Lorenzo Bartolini

Lorenzo Bartolini (7 January 1777 – 20 January 1850) was an Italian sculptor who infused his neoclassicism with a strain of sentimental piety and naturalistic detail, while he drew inspiration from the sculpture of the Florentine Renaissance rather than the overpowering influence of Antonio Canova that circumscribed his Florentine contemporaries.

Bartolini was born in Savignano di Prato, near Prato, Tuscany.

After studying at the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts, honing his skills and reputation as a modeller in alabaster, he went in 1797 to Paris, where he studied painting under Frédéric Desmarais, and afterwards sculpture under François-Frédéric Lemot. The bas-relief Cleobis and Biton, with which he gained the second prize of the Academy in 1803, at once established his fame as a sculptor and gained for him a number of influential patrons. His bas-relief of the Battle of Austerlitz was among those executed for the column erected in Place Vendôme. He also executed many minor pieces for Vivant Denon, besides portrait busts of the opera composers Méhul and Cherubini.

His great patron, however, was Napoleon, for whom he executed a colossal bust, and who sent him, on the recommendations of his sister Elisa Baciocchi, to Accademia Carrara in Bergamo in 1807, to teach sculpture, in spite of local opposition. Here he remained as the quasi-official portrait sculptor to the Buonapartes till after the fall of Napoleon. In 1833, Bartolini was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Honorary member. He then took up his residence in Florence, where he resided till his death.

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