Stefano Maderno 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...

 sculptor

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

.

Biography

News about Maderno's life are scarce and often contradictory. He was long supposed to have been a brother of the contemporary architect Carlo Maderno

Carlo Maderno

Carlo Maderno was a Swiss-Italian architect, born in Ticino, who is remembered as one of the fathers of Baroque architecture. His façades of Santa Susanna, St. Peter's Basilica and Sant'Andrea della Valle were of key importance in the evolution of the Italian Baroque...

, and therefore to having been born at Capolago

Capolago

Capolago was a municipality in the district of Mendrisio in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland, but is now part of the municipality of Mendrisio. On 25 November 2007 the municipalities of Arzo, Capolago, Genestrerio, Mendrisio, Rancate and Tremona voted to merge into the municipality of Mendrisio...

, in what is now Ticino

Ticino

Canton Ticino or Ticino is the southernmost canton of Switzerland. Named after the Ticino river, it is the only canton in which Italian is the sole official language...

: his death certificate, however, gave his place of birth as Palestrina

Palestrina

Palestrina is an ancient city and comune with a population of about 18,000, in Lazio, c. 35 km east of Rome...

 (Donati 1945) and he signed a bas-relief in the Cappella Paolina

Cappella Paolina

The Cappella Paolina is a chapel in the Vatican Palace, Rome. It is separated from the Sistine Chapel only by the Sala Regia.-Commissioning:...

 in Santa Maria Maggiore as STEPHANVS MADERNVS ROMANVS F.

Stefano Maderno is best known for the seemingly unposed, naturalistic recumbent marble of Santa Cecilia in the Church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere is a 5th century church in Rome, Italy, devoted to Saint Cecilia, in the Trastevere rione.-History:The first church on this site was founded probably in the 3rd century, by Pope Urban I; it was devoted to the Roman martyr Cecilia, martyred it is said under Marcus...

 (1599-1600). The sculpture was a counter-statement to the current dry and hectic complications of Mannerism

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...

, to which it confronted a simple sweeping outline and a stark pose. This is not a sanitized hagiographical representation of a saint, but the graphic representation of an uncorrupted corpse, claimed to be positioned just as it had been found. The saint's tomb had been opened in 1599, and Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrato commissioned Maderno, aged 23 at the time, to recreate the martyr's body in marble. Compare this statue with the passionately theatrical representations of Saint Theresa and Ludovica Albertoni by Bernini, and the Santa Rosa de Lima by Melchiorre Caffà

Melchiorre Caffà

Melchiorre Cafà was a sculptor from Malta. Cafà began a promising career in Baroque Rome but this was cut short by his premature death following a work accident.- Biography :...

.

The Santa Cecilia immediately established Maderno's reputation: elected to the Accademia di San Luca

Accademia di San Luca

The Accademia di San Luca, was founded in 1577 as an association of artists in Rome, under the directorship of Federico Zuccari, with the purpose of elevating the work of "artists", which included painters, sculptors and architects, above that of mere craftsmen. Other founders included Girolamo...

 in 1607, he became the pre-eminent sculptor of his generation, on the cusp between Mannerism

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...

 and 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...

, rivalled in his prime only by 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 ...

, though he was eclipsed in his later years by the rapidly rising star of 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...

. He provided a marble Prudence for the tomb of Michele Bonelli

Michele Bonelli

Carlo Michele Bonelli, Cardinal Alessandrino was an Italian senior papal diplomat with a distinguished career that spanned two decades from 1571.-Biography:...

, known as the Cardinale Alessandrino, in Santa Maria sopra Minerva

Santa Maria sopra Minerva

The Basilica of Saint Mary Above Minerva is a titular minor basilica and one of the most important churches of the Roman Catholic Dominican order in Rome, Italy. The church, located in the Piazza della Minerva in the Campus Martius region, is considered the only Gothic church in Rome. It houses...

, and also provided two bas-reliefs for Paul V

Pope Paul V

-Theology:Paul met with Galileo Galilei in 1616 after Cardinal Bellarmine had, on his orders, warned Galileo not to hold or defend the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus. Whether there was also an order not to teach those ideas in any way has been a matter for controversy...

