Evaristo de Chirico

Evaristo de Chirico
Born(1841-12-03)3 December 1841
Palermo, Italy
Died5 May 1905(1905-05-05) (aged 63)
Athens, Greece
Spousebaroness Gemma Cervetto
ChildrenGiorgio de Chirico[1]Andrea de ChiricoUnnamed daughter (died in infancy)

Evaristo de ChiricoGreek: Ο Εβαρίστο ντε Κίρικο ή Ευάρεστος Κηρύκος, romanized: Evaristo de Chirico (3 December 1841–5 May 1905) was an Italian-Greek engineer known for his contributions to railway construction in Greece. He played a key role in developing the railway network of Thessaly in the late 19th century. He was the farther of the artist Giorgio de Chirico.[2]

Early life

Born into a family a Greek ancestry (the Kyriko or Chirico family was of Greek origin, having moved from Rhodes to Palermo in 1523 together with 4,000 other Greek Catholic families).[3][4][5] He was the son of Sicilianbarone[6][7]Giorgio Filigone di Chirico (1794–1875) and Countess Adelaide Mabilli y Bulini (1799–1876). His maternal grandfather, Don Lorenzo Eliondoro Mabilli y Bulini (1763–1853), was the Spanishconsul in Corfu and originally from Alicante.

Career

After graduating in engineering, De Chirico specialized in railway construction.[8] He gained recognition for his work with the company Evaristo de Chirico & Co., which built railway lines in Bulgaria. In the early 1880s, Charilaos Trikoupis, then Prime Minister of Greece, commissioned him to design the railway network of Thessaly, a recently annexed region lacking railway infrastructure. De Chirico relocated to Volos, which became the operational centre for the Thessaly Railways. He designed and supervised the construction of Volos railway station and other key infrastructure projects.[9] Construction began in 1882, employing Italian and local workers. The 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge Volos–Larissa line, spanning 61 kilometres (38 mi), was inaugurated on 22 April 1884, by King George I.[10] A second branch, extending from Velestino to Kalambaka 142-kilometre (88 mi), was completed by 16 June 1886.

Later projects and legacy

Following the completion of the main metric-gauge lines, De Chirico was tasked with constructing a 600 mm narrow-gauge railway in the mountainous Pelion region. The Pelion railway, which featured two tunnels and nine bridges, was built by his own company’s workers. One of these structures remains known as the De Chirico Bridge. Due to his professional responsibilities, De Chirico moved to Athens, where his second son, Andrea, was born in 1891. In 1899, he relocated his family permanently to Athens to oversee railway projects in Thessaloniki, where he had been appointed supervisor. He died in Athens in 1905 due to health complications.[11] Later, his son Giorgio de Chirico wrote he had been in poor health.[11]

Family

He was the son of Sicilianbarone[6][12]Giorgio Filigone di Chirico (1794–1875) and Countess Adelaide Mabilli y Bulini (1799–1876). His maternal grandfather, Don Lorenzo Eliondoro Mabilli y Bulini (1763–1853), was the Spanishconsul in Corfu and originally from Alicante.

He married Gemma Cervetto, Genoesebaroness[13] of Greek origins from Smyrna,[3] with whom he had three children: a daughter who did not survive and two sons—painter Giorgio de Chirico[14] and writer Andrea de Chirico.

  • Volos train station, 30 September 2017
    Volos train station, 30 September 2017
  • The Metric approaches leading off to Girtoni, 28 September 2009
    The Metric approaches leading off to Girtoni, 28 September 2009
  • Postcard of the station, ca. 1910
    Postcard of the station, ca. 1910

See also

References

  1. ^Aa.Vv. (2014). Giorgio De Chirico. L'uomo, l'artista, il polemico: Guida alle interviste 1938–1978 (in Italian). Roma: Gangemi. p. 49. ISBN 978-8849224320.
  2. ^"Giorgio de Chirico | Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico" (in Italian). Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  3. ^ abHassall, Douglas (2020). "The art of Giorgio de Chirico: The modernist who returned to craftsmanship". Quadrant. 64 (5): 100–103. The standard sources record that de Chirico was born in 1888 at Volos in Greece, his mother being a Genoese Greek of Smyrna origins and his father a Sicilian barone of Greek ancestry. The Greek Kyriko family had moved to Palermo from Rhodes in 1523, as part of a migration of some 4000 Greek Catholic families into Sicily and southern Italy.
  4. ^Nikolaos Velissiotis, "The Origins of Adelaide Mabili and Her Marriage to Giorgio De Chirico: Restoration of the Historical Truth"Archived 15 February 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Metaphysical Art, 2013|N° 11/13.
  5. ^"Figure 1: The map depicts in dotted lines the successive moves of de..."ResearchGate.
  6. ^ abCite error: The named reference dbi was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^Aa.Vv. (2014). Giorgio De Chirico. L'uomo, l'artista, il polemico: Guida alle interviste 1938–1978 (in Italian). Roma: Gangemi. p. 64. ISBN 978-8849224320.
  8. ^Falzone-Ρίζου, Μαρία (13 July 2014). "Το πορτρέτο της οικογένειας του Τζιόρτζιο Ντε Κίρικο στο Βόλο". Η Θεσσαλία - Διαδρομές (ένθετο). Βόλος: 31.
  9. ^Aa.Vv. (2014). Giorgio De Chirico. L'uomo, l'artista, il polemico: Guida alle interviste 1938–1978 (in Italian). Roma: Gangemi. p. 49. ISBN 978-8849224320.
  10. ^Cite error: The named reference e-thessalia.gr was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ abUbaldo Nicola, Klaus Podoll, L'aura di Giorgio De Chirico: arte emicranica e pittura metafisica, Mimesis, 2003, p. 47
  12. ^Aa.Vv. (2014). Giorgio De Chirico. L'uomo, l'artista, il polemico: Guida alle interviste 1938–1978 (in Italian). Roma: Gangemi. p. 64. ISBN 978-8849224320.
  13. ^Anissia Becerra. "De Chirico"(PDF). marsilioeditori.it (in Italian). Retrieved 7 January 2022.
  14. ^Aa.Vv. (2014). Giorgio De Chirico. L'uomo, l'artista, il polemico: Guida alle interviste 1938–1978 (in Italian). Roma: Gangemi. p. 49. ISBN 978-8849224320.
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