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QUEIROLO, Francesco - b. 1704 Genova, d. 1762 Genova - WGA

QUEIROLO, Francesco

(b. 1704 Genova, d. 1762 Genova)

Italian sculptor. He was a student in Genoa of Bernardo Schiaffino. Little of his early work survives. In the 1720s he settled in Rome under the protection of Cardinal Spinola and entered Giuseppe Rusconi’s studio. In 1733 he received a third prize in the first class of sculpture from the Accademia di S Luca. One of his earliest signed works was a life-size marble bust of Clement XII (1730s; Florence, Galleria Corsini, Florence). He was active mainly in Naples and he delighted in carving veiled figures or figures covered by a net.

Release from Deception
Release from Deception by

Release from Deception

No instance in Italian sculpture in this period is more extreme than the Sansevero Chapel in Naples, which was transformed into a a sculptural pantheon by Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, in the 1750s. By importing Antonio Corradini from Venice and Francesco Queirolo (1704-1762) from Genoa, the Prince of Sansevero evolved an elaborate programme of monuments and medallions to celebrate generations of his family, each in the light of a guiding virtue. The subjects of the tombs included Sincerity, Religious Zeal and Liberality, but the most remarkable works are Corradini’s Modesty and Queirolo’s Release from Deception. Paired in the chapel’s presbytery, they were conceived as monuments to the patron’s mother and father respectively.

The Release from Deception shows a man’s emergence from the snares of error. It is, in fact, a self-portrait of the sculptor, as he is being helped from a net of cords by his own intellect, shown in the guise of a winged boy; the intellect points at the world, the source of deception, with a sceptre.

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