

From 1893 to 1913 he taught sculpture at the Brera Academy. In 1913, due to an exacerbation of a pulmonary disease, he returned to Viju, where he lived until the end of his life and did not stop working. In 1926, he transferred all his plaster sculptures to the municipality of Viju. Since 1928 he took up painting. He died in his own villa, the park near which was subsequently turned into a museum of his works according to the wishes of the deceased.

• Biografia: Approfondimenti (inaccessible link)
• Il Casato Butti