Alessandro Algardi

(31 July 1598 10 June 1654)

 Alessandro Algardi was an Italian high-Baroque sculptor

active almost exclusively in Rome, where for the latter
decades of his life, he was the major rival of
Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Algardi was born in Bologna,
where at a young age, he was apprenticed in the studio
of Agostino Carracci. However, his aptitude for sculpture
led him to work for Giulio Cesare Conventi (15771640),
an artist of modest talents. By the age of twenty,
Ferdinando I, Duke of Mantua , began commissioning
works from him, and he was also employed by local
jewelers for figurative designs. After a short residence in
Venice, he went to Rome in 1625 with an introduction
from the Duke of Mantua to the late pope's nephew,
Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, who employed him for a time
in the restoration of ancient statues.

Propelled by the Borghese and Barberini patronage, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his
studio garnered most of the major Roman sculptural commissions. For nearly a
decade, Algardi struggled for recognition. In Rome he was aided by friends that
included Pietro da Cortona and his fellow Bolognese, Domenichino. His early Roman
commissions included terracotta and some marble portrait busts,2 while he supported
himself with small works like crucifixes.
Algardi's first major commission came about in 1634, when Cardinal Ubaldini (Medici)
contracted for a funeral monument for his great-uncle, Pope Leo XI, the third of the
Medici popes, who had reigned for less than a month in 1605. The monument was
started in 1640, and mostly completed by 1644. The arrangement mirrors the one
designed by Bernini for the Tomb of Urban VIII (162847), with a central hieratic
sculpture of the pope seated in full regalia and offering a hand of blessing, while at his
feet, two allegorical female figures flank his sarcophagus. However, in Bernini's tomb,
the vigorous upraised arm and posture of the pope is counterbalanced by an active
drama below, wherein the figures of Charity and Justice are either distracted by putti
or lost in contemplation, while skeletal Death actively writes the epitaph. Algardi's
tomb is much less dynamic. The allegorical figures of Magnanimity and Liberality
have an impassive, ethereal dignity. Some have identified the helmeted figure of
Magnanimity with that of Athena and iconic images of Wisdom.3 Liberality resembles
Duquesnoy's famous Santa Susanna, but rendered more elegant. The tomb is
somberly monotone and lacks the polychromatic excitement that detracts from the
elegiac mood of Urban VIII's tomb.4

 In 1635-38, Pietro Boncompagni commissioned from

Algardi a colossal statue of Philip Neri with kneeling
angels for Santa Maria in Vallicella, completed in 1640.5
Immediately after this, Algardi produced an interactive
sculptural group representing the beheading of
Saint Paul with two figures: a kneeling, resigned saint
and the executioner poised to strike the sword-blow, for
the church of San Paolo, Bologna. These works
established his reputation. Like Bernini's characteristic
works, they often express the Baroque aesthetic of
depicting dramatic attitudes and emotional expressions,
yet Algardi's sculpture has a restraining sobriety in
contrast to those of his rival

With the death of the Barberini Pope Urban VIII in 1644 and the accession of the
Pamphilj Pope Innocent X, the Barberini family and their favorite artist, Bernini, fell
into disrepute. Algardi, on the other hand, was embraced by the new pope6 and the
pope's nephew, Camillo Pamphilj.7 Algardi's portraits were highly prized, and their
formal severity contrasts with Bernini's more vivacious expression.8 A large hieratic
bronze of Innocent X by Algardi is now to be found in the Capitoline Museums.
Algardi was not renowned for his architectural abilities. Although he was in charge of
the project for the papal villa, the Villa Pamphili, now Villa Doria Pamphili, outside the
Porta San Pancrazio in Rome, he may have had professional guidance on the design
of the casino from the architect/engineer Girolamo Rainaldi and help with supervising
its construction from his assistant Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi.9 The casino was a
showcase for the Pamphili collection of sculpture, ancient and contemporary, on
which Algardi was well able to advise. In the villa grounds, Algardi and his studio
executed sculpture-encrusted fountains and other garden features, where some of his
free-standing sculpture and bas-reliefs remain.
In 1650 Algardi met Diego Velzquez, who obtained commissions for his work from
Spain. As a consequence there are four chimney-pieces by Algardi in the
Royal Palace of Aranjuez, and in the gardens, the figures on the fountain of Neptune
are also by him. The Augustinian monastery at Salamanca contains the tomb of the
Count and Countess de Monterey, another work by Algardi.

