Augusto Passaglia (1837–1918)

Italian sculptor born on 1 May 1837 in Lucca, the son of Francesco Passaglia, a silversmith, and his wife, Maria Chicca. In 1852 he entered Lucca’s Istituto di Belle Arti, graduating in 1862 with a three-year scholarship which took him to Florence where he trained in the studio of Giovanni Dupré (1817–1882). At the conclusion of his scholarship, he opened his own studio in the via delle Ruote. According to Sylvestra Bietoletti (citing Ars Lucensis, 1924), to make ends meet he initially worked as a carver, translating into marble the plaster models of one of the many American sculptors (which one she does not state) then based in Florence. Not until the early 1870s did Passaglia manage to establish an independent practice, concentrating on portraiture and decorative carving, a major example of the latter being the work he carried out under Edoardo Gioia’s direction for the interiors of Gustave Oppenheim’s Florentine residence, the Villa Cora. The mid-1870s saw him win two important commissions, the first, the marble statue of Giovanni Boccaccio for the main square in Certaldo (1875–79) and the second, won in competition, the funerary monument to Archbishop Giulio Arrigoni, for the church of Ss. Giusto and Reparata in Lucca (1876–77). Official recognition came in 1882, with his appointment as professor of sculpture at Florence’s Accademia di Belle Arti, a post he held for the remainder of his working life. In the early 1880s he won the competition for the standing bronze statue of Vittorio Emanuele II for Lucca (erected 1885); this was followed by a seated bronze statue of the jurist, Francesco Carrara, for the courtyard of Lucca’s Palazzo Ducale (inaugurated 1891). The most important project in which Passaglia participated – one involving over 100 pieces of figurative sculpture by some 27 sculptors, with Passaglia taking the lion’s share of the work – was the sculptural decoration of the façade of the Florentine Duomo (Santa Maria del Fiore), the design of which, by architect Emilio de Fabris, was approved in 1876. To Passaglia is due the relief of God the Father in the tympanum; the reliefs in the cusps above the main portal (Madonna Foederis Arca) and the left portal (Ecce Homo); one of the 12 Apostles (St Matthew) standing in niches either side of the enthroned Madonna and Child (by Tito Sarrocchi); and a number of the busts and half-figures of prophets, saints and celebrated Florentine men whose images are deployed about the façade (completed 1887). In addition, Passaglia created two of the façade’s three sets of bronze doors, that in the north portal (completed 1893) and that in the central portal (completed in 1903 with assistance from Passaglia’s son, Giulio [1879–1956]). Passaglia also carried out a number of funerary monuments, a notable example being that to the Tognini Lenci Mazzei family in the cimitero monumentale at Lucca (1903). His one publicly-sited sculpture in Britain is his decorative marble figure, Masaniello (undated), which Alfred Holt presented to Birkenhead in 1930 and which the Council installed in the entrance hall of the Central Library prior to its opening in July 1934. Passaglia died in Florence 4 September 1918.

Bibliography: S. Bietoletti, ‘Passaglia, Augusto’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 81 (2015), via Treccani; A. de Gubernatis, Dizionario degli artisti italiani viventi, pittori, scultori e architetti, Florence, 1889, pp. 357–59; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. 15–16; A. Panzetta, Dizionario degli Scultori Italiani dell’Ottocento e del primo Novecento, Turin, 1990, pp. 208–209; Wikipedia: ‘Decorazione della facciata di Santa Maria del Fiore’.

Terry Cavanagh, April 2026