Luigi Bienaimé

Luigi Bienaimé (born March 4, 1795 in Carrara , † April 17, 1878 in Florence ) was an Italian sculptor .

The Shepherdess (1852)

Life

Bienaimé received his first artistic training at the Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown. At the age of 22 he was awarded a scholarship that enabled him to stay in Rome for a longer period of time .

There he settled as an artist and earned his living as an assistant in the studio of the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen . Bienaimé later became his workshop manager and worked with Thorvaldsen on some sculptures. When Thorvaldsen died unexpectedly on the occasion of a visit to Copenhagen on March 24, 1844, Bienaimé handled the business of his employer and opened a larger studio himself.

Between 1855 and 1860 Bienaimé settled in Florence as a freelance sculptor and mostly created ideal, lyrical or religious figures, which he executed in a poetic manner with delicacy and technical skill. As Thorvaldsen's successor, however, he did not quite come close to this model.

Luigi Bienaimé died on April 17, 1878 in Florence at the age of 83.

Works

• Diana, surprised in the bathroom
• Venus with the apple
• Venus in the bathroom
• The innocence with the dove
• A little Christ whom an angel warns of a snake
• Lying bacchante and a cupid examining the tip of an arrow

The Hermitage in St. Petersburg houses:

• The Shepherdess (1852)

literature

• Francesca Antonacci and Giovanna Caterina de Feo (eds.): Camuccini, Finelli, Bienaimé. Protagonisti del classicissmo a Roma nell'Ottocento. Rome: Antonacci, 2003. (exhibition catalog, without ISBN)