OTTONI, Lorenzo - b. 1658 Roma, d. 1736 Roma

Italian sculptor. He trained with Antonio Giorgetti and later with Ercole Ferrata, probably remaining in the latter’s workshop as an assistant. Working mainly in marble, Ottoni’s earliest commissions date from the 1670s, and an over life-size bust of Urban VIII in the main square at Pesaro, ordered by Cardinal Francesco Barberini, was completed by 1684 under the auspices of Francesco’s brother Cardinal Carlo Barberini. Carlo engaged the sculptor to execute the monument to Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1682) in St Peter’s in Rome. Carlo also commissioned several portrait sculptures of members of the Barberini family from Ottoni during the 1680s.

Bust of the Duchess of Mirandola

Ottoni imitated Algardi’s style in this portrait, but even the bust’s extension to half-length, showing arms, handkerchief and book, cannot compensate for Ottoni’s inanimate treatment of his sitter, something which merely emphasizes the distance between Algardi and his successors.