CAVRIOLI, Francesco - b. ~1600 Serravalle, d. 1670 Venezia

Italian sculptor. He was a collaborator of Baldassare Longhena, and like some other Venetian sculptors of the first half of the seventeenth century. provided his altars with statues in marble and bronze. The decorative vein and a craftsman-like meticulousness are constant in Cavrioli’s work, which included from the very beginning small works in stucco (now lost), as well as small bronzes such as the putto for the keystone of the altar (possibly by Longhena) of Francesco Morosini in the church of San Pietro in Castello (1646-47) and the three gilded bronze compartments in which Faith, Hope, and Charity are depicted on the altar of Blessed Lorenzo Giuliani in the same church (1650s). As a collaborator of Longhena, in 1645 Cavrioli made the allegorical statue of Venice for the central niche of the staircase of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore.

After a period of collaboration with Giuseppe Sardi on the Villa Selvatico in Battaglia Terme (1652) and on the altar of the Deposition in the basilica of Sant’Antonio in Padua (1654), Cavrioli was in Venice again in 1657 when he sculpted two angels for the pediment of the high altar of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, and Prudence and Magnanimity and the Cavazza coat of arms for the monument to Girolamo Cavazza in the church of the Madonna dell’Orto, which he designed himself. In these pieces he expresses himself again in the characteristically elegant decorative style.

Cavrioli also worked in Zara (presently Zadar in Croatia) in the 1650s.

Guardian Saint

This statue is on the high altar of the basilica, as a pendant to Clemente Molli’s Guardian Saint. The altar was designed by Baldassare Longhena, with sculptures by Clemente Molli, Francesco Cavrioli, and Bernardo Falconi. In the absence of artists able to work with equal competence in both sculpture and architecture, as Jacopo Sansovino and Alessandro Vittoria, sculptors in Venice began to depend increasingly on architects from the 1640s onward. Architects worked out projects in their entirety, entrusting single parts of the work to the different masters, from stonecarver and sculptor to the more modest artisans. The architect himself supervised and once finished, he approved, signing the relevant invoices and submitting them to the client for payment.

Francesco Cavrioli’s Guardian Saint’s elegant outline is accompanied by a suppleness that is still Mannerist. The decorative vein and a craftsman-like meticulousness are constant in Cavrioli’s work.