Neither a monograph nor a general survey of Roman sculpture in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, Jennifer Montagu’s new book consciously occupies a middle ground – a hybrid between two genres of art-historical writing. As the author explains in her introduction, the reasons for this approach are both practical and methodological. On the practical side, there is the absence of any contemporary or near-contemporary biography that might have guided the study and provided a framework for reconstructing the artist’s catalogue; and, equally, the existence of an imposing body of graphic evidence, often difficult to associate with a specific commission. On the methodological side, it would have been inappropriate to isolate the sculptor’s production from that of his contemporaries, in a context defined by collaborative building sites where several artists – under the more or less firm direction of an architect – contributed to a single visual organism.

It is within this framework that Montagu reconstructs the figure of Giovanni Battista Maini (1690–1752), a Lombard sculptor who arrived in Rome in 1709 and trained in the workshop of Camillo Rusconi, destined, according to contemporary sources, to become ‘the most acclaimed sculptor’ in the city. This perception was long lost, since many of his most important commissions were never completed, while others, though executed, are now located in places of difficult access for the modern visitor. His artistic profile emerges not only through the analysis of the surviving works, but also through an intensive study of documentary and graphic sources, which together make it possible to recover, at least in part, Maini’s role within the figurative culture of eighteenth-century Rome. His often-overlooked role in shaping the sculptural programme of the Trevi Fountain offers a telling example.

The volume is structured in twelve thematic chapters. The opening one, devoted to Maini’s training and early works, stands apart in focus, introducing the reader to the rest of the book, organised by sculptural typologies (for instance Standing Statues and Seated Statues) or by major commissions, without ever flattening the historical complexity of the reconstruction. The result is a coherent and illuminating progression that highlights Maini’s innovations in relation to his contemporaries and to the various sculptural genres, concluding with a detailed chronology that retraces the development of his career and the principal events of his biography.

The book also takes on the character of a genuine visual repertory – particularly in the chapter Wall Tombs and Memorials – thanks to its format and the exceptional quality of the illustrations, many of which are here published in colour for the first time. The integration of this visual material within the text allows the reader to follow the argument without distraction or loss of focus.

Montagu’s prose, as always, is distinguished by exceptional clarity and descriptive precision, and by an ability to enter imaginatively into the minds of the sculptors she discusses. She tackles complex questions such as Maini’s painstaking differentiation in the treatment of marble surfaces in relation to sources of light – most notably in the St Francis of Paola (1729–1732) in the cycle of the Founders in St Peter’s, and in the Monument to Benedict XIV in the convent of Sant’Agostino (1747–1750). Equally engaging is the section devoted to narrative reliefs, with particular attention to the works in the porticoes of the Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore, and to the Cappella del Voto in Siena. In these pages, Maini emerges as an artist of extraordinary inventiveness, deeply attuned to the laws of perception and to the viewer’s point of view, capable of abandoning naturalistic imitation in favour of effects of striking visual immediacy. All this unfolds in a lively dialogue with artists such as Bernardino Ludovisi, Pietro Bracci, and Filippo della Valle, through which the author effectively conveys the singularity and coherence of Maini’s artistic language.

One of the book’s particular strengths lies in its ability to make the workings of artistic commissions intelligible, through the analysis of contracts, payments and correspondence that illuminate the practical dynamics of an artist’s work. While the abundance of archival material can at times interrupt the rhythm of reading – the reader may occasionally wish for the inclusion of catalogue-style entries – it is precisely from this wealth of documentation that some of Montagu’s most rewarding insights emerge: an understanding of how workshops actually functioned, the complex relationships between artists, architects and patrons, and the recognition that historical reality is never univocal but made up of conflicting sources and of artists who, as the author wryly notes (p. 184), sometimes ‘lie’. From often fragmentary evidence Montagu constructs arguments that are both convincing and coherent, while openly acknowledging their conjectural nature. Elsewhere she re-examines neglected or contradictory sources, questioning long-established narratives – with salutary consequences for those who work on slightly earlier periods, where knowledge too often rests on a single piece of evidence that now seems anything but definitive.

Maini’s substantial surviving drawings – a corpus with few parallels among other sculptors beyond Bernini and, in a different vein, Pietro Bracci – shed light on the sculptor’s capacity to conceive plastic schemes in dialogue with the ideas of architects and, at times, painters. They reveal a wealth of inventive solutions devised both for himself and for some of his pupils and collaborators, notably his brother-in-law Domenico Scaramucci. This rare graphic legacy, unparalleled in the late Baroque, on the one hand underscores Maini’s individuality, and on the other invites reflection on how much of other sculptors’ design material may have been lost.

In the end, the volume restores to ‘the most acclaimed sculptor’ of his time the complexity of a long-underestimated figure, placing him in constant dialogue with the solutions devised by his contemporaries in early eighteenth-century Rome. It is yet another remarkable gift from Jennifer Montagu to the study of Baroque and late Baroque sculpture.

 

 

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