Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Foggini (25 April 1652 – 12 April 1725) was an Italian sculptor active in Florence, renowned mainly for small bronze statuary.[1]
Biography
Born in Florence, the young Foggini was sent to Rome by the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany to join the so-called Accademia Fiorentina, and apprentice in the Roman sculptural studio of Ercole Ferrata, a pupil of Algardi. He was also tutored in drawing by the Accademia's first director (1673–86), Ciro Ferri, who was a pupil of Cortona. Returning to Florence in 1676, he became the court sculptor for Cosimo III.[2]
After the son of Pietro Tacca, Fernando, died in 1686, the mantle of the premier local sculptor fell to Foggini, who would become the Medici's Architetto Primario e Primo scultore della Casa Serenissima as well as Soprintendente dei Lavori (1687–1725).[3] In 1687, Foggini acquired the foundry in Borgo Pinti that had once belonged to the sculptor Giambologna. This allowed him to specialize in small bronzes,[4] produced mainly and profitably for export. His adaptation of Pietro Tacca's Moors was the basis of bronze and ceramic reproductions for the connoisseur market well into the 18th century.[5]
^See Anthea Brook's article in The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, ed. Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing, London (The Warburg Institute) and Turin 2012.
^An example is in the Cleveland Museum of Art (Frederick Den Broeder and John D. Cooney, "Giovanni Battista Foggini: David with the Head of Goliath", The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art54.1 [January 1967:22-26]).
External links
Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). Pelican History of Art (ed.). Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750. 1980. Penguin Books.
Bruce Boucher (1998). Thames & Hudson, World of Art (ed.). Italian Baroque Sculpture. pp. 164–66, 188–89.
Gli Ultimi Medici, Review by Peter Cannon-Brookes, in The Burlington Magazine, 1974, p 777-80.