Tomb of Leo XI (detail), 1640-44
Alessandro Algardi (July 31,1598 – June 10, 1654) was an Italian high-Baroque sculptor active almost exclusively in Rome, where for the latter decades of his life, he was the major
rival of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Early years
Algardi was born in Bologna, where at a young age, he was apprenticed in the studio of
Agostino Carracci. However, his aptitude for sculpture led him to work for Giulio Cesare Conventi
(1577—1640), an artist of modest talents. By the age of twenty, the
Ferdinando I, Duke of Mantua, began commissioning works from him, and he was also
employed by local jewelers for figurative designs. After a short residence in Venice, he went to
Rome in 1625 with an introduction from the Duke of Mantua to the
late pope's nephew, Ludovico Cardinal
Ludovisi, who employed him for a time in the restoration of ancient statues[1].
Tomb of Pope Leo XI
Propelled by the Borghese and Barberini patronage, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his
studio garnered most of the major Roman sculptural commissions. For nearly a decade, Algardi struggled for recognition. In Rome
he was aided by friends that included Pietro da Cortona and his fellow Bolognese,
Domenichino. His early Roman commissions included terracotta and some marble portrait
busts,[2] while he supported himself with small works like
crucifixes.
Algardi's first major commission came about in 1634, when Cardinal Ubaldini (Medici) contracted
for a funeral monument for his great-uncle, Pope Leo XI, the third of the Medici popes, who had reigned for less than a month in 1605. The monument was
started in 1640, and mostly completed by 1644. The arrangement
mirrors the one designed by Bernini for the Tomb of Urban VIII (1627-8), with a central
hieratic sculpture of the pope seated in full regalia and offering a hand of blessing, while at his feet, two allegrical female
figures flank his sarcophagus. However, in Bernini's tomb, the vigorous upraised arm and posture of the pope is counterbalanced
by an active drama below, wherein the figures of Charity and Justice are either distracted by putti or lost
in contemplation, while skeletal Death actively writes the epitaph.
Algardi's tomb is much less dynamic. The allegorical figures of Magnanimity and Liberality have an impassive,
ethereal dignity. Some have identified the helmeted figure of Magnanimity with that of Athena and iconic images of Wisdom [3]. Liberality resembles Duquesnoy's famous Santa
Susanna, but more elegant. The tomb is somberly monotone and lacks the polychromatic excitement that detracts from the
elegiac mood of Urban VIII's tomb[4].
In 1635-38, Pietro Boncompagni commissioned from Algardi a colossal statue of
Philip Neri with kneeling angels for Santa Maria
in Vallicella, completed in 1640.[5] Immediately after this, Algardi produced an interactive sculptural group representing the beheading
of Saint Paul with two figures: a kneeling, resigned saint and the executioner poised
to strike the sword-blow, for San Paolo di Bologna. These works established his reputation. Like
Bernini, they often conform with the Baroque aesthetic of depicting dramatic attitudes and emotional expressions, yet Algardi's
sculpture has a restraining sobriety in contrast to those of his rival.
Papal favour under Innocent X
Pope Innocent X, Capitoline Museums
With the accession of the Bolognese Pamphilj Pope Innocent
X in 1644, both Barberini and his favorite artist, Bernini, fell into disrepute. Algardi, on the other hand, was embraced
by the Pope[6] and the pope's nephew, Camillo Pamphilj[7]. Algardi's portraits
were highly prized, and their formal severity contrasts with Bernini's more vivacious images[8]. A large hieratic bronze of Innocent X by Algardi is now found in the
Capitoline museum.
Algardi was not renown for architecture. He did help design the facade of
Villa Doria Pamphili outside the San Pancrazio gate, a project in which he depended
on the professional aid of the architect/engineer Girolamo Rainaldi, while Algardi and
his studio executed the sculpture-encrusted fountains and other garden features, where much of his free-standing sculpture and
bas-reliefs also remain. In 1650 Algardi met Diego
Velasquez, who obtained commissions for Spain. There are four chimney-pieces by Algardi in
the palace of Aranjuez, where the figures on the fountain of Neptune were also by him. The Augustine monastery at Salamanca contains the tomb of the count and countess de Monterey, another work by Algardi.
