He completed Gaddo movente (his first work), awarded a gold medal by the Società Promotrice delle Belle Arti.

He completed both a full size statue for his palace and a funereal monument for Count Alfredo Serristori for the cemetery of Figline.

[2] His initial contact with Milwaukee was made as a student when William E. Cramer, the editor of the Evening Wisconsin, visited Giovanni Dupre's studio, where Trentanove was studying.

For the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, Trentanove sculpted the Otriade or Last of the Spartans, a large white Carrara marble statue.

Trentanove subsequently acquired American citizenship and although he spent a portion of every year in Florence, where the foundry that cast his models in bronze was located,[4] he passed most of the remainder of his life in Milwaukee.