FELICI, Vincenzo - b. ~1657 Roma, d. 1715 Roma

Italian sculptor, pupil of Domenico Guidi. His first known work is the statue prophet Elisha, placed at the main altar of the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, executed in 1695. The altar was designed twenty years earlier by Carlo Fontana. His statue of St. Philip on the façade of the cathedral of Frascati (designed by Girolamo Fontana, nephew of Carlo, and created between 1696 and 1701) should have been executed around 1701.

In 1702-03, he created the statue of St John the Martyr placed in the colonnade of St. Peter’s, and almost simultaneously the statue of St. Francis for the façade of San Silvestro in Capite, built by Domenico Rossi and completed in 1703. Another statue, representing St. Calepodio, was carved for the façade of Santa Maria in Trastevere around 1702. Between 1703 and 1708 Felici made a relief of the Assumption of Mary for the church of Santa Maria dell’Umiltà built by Carlo Fontana.

In 1711 Felici executed two dolphins for the fountain in the square of the Pantheon, alongside the sculptor Lorenzo Ottoni. The statue of St. Agnes is perhaps the most elegant surviving work of Felici, with a distant reminiscence of Algardi, mediated through his teacher Domenico Guidi, but softened by overt debts of the eighteenth century.

John Percival, First Earl of Egmont

By the late seventeenth century, there was a revival of interest in the Classical bust, and copies for private collectors and portrait busts in an antique style became fashionable. This seems to have been prompted by British travellers on the Grand Tour. An extremely early example was made by Vincenzo Felici for John Percival, later Earl of Egmont. Carved in Rome, the bust presents the sitter in the guise of a Roman emperor, the drapery over his shoulder revealing a tunic and breastplate. His hair is treated in a series of tight curls, the face turned to the right, reminiscent of the famous late antique bust of the Emperor Caracalla. Though the pupils are slightly incised, the face is devoid of any expression. The bust was far removed from Felici’s normal style, which generally followed the late Baroque manner of his master Domenico Guidi (1625-1701).