Antonio Raggi (also called also called Antonio Lombardo; 1624-1686) was an Italian sculptor of the Roman Baroque.
Biography
He was born in Vico Morcote near Como. His
mentor in Rome for nearly three decades was Gianlorenzo Bernini. He was initially
joined the studio of Alessandro Algardi, but none of his work there is independently
recognized and by 1647, like Ercole Ferrata, Raggi was working for Bernini, for whom he
was to become his closest and most prolific pupil.[1] "In
most cases Bernini supplied Raggi with detailed modelli and supervised his work closely enough so that Raggi's statues
express Bernini's conceit[2] almost as well as a statue
from Bernini's own hand."[3]
He completed the stucco decoration of San Tomaso di Villanova in Castel
Gandolfo (1660-1), the stucco decoration of Bernini's Sant'Andrea
1662-1665), the statues of Saint Bernardino and Pope Alexander VII
Chigi for Duomo di Siena and the Virgin and Child in Saint Joseph des Carmes in Paris (1650-51). He made the Baptism of Christ for the altar of
San Giovanni dei Fiorentini (c. 1665). Recently-discovered documentation
shows that he provided the kneeling figure of Saint Bernardino of Siena (1656-57) in Alexander VII's chapel at Santa Maria della Pace, and
the two pairs of putti holding portrait medallions on the façade. [4]
His masterpiece is the marble relief of the Death of Saint Cecilia[5], in the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone, Piazza Navona.
Here it can be contrasted with the relief by Algardi's pupil Ercole Ferrata, of the Stoning of Santa Emerenziana.
Raggi was instrumental in completing illusionistic stucco decoration accompanying
Giovanni Battista Gaulli's ceiling fresco as other stucco figures in the
Church of the Gesù. He was helped by Leonardo Retti,
Michele Maglia, and Paolo Naldini. His stucco Saint Andrew
(early 1660s) in Sant' Andrea della Valle, follows Bernini's design depicting
the emaciated apostle rising to Heaven on a wisp of cloud amid a swirl of drapery.
He completed one of the ten angels carrying instruments of the Passion on the
Ponte Sant'Angelo (illustration), based on a sketch provided by
Bernini,[6]
and the statue of the Danube (carved in 1650-51) in Bernini's Fountain of Four
Rivers in Piazza Navona. He was elected to the Accademia di San Luca on July 1, 1657. Raggi died in Rome.
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Wittkower, R. p. 310
- ^ "Conceit" in the sense of concetto, "conception".
- ^ Mark S. Weil, "The Angels of the Ponte Sant' Angelo: A Comparison of
Bernini's Sculpture to the Work of Two Collaborators" The Art Journal 30.3 (Spring 1971, pp. 252-259) p 256.
- ^ Jennifer Montagu, "Antonio Raggi in S. Maria della Pace" The Burlington
Magazine 136 No. 1101 (December 1994), pp. 836-839.
- ^ Relief started by Giuseppe Peroni
(1626-63).
- ^ The workshop sketch is conserved in the Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe,
Rome. (Weil 1971:257 fig. 11).
References
- Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). in Pelican History of Art: Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750,
1980, Penguin Books Ltd.
- H. Westin, Robert (1974). "Antonio Raggi's Death of St. Cecilia". The Art Bulletin:
pp. 422-429.
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