Giulio Rancilio, Giardino delle sculture / Sculpture garden

this image and the next five from the website Tipeek Photos, 
published here in agreement with the editors

The woman on a horse, pictured above, is part of a garden with sculptures that can be seen from the street in Castiglione d'Adda, a municipality with about 4,800 inhabitants in the Lombardy region in northern Italy.

Life and works

The garden, with about thirty large and small sculptures, is a creation of Guillo Rancillio (1938-2020).

He became a bricklayer by profession, a job he had to give up in 1995 when he was 57 years old, due to major heart surgery.

Already at a young age Rancillio loved making drawings, a hobby he continued as an adult and expanded with the creation of paintings, with religious themes and portraits of animals as his main subjects.

Remaining unmarried all his life, he lived in a house in the centre of Castiglione d'Adda, which had been acquired many years earlier by a grandfather. The house has a garden along the street.

In 2000 Rancilio began making sculptures, following the technique of first making models of chicken wire, over which layers of cement are then spread. Once dried, the creations were painted in colour.

He did this creative work with great passion and working passionately he tried to depict the subject as realistically as possible. 

All together Rancilio made about thirty sculptures, which were situated in front of his house in the garden along the street named Via Alfieri. 

Some of his work can be seen in the illustrations in this post.

The collection includes all kinds of animals, such as a dog, a white rearing horse (now disappeared), a monkey riding a red Alfetta Duetto and some crazy birds. 

People were also depicted, such as women on a horse or on a scooter, a little girl on a bicycle, a man with a helmet on a Vespa and an older man sitting on a stool at a round table.

He also made creations with a religious slant, such as a sculpture of Jesus.

The wall of the neighboring house, which borders the garden, contains a large painted scene, and in the interior of Rancilio's house there is a large mural inspired by da Vinci's The Last Supper.

Giulio Rancilio died on March 8, 2020 at age 81. 

It is not clear whether the house is now occupied again.

Documentation

* Article (undated) on the website Costruttori di Babele
* Article (2024) on the website Tipeek Photos

Giulio Rancilio

Sculpture garden

Via V. Alfieri, 74

26823 Castiglione d'Adda, region Lombardy. Italy

can be seen from the street

Google Streetview