“Giuseppe’s last days of life were terrible: a year before his son’s wedding, a serious brain disease reduced him to dementia, from which he would not recover until his death in 1895‘. (Caprotti, ‘The Bones‘, p. 25).
A letter dated 12 February 1892, addressed to Major Tancredi Fogliani in Modena, is to be found in a letter copied in the Albiate archives, in which Beppo speaks at length about the serious form of ‘influenza’ – as he defines it – that tormented him for three days with unconsciousness and excruciating pain, a prodrome of the serious cerebral illness that would lead him a few months later to paralysis, then to such a point of dementia that he was officially interdicted by the Court of Monza (25 May 1892), and to his death three and a half years later, without ever having regained consciousness (ROMANO, I Caprotti, p. 32).
His body was laid out on a white bed decorated with foliage, and a photographer was called in for those post-mortem photographs that were a common practice at the time. At the same time, the eldest son Bernardo contacted Andrea Pilotti, “Collector of the ‘Fine Arts’ Society”, and on 17 December 1895, the latter replied by sending the sculptor Antonio Rescaldani “to remove the mask from his poor deceased parent, our effective partner [underlining in the text, ed. From this will be taken the head of the bust that was placed on his tomb, and now, after the construction of the family chapel (1928) where all the Caprotti’s remains were gathered, destroying the individual tombs, it is in the rooms of my archive, among the cabinets that preserve the history of his life.
Sources:
Albiate (MB), Villa San Valerio, Villa San Valerio Archives, Giuseppe Caprotti Factory Archives, Giuseppe Caprotti Archives (1837-1895).
Albiate Cemetery, Caprotti Chapel, gravestones of the ancient graves on the outside back of the perimeter walls.
Bibliography:
G. CAPROTTI, “Le Ossa dei Caprotti. Una storia italiana’, Milan, 2024/3.
R. ROMANO, “I Caprotti. L’avventura economica e umana di una dinastia industriale della Brianza”, Milan, 1980.
E. SÀITA, “I Caprotti : private aspects, from the Risorgimento to the Second World War“, 08/11/2022.
