GAGINI, FAMILY. - Architects and sculptors originally from Bissone on Lake Lugano, active during the 15th and 16th centuries in northern Italy, especially in Genoa, Lombardy, the Veneto and Sicily.
In the group of the G. of Genoa we recall BELTRAME, d. 1470, father of a PIETRO, an ANTONIO, a GIOVANNI and a PACE. Giovanni in 1450 was working in the parish of Pigna near Ventimiglia, then executed the portals of S. Maria in Castello and of the Palazzo Quartana in Genoa, in whose cathedral he erected the tomb for Card. Giorgio Fieschi. Pace, on the other hand, after having worked in Genoa as the sculptor of the reliefs in the lunettes with scenes from the life of the Saint in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Cathedral, is in Pavia alongside Amadeo and his uncle Tamagnino in the works of the Certosa. Works of his are also in France and in Spain.
Other members of the Genoese branch of the family are BERNARDINO, active above all in Spain, in Seville and Toledo, in the 16th century, and ELIA, son of Giovanni di Beltrame, author of the loggia of the Town Hall in Udine. He also worked in Spain, but above all in Genoa, where with his uncle DOMENICO he worked in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Cathedral.
Domenico is the progenitor of the branch of the G. of Sicily. Son of Pietro di Beltrame, after having worked in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in Genoa with his nephew ELIA, he went in 1463 to Sicily, where he died in Palermo in 1492. In Sicily Domenico worked above all in Palermo, sculpting statues and reliefs in a style that recalls that of Francesco Laurana. Among his best-known works are the baptismal font of Salemi, the Madonna of Castelverde (1480), the arch of St. Gandolfo at Polizzi Generosa, and some reliefs in St. Francis in Palermo. More famous but less gifted was the son of D. ANTONELLO, b. in Palermo in 1478 and d. there in 1536 after an extremely intense activity, carried on for the most part in Messina at the head of a numerous workshop of sculptors who endowed hundreds of churches in Sicily with their images of the Virgin and of saints modeled with composure but cloying monotony.
Other sculptors of the Sicilian branch of the family are ANTONIO, GIACOMO and VINCENZO, sons of Antonello, as well as an ANTONIUZZO DI GIOVANNI DOMENICO, and a NIBLIO, the latter a sculptor and goldsmith, who lived between the 16th and 17th centuries and left the area of St. John in St. James of Caltagirone.
Bibliography3 works
Emilio Lavagnino