CARCANI, Filippo - b. ~1635 ?, d. ~1691 Roma

Italian sculptor called Il Filippone. The young Carcani assisted Ercole Ferrata and devoted himself to stucco and marble work. Later he became one of Bernini’s disciples.

For the tomb monument of Cardinal Carlo Bonelli in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Carcani performed the allegorical sculpture Mercy. In 1678 he collaborated with Bernini in the construction of Pope Alexander VII’s tomb monument in St. Peter’s Basilica. In the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Carcani has sculpted two allegorical figures.

In San Giovanni in Laterano around 1685, Carcani was commissioned to provide the ceiling of Cappella Lancellotti with a stucco decoration. In the same church, he also worked on the tomb monument to Cardinal Cesare Rasponi.

Decoration

Imbued with Bernini’s late style, Carcani was attracted by Antonio Raggi, and it was Carcani, above all, who carried on Raggi’s highly strung manner - but with this difference: in Raggi’s as well as in Bernini’s late style the structure of the body remained important, Carcani, however, was no longer interested in classical structure. In his stuccoes, bodies are immensely elongated and fragile, as if they were without bones. Some of Carcani’s work, particularly the stuccoes in the Cappella Lancelotti in San Giovanni in Laterano can only be described as a strange proto-Rococo. Carcani’s proto-Rococo had no immediate following in Rome.