Monumento alla Vela

A stone globe crowned with stylised metal sails, the Monumento alla Vela salutes the age when the Adriatic moved by wind. Cleto Capponi — an Ascoli-born artist close to Futurism who spent his last decades in Grottammare — raised it on the seafront in the mid-1980s; its sail types trace navigation from the lateen rig to the ocean caravel.

Why it matters

The Monumento alla Vela represents the development of sailing through three distinct forms: the lateen sail typical of the paranze, the small fishing craft of the Adriatic; the sail of the Viking ships; and the sail of the caravels of Columbus.

The monument is a public work by Cleto Capponi, who worked in graphics, painting, ceramics and sculpture and settled in Grottammare, where he died in 2000. The seafront group, portraits in the town's illustration museum and ceramic works in local churches mark Capponi's artistic presence in Grottammare alongside Fazzini.

What to notice

The composition pairs a stone globe with stylised metal sails, exploring contrasts between full and empty, matter and transparency. The heavy stone base anchors the group; above it, the metal sails do the visual work, catching wind and light so that the sculpture seems always on the verge of movement.

The three sail types are identified as the triangular lateen of Adriatic fishing boats, the square rig of Viking ships and the mixed rig of the caravels that opened ocean routes. The sculpture has also lost the crown of blue ceramics that once represented the sea at the summit of the globe, changing its profile.

Context and history

Capponi was born in Ascoli Piceno in 1912 and died in Grottammare in 2000, and the comune traces his working presence in the town from 1958 until his death — four decades of ceramics, drawing, painting and sculpture in a single coastal town. The sail monument belongs to his late period and dates to the mid-1980s.

The sculpture first stood in Piazza Kursaal, then moved further north along the seafront after redevelopment works, to Via Cristoforo Colombo between the resort centre and the northern shore. The relocation changed its relationship to the central seafront and the open horizon.

Capponi's Futurist affinities matter for reading the work. The sail blades reflect Capponi's Futurist affinities through their dynamic treatment of speed, lightness and machinery. His other works in town — the celebrity portraits in the MIC, the ceramic Via Crucis in the church of San Pio V, the ceramic crucifix at the start of the Valtesino road, and the polychrome ceramics applied to houses in the streets off the centre — show the same restlessness of material.