Francesco Mochi was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 early-Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

  sculptor active mostly in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 and Orvieto

Orvieto

Orvieto is a city and comune in Province of Terni, southwestern Umbria, Italy situated on the flat summit of a large butte of volcanic tuff...

.

He was born in Montevarchi

Montevarchi

Montevarchi is a town and comune in the province of Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy.- History :The town of Montevarchi sprang up around 1100, near to a fortified Benedictine monastery founded by bishop Elempert of Arezzo. At first the castle belonged to the Marquess Bourbon del Monte di Santa Maria, then...

 and died in Rome. His early training was with the anti-Mannerist

Mannerism

Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...

 Florentine painter Santi di Tito

Santi di Tito

Santi di Tito was an Italian painter of Late-Mannerist or proto-Baroque style, what is sometimes referred to as Contra-Maniera or Counter-Mannerism.-Biography:...

, where he formed a taste for pictorial clarity and the primacy of disegno, exemplified in the sculpture of Giambologna

Giambologna

Giambologna, born as Jean Boulogne, incorrectly known as Giovanni da Bologna and Giovanni Bologna , was a sculptor, known for his marble and bronze statuary in a late Renaissance or Mannerist style.- Biography :...

 and his studio and followers. He moved to Rome around 1599 and continued his training in the studio of the Venetian-trained sculptor Camillo Mariani

Camillo Mariani

Camillo Mariani was an Italian sculptor of the early Baroque.He was born in Vicenza. He apprenticed in the studio of the prominent Venetian Mannerist sculptor Alessandro Vittoria, but moved to Rome in 1597. His first works in Rome were stucco statuary for the churches of San Bernardo alle Terme ...

. Mochi was a contemporary of Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian artist who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age and also a prominent architect...

's father, Pietro, as well as later with the son.

Career

Mochi worked with Stefano Maderno

Stefano Maderno

Stefano Maderno was an Italian sculptor.-Biography:News about Maderno's life are scarce and often contradictory...

 on a prominent papal commission, the Cappella Paolina in Santa Maria Maggiore, where he contributed his still somewhat immature Saint Matthew and the Angel, in travertine.
His first major work was the Annunciation of the Virgin by the Angel, composed of two statues (the Angel completed 1605, the Virgin Annunciate, 1608, Orvieto, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo). "A fanfare raising sculpture from its slumber", as Rudolph Wittkower called it, it prefigures the baroque with its restrained emotiveness.

Mochi was one of the few seventeenth-century sculptors who was also a master bronze-caster. He made two masterly equestrian bronze statues of Ranuccio and Alessandro Farnese in Piazza Cavalli, Piacenza

Piacenza

Piacenza is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Piacenza...

. Ranuccio Farnese, 1612–20, and Alessandro Farnese, 1620–29, are among the high points of his career.

He returned from Piacenza to Rome, where he found Bernini fully in charge of major commissions, and a current fully developed Baroque style with which Mochi was now out of touch. His late Roman works are the Christ Receiving Baptism (1635 or later, Ponte Mello, Rome); Taddeus (1641–44, Orvieto), and Saints Peter and Paul (1638–52, Porta del Popolo), and Saint Martha for the Barberini family chapel at Sant'Andrea della Valle

Sant'Andrea della Valle

Sant'Andrea della Valle is a basilica church in Rome, Italy, in the rione of Sant'Eustachio. The basilica is the general seat for the religious order of the Theatines.-Overview:...

 (1609–1621).

Saint Veronica in the Crossing of St Peter's Basilica

One of the four massive sculptures in the crossing of St. Peter's Basilica

St. Peter's Basilica

The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as ' and commonly known as Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world...

, the statue of the frantic Saint Veronica displaying the by then lost Veil of Veronica

Veil of Veronica

The Veil of Veronica, or Sudarium , often called simply "The Veronica" and known in Italian as the Volto Santo or Holy Face is a Catholic relic, which, according to legend, bears the likeness of the Face of Jesus not made by human hand The Veil of Veronica, or Sudarium (Latin for sweat-cloth),...

 (1629-40) is the best-known masterpiece by Mochi, in the most prominent position. The other three are François Duquesnoy

François Duquesnoy

François Duquesnoy was a Baroque sculptor in Rome. His more idealized representations are often contrasted with the emotional character of Bernini's works, while his style shows greater affinity to Algardi's sculptures....

's (Saint Andrew), Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian artist who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age and also a prominent architect...

's (Saint Longinus), and Andrea Bolgi

Andrea Bolgi

Andrea Bolgi was an Italian sculptor responsible for several statues in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. Towards the end of his life he moved to Naples, where he sculpted portrait busts.-Early life:...

's (St Helena).

Of the four, Mochi's is the least appropriate to its site and topic, the most idiosyncratic and original. Bernini's Longinus is an intermediary between the sober but contorting classicism of Bolgi and Duquesnoy and the emotive dynamism of Mochi. Mochi's passionate depiction appears oversteps the decorum of the place. The other statues exude the equanimity of passionate triumphal Catholicism, celebrated here in the center of the mother church. The frantic pitch of the Veronica seems to attempt to storm into the circle of dramatic setpieces, with a shrill fervor. Mochi, in a letter pleading for completion of his payments, remarked that he had laboured "con ogni studio" in order "to stamp his old age with a memorable work".

Mochi's modern reinterpretation stems in part from interest in him that was renewed by the exhibition Francesco Mochi 1580-1654 (Montevarchi, Piacenza, Rome) 1981

External links

• Bigraphic entry
• WGA entry