MOCHI, FRANCESCO. - Sculptor, b. at Montevarchi on 29 July 1580, d. at Rome on 6 Feb. 1654. At about the age of twenty he moved to Rome and collaborated with Camillo Mariani of Vicenza on various Roman churches.
Between 1603 and 1610 he carved at Orvieto his first statues of notable quality: the Angel Annunciator and the Annunciate (Museo dell'Opera del Duomo). And shortly afterwards, on returning to Rome, he executed there a most valuable St. Matthew for the exterior of the Pauline Chapel, in St. Mary Major. It was, however, the two equestrian monuments in bronze of Ranuccio and Alessandro Farnese, completed at Piacenza from 1612 to 1629, that fully established his renown, to which he remained equal with the beautiful statue of St. Martha in St. Andrew della Valle in Rome (1629), but, subsequently, the colossal, emphatic figure of the Veronica in the Vatican Basilica (1640), the mediocre statues of the Baptism of Christ (now near Ponte Milvio)
gave occasion to the criticisms and the conspiracies of his rivals G. L. Bernini and Algardi, so that the last years of M. passed amid tribulations and professional humiliations. Above all in the equestrian group of Duke Alessandro, M. achieved a full harmony of stylistic elements, mastering with his innate Tuscan virtues the pictorialism and the lyrical and dynamic impetus, which he had absorbed in his contacts with Venetian art, while the reliefs on the two pedestals, particularly the one that recalls the Bridge over the Scheda, for the military blockade of Antwerp, display refinements of landscape and of atmospheric setting that are altogether modern. To him are also owed certain portrait busts in marble of strong relief, the best expressions of the Roman Baroque, such as that of Prince Carlo Barberini (Barberini collection in Rome, where a small equestrian statue in bronze is likewise preserved, depicting the same personage) and the other of Card. Ladislao D'Aquino in St. Mary sopra Minerva.
Bibliography9 works
Alberto Neppi