Palazzo Stocchi Monti-Menoni

STORTI MONTI MARIO Parma 20 October 1880-1950 Son of Giuseppe and Elvira Ferrari. He graduated as a surveyor at the Technical Institute of Parma. After a brief professional activity in the field of architecture and one that saw him engaged as a technician of the Cassa di Risparmio di Parma (1926-1930), he retired to private life in his country house. The Stocchi Monti fixed its constructive model by looking at the examples proposed by Pietro Fenoglio, in particular at his home in Turin in 1902. Defined as one of the most interesting Emilian designers and with no equal inventiveness in interior spaces (Godoli), the Stocchi Monti he is often cited as one of the few Parmigiani experimenters in New Art, especially considering the first works made between 1911 and 1916. Taken as a banner of Parmesan liberty architecture, Villa Stocchi Monti, between Viale Rustici and Viale Magenta, which the bibliography given to 1911, was designed for the Stocchi Monti family who, used to living in the city center, considered the new building on the outskirts and therefore not very suitable to be inhabited as a town house. Among the decorative elements painted, such as the daisies of the southern front and the plastic ones, the circular windows and the phytomorphic and zoomorphic motifs, coexist still stylistic elements of late eclectic origin, typically Umbertine, which distinguish the work. Of Villa Ghirardi Pomarelli (1916, on viale Barilla), attributed until now to the Stocchi Monti, there is another project for the same lot, dating back to the same year, signed by the architect Olindo Tomasi. Those typical elements of the Umbertino-style eclecticism, which according to Vandelli survive in the culture and design of the Stocchi Monti, are found in other later works. The circular windows, the sinuous and floral decorations of the liberty are abandoned, to leave room for the stylistic features of the late nineteenth-century tradition. This is the case for example of Palazzo Stocchi Monti-Menoni, dating back to 1930-1931, in via Cairoli n. 11 The intervention on the first seems to have been limited to restoring the asymmetrical façade, where the three levels are traditionally marked with different orders: the base layer in cement plaster, the ashlar-work of the foreground with bush-hammered cement plaster with windows simply framed by the bosses and surmounted by plastic decorations with festoons, the second floor with gabled windows and the last level with a similar decorative motif on the ground floor, but simplified. Topical element is the anthropomorphic mask that is in the key of the arch of the entrance. A similar approach is found in the second: staggered ashlars in running and frames framing the windows with shelves supported by phytomorphic elements and curved tympanums. Here we do not find the same richness and the vast decorative vocabulary of the previous works, perhaps in consideration of the fact that these were two interventions on pre-existing historical buildings and not new designs. Inside, on the courtyard, decentralized with respect to the entrance corridor, there is the loggia consisting of the same slender columns that are found in the loggia of the facade on the western edge, which represents the singular element of movement in the traditional score of the front on Street.