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TADOLINI, Scipione - b. 1822 Roma, d. 1892 Roma - WGA

TADOLINI, Scipione

(b. 1822 Roma, d. 1892 Roma)

Italian sculptor, part of a family of sculptors. Four generations of the family lived and worked in the same studio in Rome for some 150 years.

The first of the family to occupy this studio was the sculptor Adamo Tadolini (1788-1868). Born in Bologna, he arrived in the capital in 1814 after wining the Prix de Rome. The success of his early work soon brought him to the attention of Canova who invited him to work in his studio.

The family tradition was continued by his eldest son Scipione Tadolini. Trained in his father’s studio, he was barely in his twenties when he produced a statue which was to establish his fame, ‘Ninfa Pescatrice’. This sensuous and elegant nude set the pattern for much of his future work, combining a classical subject matter with the Romantic interpretation of the period.

Scipio was overwhelmed with commissions. In addition to innumerable private commissions, he produced the statue of Santa Lucia for the Gonfalone Church in Rome, an equestrian portrait of Bolivar for Lima and a famous version of St Michael, now in Boston.

Following the Risorgimento, Scipione was commissioned to produce the first Roman bust of King Vittorio Emanuele I, and amongst the many notable people who visited his studio, was the Queen of Italy. Tadolini received many medals and awards; and when he died in Rome in 1892, his place was taken by his son Giulio Tadolini (1849-1922).

Greek Slave
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Greek Slave

Canova’s tradition survived in Scipione Tadolini, whose father had worked with the great man. Tadolini’s graceful and melancholy Greek Slave enjoyed considerable success, with some forty replicas being executed of it. This kind of distribution by means of large numbers of marble replicas was typical in Italy.

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Susanna
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Susanna

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