OLIVIERI, Pier Paolo – Sculptor and architect, born in Rome in 1551 and died there in 1599. In both his architectural and sculptural works he is tied to the very distinctive taste of the late 16th century dominated by the Catholic Reformation, an academic and cold taste that reveals itself in the way he defines forms with an abstract clarity lacking in vitality and sometimes surmounted by a pre-Baroque richness of decoration.
The church of S. Andrea della Valle, begun in 1591 (later continued by Maderno), the ciborium and the altar in the transept of S. Giovanni in Laterano (1598–99), more sober and lacking in detail than the preceding church, clearly reveal the characteristics mentioned above. Even when more original in his sculptures, he is no less influenced by the atmosphere that surrounds him. In general, his works display a minute, insistent, analytical search for details studied and rendered with excessive care, partly due to the influence of northern sculptors working in Rome at that time, which sometimes causes him to lose sight of the overall view. In the statue of Gregory XIII in S. Maria in Araceli, signed and datable to 1576–77, he works the marble with extreme skill, allowing him to render the differentiation of materials in the linen, damask, and embroidered parts of the Pope’s vestments, though he fails to give life and character to the face. In the Monument to Gregory XI in S. Francesca Romana it seems
OLIVIERI, Pier Paolo – Return of the Pontiff to Rome, 1 Marble relief. Detail of the monument erected to Gregory XI commemorating the return of the papacy from Avignon – Rome, church of S. Francesca Romana.
(photo Alinari)
OLIVIERI, Pier Paolo – Return of the Pontiff to Rome, 1 Marble relief