CORNACCHINI, Agostino - b. 1683 Pescia, d. 1754 Roma - WGA

CORNACCHINI, Agostino

(b. 1683 Pescia, d. 1754 Roma)

Italian sculptor, draughtsman and painter. He moved with his family to Florence in 1697, entering the workshop of Giovanni Battista Foggini, principal sculptor to Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Early in his career he received some important commissions: in 1709, when the English antiquarian John Talman arrived in Florence looking for artists to illustrate Italy’s most famous monuments of art, he chose Cornacchini to do a number of the drawings, and in 1710 Cornacchini signed and dated a marble standing statue of Clement XI (Urbino Cathedral). He was also patronized by the influential Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri, who commissioned from him, probably before 1712, stucco decorations (destroyed early 19th century) for his own Palazzo Giuntini. Gabburri accompanied Cornacchini when he departed for Rome in 1712, establishing him in the household of his uncle, Cardinal Carlo Agostino Fabbroni, who until 1720 provided Cornacchini with a studio, lodgings and an income.

In Rome he realized, among others, the statue Sant’Elia (1727) in St Peter’s. The work that most perplexed Cornacchini’s contemporaries was the monumental equestrian statue of Charlemagne in the porch of St Peter’s. The statue, completed in 1725, had a precise political importance, in that it testified to the opening of relations with France, as desired by Benedict XIII, strengthening the ties of friendship.

Cornacchini worked as well in Orvieto (Arcangeli Michele e Gabriele in Duomo, 1729), in Pistoia, Ancona and Turin (Basilica di Superga, circa 1730).

Equestrian statue of Charlemagne

Cornacchini’s model was Bernini’s Constantine. The choice was amply justified by the fact that Bernini’s work would have made a match with Cornacchini’s, since it is positioned on the right of the portico, beyond the door giving access to the Scala Regia. It goes without saying that it would have been difficult to come out victorious from such a comparison, but the solution proposed by Cornacchini did not satisfy even his contemporaries. The polychrome of the whole is over-accentuated and the disproportion between horse and rider (the rider is too big�) worsens the situation.

However, Cornacchini’s work is important because it allows a focus to be placed on those elements that conditioned the change of taste at the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century, determining the birth of Rococo - the predilection for fragmentary compositions, the inclination to the picturesque, and the love for working at the limits of virtuosity, as evident in the horse’s tail and mane, which end up by being affected.

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Hope

The figure of Hope at the entrance of the chapel of Monte di Pietà is a masterpiece of Cornacchini. He is certainly an interpreter of Rococo who cannot be disregarded, if only for the importance of the work he had the opportunity to carry out. However, Hope already shows the limits of his art. While it is true that the figure is well-constructed and the two cherubs have all the softness of children (revealing considerable technical ability), it is equally true that incongruous solutions are present, such as the pedestal supporting the standing child behind the female figure and the hem of the skirt with which the woman tries to cover the other cherub. The taut and straight cloth splits the image awkwardly. The lowest point is the expression on the face of the woman, whose nose, while Greek, is too wide and imposing. Similarly, her mouth is gathered in a sort of smile that does not manage to be either benevolent or reassuring.

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The Guardian Angel

This statue shows that Cornacchini could command a typically eighteenth-century charm, and in such works his manner is close to that of his contemporary Pietro Bracci.

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