Ippolito Buzzi

Ippolito Buzzi (or Buzio) (1562–1634) was an Italian sculptor from Viggiù, near Varese, in northernmost Lombardy, a member of a long-established dynasty of painters, sculptors and architects from the town, who passed his mature career in Rome. His personality as a sculptor is somewhat overshadowed by the two kinds of work he is known for: restorations to ancient Roman sculptures, some of them highly improvisatory by modern standards, and sculpture contributed to architectural projects and funeral monuments, where he was one among a team of craftsmen working under the general direction of an architect, like Giacomo della Porta - in projects for Pope Clement VIII, or Flaminio Ponzio - in projects for Pope Paul V - who would provide the designs from which the work was executed, always in consultation with the patron.

Buzzi also turned his hand to garden sculpture of a high order, such as caryatids for the Teatro delle Acque in the Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati, works that were in the process of completion from 1603, with water features designed by Orazio Olivieri and Giovanni Guglielmi. Eva-Bettina Krems suggests that Pietro Aldobrandini's secretary, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi, is a likely candidate for the connection that introduced Buzzi to Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi.

From about 1620 Buzzi was virtually the house restorer for Cardinal Ludovisi, who possessed in his villa on the Quirinale one of the finest collections of Roman sculptures in Rome, and commissioned repairs from Gian Lorenzo Bernini—whose minor restorations to the Ludovisi Ares are discreet—and Alessandro Algardi, who supported himself with restoration work, as well as Buzzi. Some of Buzzi's restorations are minor interventions to satisfy the taste of the day, as with the Ludovisi Dying Gaul; while others are more creative and incur the uneasy dissatisfaction of 21st-century writers on antiquities, especially when unrelated fragments were assembled, to create essentially new compositions, such as Buzzi's Amore and Psyche in the Ludovisi collection. A Hermaphroditus belonging to Ludovisi was restored by Buzzi, 1621–23; it was later purchased by Ferdinando II de' Medici and is in the Uffizi. Buzzi restored the marble group in the Prado now identified equally as Castor and Pollux or as Orestes and Pylades providing the headless torso with an ancient bust of Antinous, the emperor Hadrian's favorite.

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