ALGARDI, ALESSANDRO. - Sculptor and architect, b. in Bologna on 27 Nov. 1595, d. in Rome in 1654. From Ludovico Carracci he learned painting and he was in the workshop of Giulio Cesare Conventi, a mediocre sculptor and engraver. His formation, rather than through one or more specific masters, must be sought in the cultural environment of Carraccism and of the Bolognese painting school in general, with which he maintained ties even after moving to Rome. From his early activity, rather close to the art of the goldsmith, there remain among other things a Pietà in ivory formerly in the Rospigliosi gallery and now in the Liebermann collection in Berlin; Jesus Falling beneath the Cross, a bronze in the Museum of Palazzo Venezia; the Flagellated Christ of the Hofmuseum in Vienna; a Madonna from the Ducal Palace of Urbino and a Crucifix in the sacristy of S. Pietro in Perugia.
Having reached Rome in 1625 after a stay in Mantua, he executed for the Bandini chapel in S. Silvestro al Quirinale the two stucco statues of St. John the Baptist and of the Magdalene, in which a Berninian infusion is not absent. Immediately afterward, in the Frangipane portraits in S. Marcello al Corso or in the Mellini monument in S. Maria del Popolo, A. finds the exact measure of his personality.
Under the pontificate of Urban VIII, when Bernini enjoyed its favors, the difference of style and taste reduced A.'s activity to modest if not indeed obscure work; from this period are the works for the church of S. Luca, marked by a lively classicism. Then, with his appointment as Academician in 1640, but even more with the death of Urban and the fall from grace of Bernini, his worth was able to manifest itself fully. After executing the group of St. Philip and the Angel and the bust of Gregory XV in S. Maria in Vallicella (1640) and the Decollation of St. Paul in the church of the same name in Bologna (1641), he executed for Innocent X the monument of Leo XI in S. Pietro, the great altarpiece with the meeting of Attila and Leo the Great in the same basilica (1650), the portrait of donna Olimpia (Doria Gallery) and the bronze statue of Innocent X on the Capitoline which, for psychological depth, plastic solidity and lively pictorial sensitivity, surpasses the Berninian one of Urban VIII that faces it.
In particular in the Vatican altarpiece of the Attila he transfers into marble the pictorial vision of the Bolognese, but he does not thereby produce a work of virtuosity; rather he sets against the Berninian manner another no less original individuality, itself also Baroque.
Bellori takes A. as a typical proof of his theoretical position on ideal beauty and therefore lingers to sketch his biography; not for this, however, must one believe that the Bolognese sculptor kept himself far from the taste of his time, to which he indeed fully adheres; the truth of Bellori's assertion lies more in the sculptor's education than in the reality of his art.
The absence of any chromatic touch from A.'s sculptures is due to the fact that his subtle sensibility as a sculptor knows how to draw even from white marble those effects that others sought in polychromy, and not to an aversion for the pictorial and coloristic taste that he has in common with the Berninian current, to which he is nonetheless as a rule opposed.
He was also an architect and among his works there should be remembered, besides the villa Bel Respiro in which he proved himself a skilled and virtuoso decorator, the high altar in S. Nicolò da Tolentino; the fountain in the courtyard of S. Damaso in the Vatican and the door that leads from the interior of S. Ignazio to the Collegio Romano. The traditional attribution to A. of the façade of S. Ignazio is doubtful. - See Pl. LXV.
Bibliography5 works
Vincenzo Galzio - *