Pietro Bracci

Pietro Bracci (1700–1773) was an Italian sculptor working in the Late Baroque manner.

He was born in Rome and became a student of Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari and Camillo Rusconi. His most familiar works are the colossal Oceanus or Neptune of the Trevi Fountain, Rome, after a modello by Giovanni Battista Maini, and four prominent tomb monuments in Rome.

He sculpted the figures for the tomb of Benedict XIII (1734) in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, which was designed by the architect Carlo Marchionni, and for the tomb of Benedict XIV (1763–1770) in the Basilica of Saint Peter, completed with the help of his pupil Gaspare Sibilia. The third tomb at St Peter's on which he worked commemorates Maria Clementina Sobieski (1742), wife of the "Old Pretender", James Stuart, one of the Catholic Stuart claimants to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland. It is one of three monuments in St. Peter's dedicated to the deposed royal line of Stuart. The sculpture is in polychrome with an image of Maria Clementina in mosaic held aloft by Charity. The monument was conceived by the architect Filippo Barigioni, who provided preliminary sketches. Bracci also designed and sculpted the polychromatic tomb of Cardinal Giuseppe Renato Imperiali (1741) in Sant'Agostino in Rome.

His best known work is the colossal Oceanus— also known as Neptune — (after 1759) of the Trevi Fountain, Rome, where he was constrained to follow a plaster modello by Giovanni Battista Maini, who died before he could execute the marble. Bracci executed the Oceanus and the tritons when he took over work on the fountain. After the death of Nicola Salvi (1751) work was halted with only the foundations built. A few years later the works were assigned to Panini who was stopped when he started to make changes to the project. Bracci took over in 1761 and finished the fountain in 1763. Nicola Salvi and Pietro Bracci were longtime friends, both being members of Arcadia and members of the confraternity of the virtuosi at the Pantheon.

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