MORETTI, Scipione

Italian sculptor. The son of an architect, he began his training in 1843 as an assistant in the studios of Pietro Tenerani and Randolph Rogers, two of the most distinguished Neoclassical sculptors active in Rome. In 1864 Moretti moved on to the workshop of Giuseppe Obici, with whom he collaborated in the execution of the statues for the Column of the Immaculate Conception near the Spanish steps. In 1883, the same year that he participated in a contest for the monument to Raphael in Urbino, Moretti exhibited Il cacciatore africano (The African Hunter) at the International Exhibition in Rome to critical acclaim. The sculptor subsequently left Rome to work in San Sebastian, Spain, returning to Italy in 1890.

Moretti’s oeuvre includes religious works and monuments in both bronze and marble; however Il cacciatore africano remains his best-known work.

The African Hunter

The African hunter is poised to shoot at a beast in the distance, his face bearing an intense look of concentration. In style and subject matter, this large-scale bronze is far removed from Moretti’s neoclassical training. Instead, the romanticised realism of the scene relates closely to French ethnographic genre sculpture.

The work is signed and dated: Scipne Moretti / fece in Roma nel 1880.

The African Hunter

The African Hunter (detail)