DUPRÈ, GIOVANNI. - B. at Siena on 1 March 1817, d. at Firenze on 10 Jan. 1882. A pupil in Firenze of L. Magi and V. Cambi, he BARTOLI, DANIELLO (v.), whose programme, in opposition to Canova and Thorwaldsen, was to create images studied from life.
Among D.’s earliest works must be placed the Abele, executed in marble in 1842 for the Emperor of Russia (in bronze in the Gallery of Modern Art in Firenze), one of his finest sculptures, distinguished by the intense naturalistic rendering of the subject. The following year he modelled the Caino, undoubtedly inferior, and then, in 1844, the Giotto for the porticoes of the Uffizi.
Thus began his very extensive activity as a sculptor of funerary monuments in the cemeteries of Firenze, Siena, Pisa, Bologna, etc., of commemorative monuments and sculptures of various subjects, as well as portraits. Among his most famous works, in addition to those already mentioned, are the Saffo in the Gallery of Modern Art in Roma, the Adolorata and the Esaltazione della Croce for the façade of S. Croce in Firenze (1860–61), and above all the Pietà in the Bichi-Ruspoli chapel in the cemetery of Siena. In this latter sculpture, certainly among the most significant of its time, the powerful and deeply human characterization of the subject does not completely conceal the fifteenth-century scheme of the composition. - Vedi tav. CXXV.
(phot. Alinari)
DUPRÈ, GIOVANNI - St Francis - Assisi, church of S. Rufino.