The Fuga d'Attila relief
Fuga d'Atilla, St. Peter's Basilica
Algardi's large dramatic marble high-relief panel of Pope Leo and Attila [9](1646–53) for St Peter's Basilica was widely admired in
his day, and reinvigorated the use of such marble reliefs. There had been large marble reliefs used previously in Roman churches
[10], but for most patrons, sculpted marble altarpieces
were far to costly. In this relief, the two principal figures, the stern and courageous pope and the dismayed and frightened
Attila, surge and protrude from the center into three dimensions. Only they two see the
descending angelic warriors rallying to the pope's defense, while all others persist in the background reliefs, performing
respective earthly duties.
The subject was apt for a papal state seeking clout, since it depicts the historical legend when the greatest of Leonine
popes, with supernatural aide, deterred Huns from looting Rome. From a baroque standpoint it is
a moment of divine intervention in the affairs of man. No doubt part of his patron's message would be that all viewers would be
sternly reminded of the papal capacity to invoke divine retribution against enemies.
Hellenistic Lysippean torso, restored by
Algardi as
Hercules and the Hydra (Capitoline Museums)
Algardi died in Rome within a year of completing his famous relief, which was admired by contemporaries. In his later years
Algardi controlled a large studio and amassed a great fortune. Algardi's classicizing manner was carried on by pupils (including
Ercole Ferrata and Domenico Guidi).
Antonio Raggi initially trained with him. The latter two completed his design for an
altarpiece titled the Vision of Saint Nicholas (San Nicola
de Tolentino, Rome) using two separate marble pieces linked together in one event and place, yet successfully separating
the divine and earthly spheres. Other lesser known assistants from his studio include Francesco
Barrata, Girolamo Lucenti, and Giuseppe
Perroni.
Critical assessment and legacy
Algardi was also known for his portraiture which shows an obsessive attention to details of psychologically revealing
physiognomy in a sober but immediate naturalism, and minute attention to costume and draperies, such as in the busts of Laudivio
Zacchia, Camillo Pamphilj, and of Muzio Frangipane and his two sons Lello and Roberto[11].
In temperament, his style was more akin to the classicized and restrained Baroque of
Duquesnoy than to the emotive works of other Baroque artists. From an artistic point
of view, he was most successful in portrait-statues and groups of children, where he was obliged to follow nature most closely.
His terracotta models, some of them finished works of art, were prized by collectors,[12].
Sources
- Jennifer Montagu (1985). in Yale University Press: Alessandro
Algardi. ISBN 0-300-03173-4.
- Bruce Boucher (1998). in Thames & Hudson, World of Art: Italian
Baroque Sculpture.
- Alessandro Algardi in the
"History of Art"
- Artnet Resource Library:
Alessandro Algardi
- Encyclopaedia
Britannica 1911: Alessandro Algardi
- Web Gallery of Art: Algardi,
sculptures
- Roderick Conway-Morris,
"Casting light on a Baroque sculptor", International Herald Tribune, March 20, 1999: Review of exhibition "Algardi:
The Other Face of the Baroque,", 1999
- A landscape pen-and-ink
drawing by Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, c 1650, to which Algardi has added figures of the Holy Family (Getty Museum)
- Images of
nearly all works
- Roberto Piperno, "Three busts by
Alessandro Algardi" Busts of members of the Frangipane family in S. Marcello al Corso
Notes
- ^ These restored statues still form the core of the Bonacorsi-Ludovisi
collection in Palazzo Altemps. Sculpture restoration was a common employment
for even the most prominent sculptors of his day, including Bernini and Ercole
Ferrata.
- ^ His marble bust of Laudivio Zacchia, 1627, is in the Staatliche Museen,
Berlin (illustrated)
- ^ Harriet F. Senie, "The Tomb of Leo XI by Alessandro Algardi", The Art
Bulletin (1978); p 90-95.
- ^ Boucher p 121-2
- ^ Bruce Boucher, Earth and Fire: Italian Terracotta Sculpture from
Donatello to Canova (Yale University Press) 2001:47.
- ^ Algardi's official 1645 portrait statue of Innocent X is preserved in the
Palazzo dei Conservatori in the Campidoglio.
- ^ His portrait bust of Camillo Pamphili, 1647, is at The Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg illustration.
- ^ Compare the prior images with Bernini's Urban VIII[1]
- ^ Pope Leo and Atilla relief
- ^ For example, Gian Lorenzo's father, Pietro
Bernini's crowded Assumption of the Virgin for Santa Maria
Maggiore(1606)
- ^ of Algardi's children
- ^ An outstanding series of terracotta models is at the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
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