Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Camilliani and Montorsoli - 16th-century Fountain Sculptures

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(Water Goddess with Merman and Mermaid)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God with Merman and Mermaid)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God with Mermaid and Merman)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God with Merman and Mermaid)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God with Merman and Mermaid)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

CAMILLIANI (Francesco), sculpteur italien, né vers 1525 à Florence, mort en 1586.  Après avoir reçu do son père, Giovanni della Camilla, sa première éducation artistique, il prit pour maître Baccio Bandinelli, et ne tarda pas à devenir un des maîtres de la sculpture florentine.  Les contemporains s'émerveillèrent surtout des travaux qu'il exécuta pour les jardins fameux de don Luigi da Toledo, et des statues d'hommes et d'animaux dont il y entoura une fontaine, achetée plus tard par le Sénat de Palerme et placé, dans cette ville, sur la Piazza Pretoriana.

–  La Grande Encyclopédie: Inventaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts (Paris: Lamirault, 1885)

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana de Tritone
ca. 1543
marble
Villa del Principe, Genoa

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana di Orione
(The Tiber)
1553
marble
Piazza del Duomo, Messina

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana di Orione
(The Nile)
1553
marble
Piazza del Duomo, Messina

"While the Frate [Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli] was thus passing his time in Rome, the people of Messina, having determined to erect on the Piazza of their Duomo a fountain with a very great enrichment of statues, had sent men to Rome to seek out some excellent sculptor.  These men had secured Raffaello da Montelupo, but he fell ill at the very moment when he was about to depart with them for Messina, so that they made another choice and took the Frate [Montorsoli], who had sought with all insistence, and even with some interest, to obtain that work.  . . .  Having been provided with rooms, he set his hand to making the conduit for the waters, which come from a distance, and to having marble sent from Carrara; and with great promptitude, assisted by many stone-cutters and carvers, he finished that fountain.  . . .  And since it much pleased the people of Messina, they caused him to make another [below] on the shore, where the Customs-House is; which also proved to be beautiful and very rich.  . . .  In the centre of the great basin of the fountain is a pedestal high in proportion . . . and on the summit is a Neptune of five braccia, who holds the trident in his hand, and has his right leg planted beside a Dolphin.  At the sides, also, upon two other pedestals, are Scylla and Charybdis in the forms of two monsters, fashioned very well, with heads of Dogs and Furies about them."

– from Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects by Giorgio Vasari (1568), translated by Gaston du C. de Vere (1912)

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana del Nettuno
(Neptune between Scylla and Charybdis)
1557
marble
Piazza Unità d'Italia, Messina

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana del Nettuno
(Charybdis)
1557
marble
Piazza Unità d'Italia, Messina

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana del Nettuno
(Scylla)
1557
marble
Piazza Unità d'Italia, Messina