BEGARELLI, ANTONIO. - Sculptor, b. at Modena ca. 1499, d. there in 1565. He carried on his activity at Modena, Ferrara, Parma, Mantua, giving concrete form to the Emilian plastic tradition of Niccolò dell'Arca (v.) and of Mazzoni (v.) in the new sixteenth-century forms (e.g., the Pietà in S. Agostino at Modena, 1524). To the monumental breadth of the composition, derived from Alfonso Lombardi (v.), he joins the soft grace of the modelling inspired by Raphael and by Correggio (Madonna with Child and St. John the Baptist, Museo civico, ca. 1527; Presepio, cathedral of Modena, 1527): his pursuit of a pictorial animation of the surfaces is insistent (cf. fragments of the Belleandi monument, galleria Estense, 1529) and of the scenes, and through it he arrives at spectacular effects of an already seventeenth-century taste (Deposition, in S. Francesco at Modena, 1531). B. achieves a rare balance between the calm plastic breadth and the delicate pictorial sense in the statues for the church of S. Pietro at Modena (1532-33), whereas later this balance is lost through the predominance of a mannered elegance (statues for S. Giovanni Evangelista at Parma, ca. 1540) and of an excessive sculptural vigour that distorts the forms (Pietà, in S. Pietro, 1546; altarpiece group, ibid., commissioned in 1553; statues for the church of S. Benedetto di Polirone near Mantua, 1559). He was assisted by his nephew Ludovico (b. at Modena ca. 1530, d. there in 1577), to whom are attributed, though without certainty, the four figures of saints in the altar of S. Pietro and the group with St. Mary and Martha, in S. Domenico at Modena. - See Pl. LXXII.
Bibliography3 works
Maria Vittoria Brugnoli