Antonio Gobbo

Portrait by Antonio Gobbo around 1895

Antonio Gobbo (born January 10, 1857 in Venice , † April 14, 1907 in Cologne-Ehrenfeld ) was an Italian mosaicist .

Life

Antonio Gobbo was born as the son of the teacher Pietro Gobbo and Adelaide. Fiora born in Venice. Little is known about his training. At the age of 15 he worked as an apprentice in the Antonio Salviati studio in Venice and was involved in the restoration of the 7th and 12th / 13th centuries. Involved in mosaic work in the cathedral of Torcello dating from the 17th century . This work was under the direction of the engineer Giovanni Battista Meduna. It is known that Gobbo, as a painter and mosaicist, ran a mosaic workshop in Venice. Encouraged by the discovery of Byzantine mosaics in the Cathedral of St. Sophia (Kiev) , Tsar Nicholas I (Russia) founded a mosaic school in Saint Petersburg , which was followed by other mosaic schools and artist colonies in Rome , Vienna , Darmstadt and Venice. In Venice, Gobbo held a professorship for "mosaic". The first known commission he carried out outside of Italy was to design the ceiling above the choir of St Paul's Cathedral in London . The mosaic work was under the direction of William Richmond and was completed in 1890.

It is also known that he and his journeyman Victor Bonato completed the floor mosaic of the Gnadenkapelle in Kevelaer in 1895 . At that time he lived with his wife, nine of later twelve children and seven other mosaic workers on Gelderner Strasse in Kevelaer.

In 1902 Gobbo supplied mosaics for the parish church of the Holy Trinity, Weissenthurm on the Rhine, which was expanded from 1900 to 1902 . This was a larger than life mosaic of St. Michael at the newly built church tower, and the new communion bench was also decorated with four mosaics depicting Saints Thomas Aquinas, Clare, Juliana and Norbert. These four mosaics found their place in the substructure of the high altar after the church was redesigned in 1970. According to the documents in the Weißenthurm parish archive (construction diary and correspondence), Gobbo himself was present when the mosaics were laid.

Shortly before the turn of the 20th century, Gobbo was commissioned to design St. Aposteln in Cologne with his mosaics. This mainly concerned the decoration of the dome and the two cross arms . Friedrich Stummel drew the drafts , while Gobbo carried out the execution. However, he was responsible for the designs for the flooring , which, made in marble and mosaic, adorned the choir and the crossing . It was believed that the decoration of the choir and the dome with gold mosaics would have had such brilliant decoration that no other church in Germany, apart from the Carolingian cathedral in Aachen, had. In order to carry out this task, Gobbo moved with his family and his mosaicists to Försterstrasse in Cologne-Ehrenfeld.

Before 1904 he was commissioned to design the burial chapel for Pope Pius IX. which is located in the crypt of the pilgrimage church of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura in Rome. The tomb, which was initially quite unadorned, was not decorated until 1904, which was financed by donations from Catholics from many countries.

Antonio Gobbo's tomb in the Ehrenfeld cemetery

In the middle of completing the mosaics in the north and south conche of the St. Aposteln Church in Cologne , Antonio Gobbo died on April 14, 1907. The mosaic work on the front of his tombstone shows the bust of the risen Christ with an aureole . The right hand is raised to heaven, with the left he is holding an open book with the following text: EGO / SUM / RESUR (R) ECT / IO ET VITA / QUI CREDIT / IN ME VIVET ( analogous translation: “I am the resurrection and life, whoever believes in me will live, even if he has already died ”) . Both Antonio Gobbo's family and employees almost completely moved back to Venice after his death.

Fonts

• The technique of old mosaics , Schmitz-Verlag, Cologne 1903

literature

• Johannes Maubach, Marianne Vogt-Werling, Michael Werling : The Ehrenfeld cemetery. Monuments and personalities. Cologne 2011

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Rhineland Department, Registry Office, Cologne-Ehrenfeld, death certificate 247/1907 of April 15, 1907
2. ↑ Friedrich Stummel: About old and new mosaic technology , in: Zeitschrift für Christliche Kunst, No. 7, Düsseldorf 1895, p. 210 ff.
3. ↑ Oral communication from the great-grandson of Antonio Gobbo, Hans Bodewig , Cologne-Ehrenfeld
4. ↑ Oral communication from the great-grandson of Antonio Gobbo, Hans Bodewig , Cologne-Ehrenfeld
5. ^ " Musical art is still alive in Cologne ", in: Kölner Rundschau from September 15, 1950
6. ↑ Master signature "ANTONIO GOBBO MOSAICISTA VENECIA 1895"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 6, 2012, 11.10 p.m.  
7. ↑ Emma Gobbo, b. Bonato (born November 28, 1867 in Venice, † December 17, 1929)
8. ↑ Born in Venice: Adele (1892), Lisetta (1894), Petro (1895), Leni (1896), Maria (1898); born in Kevelaer: Klara (1899), Luise (1900), Mathilde (1901), Klara II. (1903); born in Ehrenfeld: Agnes (1904), Emilie (1905) and Hans (1907)
9. ↑ The following men are recorded: Luigi Centasso, Franzesko Lena, Angelo di Giovanni Masin, Francesco Morolin, Eugenio da Prat (and the 10-year-old Alexander da Prat), Alexandro Zerbon and Giuseppe Sitarello (from Vicenza), cf. Mosaic layer in Kevelaer, Italian tradition continues to this day , in: Kevelaerer Blatt, August 30, 2002
10. ↑ Gottfried Stracke: Cologne: St. Aposteln . Stadtspuren-Denkmäler in Cologne, Vol. 19, Cologne 1992, p. 244
11. ↑ Gottfried Stracke: Cologne: St. Aposteln in: Stadtspuren-Denkmäler in Köln, Vol. 19, Cologne 1992, p. 203
12. ↑ Stephan Beissel: Prof. Ludwig Seitz and his plans for the painting of the papal chapel in Loreto, in: Zeitschrift für Christliche Kunst, Vol. V, Heft 3, Düsseldorf 1892, p. 65 ff. Or Stummel 1895, p. 210
13. ↑ Old Ehrenfeld Cemetery, Hallway E20, No. 30–31