Algardi's large dramatic marble high-relief panel of Pope Leo and Attila10(164653) for
St Peter's Basilica was widely admired in his day, and reinvigorated the use of such marble
reliefs. There had been large marble reliefs used previously in Roman churches,11 but for most
patrons, sculpted marble altarpieces were far too costly. In this relief, the two principal figures, the
stern and courageous pope and the dismayed and frightened Attila, surge forward from the
center into three dimensions. Only they two see the descending angelic warriors rallying to the
pope's defense, while all others in the background reliefs, persist in performing their respective
earthly duties.
The subject was apt for a papal state seeking clout, since it depicts the historical legend when the
greatest of the popes Leo, with supernatural aid, deterred the Huns from looting Rome. From a
baroque standpoint it is a moment of divine intervention in the affairs of man. No doubt part of his
patron's message would be that all viewers would be sternly reminded of the papal capacity to
invoke divine retribution against enemies.
Algardi died in Rome within a year of completing his famous relief, which was admired by
contemporaries.
In his later years Algardi controlled a large studio and amassed a great fortune. Algardi's
classicizing manner was carried on by pupils (including Ercole Ferrata and Domenico Guidi).
Antonio Raggi initially trained with him. The latter two completed his design for an altarpiece of
the Vision of Saint Nicholas (San Nicola da Tolentino, Rome) using two separate marble pieces
linked together in one event and place, yet successfully separating the divine and earthly
spheres. Other lesser known assistants from his studio include Francesco Barrata,
Girolamo Lucenti, and Giuseppe Peroni.

 Algardi was also known for his portraiture which shows

an obsessive attention to details of psychologically
revealing physiognomy in a sober but immediate
naturalism, and minute attention to costume and
draperies, such as in the busts of Laudivio Zacchia,
Camillo Pamphilj, and of Muzio Frangipane and his two
sons Lello and Roberto.12
In temperament, his style was more akin to the
classicized and restrained baroque of Duquesnoy than to
the emotive works of other baroque artists. From an
artistic point of view, he was most successful in portraitstatues and groups of children, where he was obliged to
follow nature most closely. His terracotta models, some
of them finished works of art, were prized by collectors

Monument of Pope Leo XI

1634-44
Marble
Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican
Algardi's tomb for Leo XI was
built at the same time as
Bernini's tomb for Urban VIII,
and it clearly borrows some of
its concept from Bernini's work.
The figures of Liberty and
Majesty at the sides were
executed by Ercole Ferrata and
Giuseppe Peroni.

 Monument
of Pope
Leo XI
1634-44
Marble
Basilica di
San Pietro,
Vatican

 Bust of Pope
Innocent X
Marble
Galleria Doria
Pamphilj,
Rome

 Bust of Donna
Olimpia
Maidalchini
1646-47
Marble, height 70
cm
Galleria Doria
Pamphilj, Rome

The combination of minute attention to detail and miraculous tonal

control are the most engrossing feature of Algardi's busts. When the
need arose, he cold also produce a striking performance, as in the
splendidly imposing bust of Donna Olimpia Maidalchini, one of the
greatest portraits of the period. Disagreeable and domineering,
Donna Olimpia did not exude charm, but as the sister-in-law of Pope
Innocent X she was a power in Rome during his reign. Algardi
transmutes his unpromising sitter into an image of majesty and
determination, the tilt of her head and the expression of her face
being amplified by a billowing veil. Unusually, Algardi reverses the
normal approach to flesh and drapery tones by giving the latter a
bright, milky sheen and leaving the former matt. This transposition
was dictated by Algardi's emphasis upon the veil which is so integral
to the bust's impact.

