In the long history of public sculpture in these islands, one of the greatest might-have-beens must surely be the monumental gilt-bronze statue of Queen Anne that was commissioned from the Florentine sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652–1725) for a prominent site in London in 1714, the year of the monarch’s death.  The project was subsequently abandoned, a victim of anti-Jacobite sentiment in the wake of the 1715 rising but, as Kira d’Alburquerque informs us in this book, based on her doctoral dissertation for the École pratique des hautes études in Paris, the inventory made after Foggini’s death in 1725 included various cast bronze sections that the sculptor had completed, notably the head, bust section and arms.  The intermediary between the committee in London and the sculptor was the antiquary and collector John Talman (1677–1726), one of many British names to crop up in this important and engrossing study of the business of sculpture in late Medici Florence, from the accession in 1670 of Grand Duke Cosimo III de’ Medici (1642–1723) to the death in 1743 of the last of the Medici dynasty, his daughter Anna Maria Luisa.

The last decades of the long rule of the Medici were long neglected, even disparaged, in part because it suited the new rulers of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the house of Habsburg-Lorraine, to cast a shadow over their immediate Medici predecessors.   From the 1950s however a series of scholars, among them Klaus Lankheit, Jennifer Montagu and Sandro Bellesi, spearheaded a revival of interest in the extraordinary flowering of the arts initiated by Grand Duke Cosimo III, of which works by sculptors such as Foggini, Giuseppe Piamontini (1663–1744) and Massimiliano Soldani Benzi (1656–1740) are now acknowledged as among the highest expressions.  Kira d’Alburquerque’s book is an outstanding contribution to the scholarship on this remarkable school of late Baroque sculpture.  Not a monograph, nor a straightforward artistic history, it is rather a detailed examination of the circumstances within which sculptors operated in Florence, and the ways in which they lived and ran their lives and their businesses.

After a brief introduction, which sets the scene and summarises the state of scholarship, the book is divided into four main chapters which collectively show how Cosimo III succeeded in using a revitalised visual arts tradition to boost the reputation and cultural power of his small state, which was militarily and politically weak.   The first chapter deals with the training of sculptors in Florence, relating the brief history of the Florentine Academy that Cosimo III established in Rome in 1673 and, following its closure in 1686, his reforms to the venerable Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, creating what in effect became the Florentine Academy.  Following the death in 1687 of Ferdinando Tacca, Cosimo also appointed as his new First Sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini, a protean figure whose presence is felt on almost every page of this book, as a gifted sculptor and architect, but also as a brilliant designer and highly effective teacher and manager of others, especially the numerous artists and artisans working in the Galleria dei Lavori.  Operating from the Uffizi, the many products of this remarkable luxury goods enterprise included richly decorated and inventive objects in hardstone and precious metal, furniture and even tapestries.

In the second chapter the author analyses the sculptors’ workshops.  In complete contrast to Rome, only a bare handful of sculptors in Florence had their own independent workshops, most instead occupying spaces in Granducal properties – the extensive Sapienza complex, the Old Mint (where Soldani was based), the Galleria dei Lavori workshops in the Uffizi, and of course the famous house on Borgo Pinti, once occupied by Giovanni Bologna (Giambologna, 1529–1608).  Still filled with the great sculptor’s models, the Borgo Pinti house, with its extensive workshops and living quarters, was allocated at any given time to the Grand Duke’s then First Sculptor.    Despite the apparently tight state control over their accommodation, sculptors seem to have enjoyed considerable professional autonomy, and so were generally permitted to work for external patrons, and even foreigners, helping to explain why so many Grand Tourists were able to take small bronze sculptures home with them.

In helping us to understand what these studios might have looked like, Kira d’Alburquerque makes extensive use of no fewer than three newly-discovered and hitherto unpublished post mortem  inventories: for Domenico Cappelli (fl. 1662–1688) based at the Sapienza, for Foggini (1725) at Borgo Pinti and for Giovacchino Fortini (1670–1736), one of the rare sculptors to have been based in an independent workshop.  Two unusual features appear to have been common in Florentine workshops, the presence of a separate room for study and drawing, and the provision – quite different from Roman practice – of an on-site foundry, even if only a small one that would allow the casting on site of medals and small bronzes.

Chapter three examines the social status of sculptors in Florence.  Of the many sculptors recorded during this period, the vast majority would have led modest lives, including those toiling in the Galleria dei Lavori, who were mostly paid at a daily or weekly rate.  But a few were highly successful, among them Soldani, from an old aristocratic family, Foggini who at the end of his life was building for himself a country villa, and Fortini, who assembled a rich collection.  Foggini too had a fine collection and an enormous library with some 800 books (against the approximately 200 owned by Soldani and Fortini’s just 40 or so).   A voracious and passionate reader, even when working he generally asked one of his children or pupils to read to him.

The final chapter, on sculptors as inventors and masters of their workshops, again prominently features Giovanni Battista Foggini, not only a prolific and brilliant designer for the Galleria dei Lavori but also an outstanding manager of people.  Interestingly, whilst hundreds of drawings by him survive for products of the Galleria dei Lavori, there are almost none for sculptures made in his own workshop.   The author also discusses in this chapter the often-neglected sculptural form of stucco, and – again quite different from other centres – the limited role architects played in larger-scale sculptural commissions in Florence.

Kira d’Alburquerque has told a fascinating story, showing how judicious combinations of state support and private enterprise can, within a short period, produce an extraordinary flowering of artistic brilliance, even within a smallish city and community, albeit one boasting an incomparable cultural heritage.  A short review can hardly do justice to the huge amount of information that she has skilfully woven together here, much of it newly discovered.  It is unfortunate that almost all the new documentary material, for example extracts from the three sculptors’ inventories, is presented only in French translation and without the original Italian texts even in notes or an appendix.  But this should not detract from the importance of this volume, which will henceforth be required reading for scholars working on this chapter in the history of Florentine sculpture, as well as for anyone with a broader interest in the business of sculpture.

 

Back to reviews