Giovanni Bastianini

Giovanni Bastianini (17 September 1830 – 29 June 1868) was an Italian sculptor who began his career as a stonecutter in the quarries at Fiesole, and was sent by Francesco Inghirami to study in Florence, first with Pio Fedi and then with Girolamo Torrini, with whom he collaborated on a statue of Donatello for the portico of the Uffizi. Bastianini's name became famous in connection with his unmasking as the first widely publicized art forger.

Bastianini admired Renaissance sculpture, which became his main inspiration. From 1848 to 1866 he was under contract to the Florentine antique dealer, Giovanni Freppa, who supplied him with casts and models as well as a stipend, in exchange for which Bastianini produced numerous neo-Renaissance works, especially busts and bas-reliefs in the style of Donatello, Verrocchio, Mino da Fiesole and other Italian Old Masters, most of which were sold at modest prices.

In the early 1860s Freppa and Bastianini grew more ambitious. Following the success of Bastianini's bust of Savonarola, carefully coloured and aged by the sculptor Gaiarini and placed in Inghirami's Florentine villa, where it was "discovered" by the eminent Florentine art dealer Capponi and bought for the nation, Bastianini crafted a portrait bust of the poet Girolamo Benivieni, which Freppa commissioned; exhibited to great acclaim in Paris as "school of Verrocchio", it was purchased by comte de Nieuwerkerke for the Louvre at auction for fr 13,600.

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