's Cappella Paolina

Cappella Paolina

The Cappella Paolina is a chapel in the Vatican Palace, Rome. It is separated from the Sistine Chapel only by the Sala Regia.-Commissioning:...

 at Santa Maria Maggiore (1608–1615); probably the figure of St. Peter for the façade of the Palazzo del Quirinale; a statue of St. Charles Borromeo in the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso

San Lorenzo in Damaso

San Lorenzo in Damaso is a basilica church in Rome, Italy, one of several dedicated to the Roman deacon and martyr Saint Lawrence...

; decorative figures of putti in the Sistine Chapel of Santa Maria Maggiore, angels of the Madonna di Loreto and Santa Maria sopra Minerva and the reclining figures of Peace and Justice for the high altar at Santa Maria della Pace

Santa Maria della Pace

Santa Maria della Pace is a church in Rome, central Italy, not far from Piazza Navona.The current building was built on the foundations of the pre-existing church of Sant'Andrea de Aquarizariis in 1482, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV. The church was rededicated to the Virgin Mary to remember a...

.

His patron, conte Gaspare Rivaldi, having sought to reward him by procuring for him a sinecure at the excise offices of the Gabelle di Ripetta, the sculptor dutifully devoted his time to his new duties and neglected his art.

Of the few sculptures outside of Italy, Cincinnati has a small bronze (c. 1622–25) portraying Hercules and Antaeus, wherein Hercules has to lift Antaeus off the ground to kill him http://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/greatart/tour_europaint.shtml. Finally there are several bozzetti— terracotta sketches, in Maderno's case highly finished ones— at the Hermitage, which came from the collection of Abate Filippo Farsetti in Venice, who possessed several of Maderno's terracottas, a form in which Maderno specialized. Tsar Paul I of Russia

Paul I of Russia

Paul I was the Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801. He also was the 72nd Prince and Grand Master of the Order of Malta .-Childhood:...

 began acquiring Farsetti's collection in 1800, and the transfer to Saint Petersburg was completed in 1805 by Tsar Alexander I

Alexander I of Russia

Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....

 http://www.philamuseum.org/information/pr/980319.shtml. One of the Hermitage terracottas is a suggested restoration of the Laocoön

Laocoön

Laocoön the son of Acoetes is a figure in Greek and Roman mythology.-History:Laocoön is a Trojan priest of Poseidon , whose rules he had defied, either by marrying and having sons, or by having committed an impiety by making love with his wife in the presence of a cult image in a sanctuary...

, the correct restoration of which was a classic puzzle for 16th- and 17th-century virtuosi— another a variation on the Farnese Hercules

Farnese Hercules

The Farnese Hercules is an ancient sculpture, probably an enlarged copy made in the early third century AD and signed by a certain Glykon, from an original by Lysippos that would have been made in the fourth century BC...

, and yet another a remarkable Pietà (c. 1605), where Nicodemus holds the dead Christ in his lap, a conscious response to Michelangelo's Pietà

Pietà (Michelangelo)

The Pietà is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti, housed in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. It is the first of a number of works of the same theme by the artist. The statue was commissioned for the French cardinal Jean de Billheres, who was a representative in...

  http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin/db2www/quickSearch.mac/gallery?selLang=English&tmCond=Maderno
Further terracottas are in the collection at the Ca' d'Oro

Ca' d'Oro

Ca' d'Oro is a palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, northern Italy. One of the older palazzi, it has always been known as Ca' d'Oro due to the gilt and polychrome external decorations which once adorned its walls.The Palazzo was built between 1428 and 1430 for the Contarini family, who provided...

, Venice.

External links

• Catholic Encyclopedia article on Stefano Maderno
• Patricia Wengraf Ltd., Apollo flaying Marsyas. A newly rediscovered terracotta reworking the theme of the Hermitage Marsyas.
• Grove Dictionary of Art

Further reading

• S.F. Ostrow in The dictionary of art, Macmillan 1996, vol. 20, pp. 46-48
• Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750