Agostino Cornacchini

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Agostino Cornacchini (born August 26, 1686 in Pescia , Grand Duchy of Tuscany , † 1754 in Rome ) was an Italian sculptor and painter of the Baroque and Rococo .

Life

Cornacchini, son of Ludovico and Lucia Niccolai, moved with his family from Pescia to Florence at the age of eleven . There he entered the studio of the sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini in 1697 , the first sculptor at the Medici Court, who was considered the most influential figure in Florentine baroque sculpture until his death in 1725 . In 1709 the English antiquarian and collector John Talman (1677–1726), who had just arrived in Florence, commissioned him to produce drawings of famous Italian sculptures. He also received support from the Florentine diplomat, painter and art collector Francesco Maria Niccolò Grabburri (1676–1742), then vice director of the Accademia delle arti del disegno , today's Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. He commissioned him with the production of stucco decorations in his house in Florence, today's Palazzo Guintini. Cornacchini also made such decorations in the years 1710 to 1712 for the chapel of San Giovanni Gualberto in the church of Santa Trinità .

Equestrian statue of Charlemagne in the vestibule to the entrance of St. Peter's Basilica , 1725

When Grabburri went to Rome in 1712, he took Cornacchini with him. He provided him not only with the essentials of life, but also with equipment that he needed for his art. Through the patronage of Grabburri's uncle, Cardinal Carlo Agostino Fabroni (1651–1727), he was able to live in his household from 1714 to 1716. During this time Cornacchini created a Natività and a Deposizione . These sculptures are now in the Biblioteca Fabroniana in Pistoia . At the beginning of the 1720s Cornacchini moved into their own studio with a brother and an aunt until 1727, in which Cornacchini made and kept his main work, the equestrian statue of Charlemagne . There was Giovanni Antonio Cybei his student. The equestrian statue of Charlemagne was finally placed on the southern face of the narthex of St. Peter's Basilica , as an iconographic counterpart to the equestrian statue of Constantine the Great by Gian Lorenzo Bernini set up at the foot of the Scala Regia . Cornacchini's important Speranza , a life-size allegorical figure of hope , which is now in the chapel of the Palazzo del Monte di Pietà in Rome , was also created in the residential studio .

On February 4, 1727, he married Maria Angelica Papi, a girl twenty years his junior, and moved with her to a more suitable house in Via della Lupa. When Clemens XII. ascended the papal throne, the demand for Florentine artists in Rome grew. He created a statue of Prudenza (prudence) for the Corsini Chapel in the Lateran Basilica in 1734/35 . In the years 1735 to 1737 he also made a statue of Clemens XII.

literature

Web links

Commons : Agostino Cornacchini  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Cannon-Brookes: The Paintings and Drawings of Agostino Cornacchini . In: Klaus Lankheit (Ed.): Art of the Baroque in Tuscany. Studies of art among the last Medici . F. Bruckmann, Munich 1976, pp. 118-125
personal data
SURNAME Cornacchini, Agostino
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian sculptor and painter of the Baroque and Rococo
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1686
PLACE OF BIRTH Pescia , Grand Duchy of Tuscany
DATE OF DEATH 1754
Place of death Rome