Bartolomeo Cavaceppi

Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (c. 1716 — 1799) was an Italian sculptor who worked in Rome, where he trained in the studio of the acclimatized Frenchman, Pierre-Étienne Monnot, and then in the workshop of Carlo Antonio Napolioni, [His name was variously given in contemporary notices. Francesco Giuseppe Napoleoni, who provided sculptures for Bernini's colonnade at St. Peter's may have been kin, according to Seymour Howard, "Some Eighteenth-Century 'Restored' Boxers" "Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes" 56 (1993, pp. 238-255) p 240 note 5.] a restorer of sculptures for Alessandro Cardinal Albani, who was to become a major patron of Cavaceppi. The two sculptors shared a studio. Much of his work was in restoring antique Roman sculptures, making casts, copies, and fakes of antiques, fields in which he was pre-eminent and which brought him into contact with all the "virtuosi": he was a close friend of and informant for Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Winckelmann's influence and Cardinal Albani's own evolving taste may have contributed to Cavaceppi's increased self-consciousness of the appropriateness of restorations — a field in which earlier sculptors had improvised broadly — evinced in his introductory essay to his "Raccolta d'antiche statue, busti, teste cognite ed altre sculture antiche" ["Collection of antique statues, busts, identified heads and other antique sculptures".] (1768). The baroque taste in ornate restorations of antiquities had favoured finely pumiced polished surfaces, coloured marbles and mixed media, and highly speculative restorations of sometimes incongruous fragments. [Jennifer Montagu, "Roman Baroque Sculpture: the Industry of Art" (New Haven: Yale University Press) 1989.] Only in the nineteenth century, would collectors begin for the first time to appreciate fragments of sculpture: a headless torso was not easily sold in eighteenth-century Rome.

In the competition for a permanent marble of "Saint Norbert" for the last available niche in St. Peter's Basilica, Cavaceppi, the candidate favoured by Cardinal Albani, lost out in the end to the more conservative declamatory Baroque manner of Pietro Bracci, who received the commission. [The details of the story, which "admirably documents the workings of power politics and intrigue in matters of taste, traditional factors in the competition for lucrative commissions in the art capital of Western Christendom" has been detailed by Seymour Howard, "Bartolomeo Cavaceppi's Saint Norbert" "The Art Bulletin" 70.3 (September 1988), pp. 478-485.]

Cavaceppi, "now certainly one of the most underrated artist-personalities in that era" according to Seymour Howard was the Pope's chief restorer, and a measure of his other clientele may be drawn from the plates that illustrated the works of art that had been restored in his extensive studio in the "Raccolta", which appeared in three folio volumes, 1768-72. Haskell and Penny note [Haskell and Penny 1981:68.] that of sixty plates in the first volume, thirty-four reproduced works already belonging to Englishmen, while a further seventeen showed works in German collections. The remainder were divided among Alessandro Cardinal Albani, Alessandro Cardinal Furietti (1684-1764) and Conte Giuseppe Fede, [Conte Fede owned part of the site of Hadrian's Villa where he carried out excavations in his property.] with one more in the Capitoline Museum and another belonging to the Jacques-Laure le Tonnelier de Breteuil, the Bailli de Breteuil. [ [http://www.um.edu.mt/pub/cdep2.html C. Depasquale, "The Bailli de Breteuil, the Château de Breteuil and its literary connections" 2001.] ] The following year's volume showed sixty plates of sculptures that were all on the market. Cavaceppi made a considerable fortune from his endeavors.

Cavaceppi's studio, staffed with a host of assistants, was a stop for all the young connoisseurs making the Grand Tour. Goethe described his visit in "Italienische Reise" XXXII. Cavaceppi was entrusted with making casts of antiquities. Joseph Nollekens purchased from Cavaceppi the casts of the "Furietti Centaurs" that may still be seen at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire; Cavaceppi also produced full-size copies in marble.

For his contributions in the formation of the Museo Clementino, based in large part on Albani's collection, Cavaceppi was made a Knight of the Golden Spur in 1770 [Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was made a cavalier of the Golden Spur the same year. (Howard 1988:479).] and was henceforth "Cavaliere" Cavaceppi. His sculptures were presented for sale in the "Museo Cavaceppi" between the Piazza di Spagna and the Piazza del Popolo, the part of Rome most frequented by foreigners.

In the 1770s he carved a reduced version of Trajan's Column, which was purchased by the English virtuoso Henry Blundell to complement his antiqities at Ince Blundell; Blundell also acquired Cavaceppi's working model, a wooden column painted in grisaille. [Haskell and Penny 1981:47]

At the time of his death, the collection of fragments and casts in the "Museo" was vast. Prince Giovanni Torlonia purchased over a thousand items from Cavaceppi's legacy. [Howard 1993:243 note 5.] In some senses, Vincenzo Pacetti, who had collaborated with Cavaceppi on restorations and who supervised restorations and display of the Borghese collection at Villa Borghese was Cavaceppi's successor.

An exhibition "Bartolomeo Cavaceppi", curated by C.A. Picon in London, 1983, helped to bring him out of obscurity.

ome other sculptors in Rome renowned for their restorations

*Orfeo Boselli
*Ippolito Buzzi
*Ercole Ferrata
*Francesco Nocchieri
*Francesco Fontana
*Giovanni Battista Piranesi
*Vincenzo Pacetti

Notes

References

*Haskell, Francis and Nicholas Penny, "Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900" (Yale University Press) 1981.
*Howard, Seymour, "Bartolomeo Cavaceppi's Saint Norbert" "The Art Bulletin" 70.3 (September 1988), pp. 478-485. Howard appends a list of original sculptures by Cavaceppi.