Antonio Corradini

Antonio Corradini (19 October 1688, Venice – 12 August 1752, Naples) was a Venetian Rococo sculptor.

Corradini was born in Venice and worked mainly in the Veneto, but also completed commissions for work outside Venice, including work for patrons through Eastern Europe, in Vienna where he was court sculptor for Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, and in Naples, where he died.

Much of the information on Corradini's early life is contradictory, including his date of birth. According to recent scholarship, he was the son of Gerolamo Corradini, a professional veler (packer of sails for ships), and his wife Barbara, and born in the parish of SS. Vito and Modesto. His family was modest.

Corradini was apprenticed to the sculptor Antonio Tarsia (1663 - ca 1739), for whom he worked probably for four or five years starting at the age of fourteen or fifteen (this was the norm at the time). He later became Tarsia's son-in-law.

Corradini seems to have come into his own as a sculptor around 1709. That year he was employed on work for the façade of the church of San Stae in Venice. Two years later, in 1711, he was recorded as having been enrolled in the Arte dei Tagliapietra as one of the sculptors. By 1713 he had finally set up his own workshop and was working on the state of St. Anastasia in Zara for the church of San Donato.

Corradini's commissions for the next several years came from patrons all over Eastern Europe. In 1716-17, he completed eighteen busts and two statues for the summer garden of the Russian czar Peter the Great in St. Petersburg, and the first of his famous veiled women; he would complete two more in the city in 1722. Sometime in 1718 or 1719 he was commissioned to execute a monument to Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, Marshal of the Venetian forces for the defence of island of Corfu (pictured above). In 1718 he completed an altar for the Cathedral of Rovigo, and in 1720 he was paid for a signed altar dedicated to the Blessed Hemma, installed in the crypt. Corradini completed the outdoor marble statuary group, Nessus and Deianira (1718–23), for the Grosser Garten in Dresden. The Apollo Flaying Marsyas and Zephyrus and Flora (1723-8) are two life-sized marble sculptures originally commissioned by the King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, Augustus the Strong for the gardens of the Höllandisches Palais in Dresden (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London). It was also at this time that Corradini married Maria Tarsia, daughter of the sculptor Antonio.

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