 St Mary Magdalene
1629
Stucco, over life-size
San Silvestro al
Quirinale, Rome

 St John the
Evangelist
1629
Stucco, over lifesize
San Silvestro al
Quirinale, Rome

 Bust of
Cardinal
Giovanni
Garzia
Mellini
1637-38
Marble, lifesize
Santa Maria
del Popolo,
Rome

Algardi's portrait busts are much less flamboyant or self-consciously artistic

in character than those of Bernini. Where Bernini sought movement and
engagement in his portraits, Algardi's approach was more understated, and
more concerned with evoking presence through minute attention to
physiognomy. His busts seem more aloof because they functioned generally
as part of funerary monuments where meditation and piety were the primary
requirements. The hallmarks of his approach to portraiture were established
by the mid-1630s, when he created the bust of the papal advocate,
Monsignor Antonio Cerri, and the posthumous portrait of Cardinal Giovanni
Garzia Mellini. The bust of Mellini stands in his chapel in Santa Maria del
Popolo and shows the Cardinal turning towards the altar, his left hand on his
heart and his right hand holding his place in a prayer book. The work was
much admired in Algardi's day, and the critic Bellori praised the illusion of
the deceased 'almost kneeling, in the act of praying to the altar'. The bust
conveys a sense of Baroque piety and an assured technique: the lace
appearing at the Cardinal's sleeves and the short cape carelessly folded
behind his left hand are brilliantly observed, and such details contribute to
the uncanny sense of a physical presence in the niche.

 The Meeting
of Leo I and
Attila
1646-53
Marble,
height: 750
cm
Basilica di
San Pietro,
Vatican

After the death of Pope Urban VIII his relatives, hopelessly in debt,
fled Rome and with them were discredited all the artists who had
been closely associated with them, including Bernini. Algardi's
opportunity had come and his great contribution to the High
Baroque, the relief of the Meeting of Leo I and Attila was
commissioned by Innocent X for St Peter's in 1646. The composition
of this relief is modeled on Raphael's representation of this crucial
episode in the history of papacy in the Stanza Eliodoro.
The huge relief was completed in 1653, and shows a compromise
between the Grand Manner as expressed by Bernini and his own
classicising tendencies. The treatment of the highly dramatic subject
is remarkably restrained, and this coolness is further emphasized by
the smooth, evenly worked marble, which is in direct contrast to
Bernini's differentiation of texture and sparkling surfaces.
The relief was the prototype for a great series of sculpted
altarpieces which replaced painted altarpieces in the second half of
the century whenever circumstances permitted.

 Beheading of
St Paul
c. 1650
Marble, height:
286 cm
San Paolo
Maggiore,
Bologna

Virgilio Spada, a career ecclesiastic whose family had established

itself in Bologna engineered one of Algardi's greatest triumphs of the
1630s, the dramatic altarpiece of the Beheading of St Paul for the
Bolognese church of San Paolo Maggiore. Unusual in Rome, such
sculptural altars were not unknown in Venice and in the region
around Bologna.
Algardi created a masterpiece without equal in Baroque sculpture.
Often compared to painted altarpieces, Algardi's tableau exploits the
traditional strength of sculpture by achieving a fully rounded,
spatially complex group which plays upon the contrasting types and
emotions of the figures. Having established action frozen in time, the
sculptor sets a spiral pattern in motion, from the poised right arm of
the executioner through the shoulders and arms of the kneeling
saint and back to his assailant's right leg and drapery. The centre of
the composition is a void, and tension builds up because of the
imminent execution and the inevitability of martyrdom.