Canzone in seven verses of varying length, composed between 1831 and 1835 and first published in the Naples 1835 edition. The title translates as Upon a bas-relief of an ancient sepulchre, where a dead young girl is represented in the act of departure, taking leave of her parents.

With the subsequent Sopra il ritratto di una bella donna/Upon the portrait of a beautiful woman it constitutes the so called “sepolcrali” or sepulchral poems, linked to reflections on death (a theme often present in Leopardi’s mind, from the Operette morali/Moral Operettas to the Zibaldone), and in particular the death of young women (more immediate examples are A Silvia and Ricordanze/Remembrances, but the theme was already present in Ricordi d’infanzia e di adolescenza/Memories of childhood and adolescence, and in his early Canto Il sogno/The dream).

The heart to the Canto is an anguished metaphysical  interrogation addressed to nature, “Mother feared and wept for”, “laudable marvel, / who to kill gives birth and feeds” (v. 44; vv. 46-7): if to die is something bad, why allow it in innocent creatures? And if it is good, why does the loss of dear ones so pain those who remain alive?

se danno è del mortale

immaturo perir, come il consenti

in quei capi innocenti?

Se ben, perché funesta,

perché sovra ogni male,

a chi si parte, a chi rimane in vita,

inconsolabil fai tal dipartita?

And it is indeed the cruelty of such a loss of one’s dear ones which motivates a further series of questions addressed to nature (vv. 75-107); questions that alas remain without answer, considering that nature (and here the theme of the indifference of nature, central to Dialogo della Natura e di un Islandese, is back) “of other things in what it does / is it concerned rather than our plights or fortunes” (vv. 108-9):

Come, hai come, o natura il cor ti soffre

di strappar dalle braccia

all’amico l’amico,

al fratello il fratello,

la prole al genitore,

all’amante l’amore: e l’uno estinto,

l’altro in vita serbar? Come potesti

far necessario in noi

tanto dolor, che sopravviva amando

al mortale il mortal? ... (vv. 98-107)

Pietro Tenerani, Final farewell of a girl to her parents, draft for the Monumento Severini, 1822. Source: Leopardi a Roma, edited by Novella Bellucci and Luigi Trenti, Electa, Milan 1998.