L'INFORMATORE DEL MARMISTA

NR. 594 JUNE 2011

A SCULPTOR FROM CARRARA IN GENOA
Jacopo Antonio Ponsonelli (1654 - 1735) from Carrara was undoubtedly one of the most significant artists in the sphere of marble sculpture in Genoa in the late 1600s-early 1700s. The son of Giovanni Ponsonelli, a marble carver specialising in architectural elements such as balusters, capitals and columns, Jacopo was sent by his father (who desired for him a career as a figure sculptor) to the workshop of Filippo Parodi, the most prestigious in Genoa. It is not known when Giovanni and the very young Jacopo moved from Carrara to Genoa; undoubtedly, in the wake of the close relationships existing since the Middle Ages between the two cities through trade in marble, Giovanni glimpsed good prospects for work for himself and his son in the capital of the Republic, that for some considerable time had been an international emporium for the production marble artefacts, from the simplest furnishings (gates, fireplaces, floors) to most complex and grandiose statuary groups.
Genoa was already home to numerous sculptors busy at work for clients that included the Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Austrian aristocracy, as well as churches and convents throughout Catholic Europe. Parodi’s workshop, which was certainly the most up-to-date as regards the astonishing innovations in the theatrical Baroque sculpture of Gianlorenzo Bernini and Alessandro Algardi in Rome, saw the young Jacopo train in technical and stylistic terms to the point of achieving enough skill to be called by the master to collaborate on some on his most important works, such as the huge funeral monument for Patriarch Morosini in the Tolentini Church in Venice, the group of sculptures for the Chapel of Reliquaries in the Basilica of Sant’Antonio in Padua and the series of statues of the Apostles for the Church of the Italians in Lisbon. Friendship with the “maestro” in the meantime had become even stronger through family ties following the marriage in 1680 between Jacopo and Maria Agata, Parodi's daughter.
Hints of Parodi’s sculpture are evident in Ponsonelli’s works, all characterised by an extraordinary sophistication in his delicate workmanship of the marble, the fluid movement of drapery with chiaroscuro effects having pictorial fineness and the figures in harmoniously graceful poses. The sweet figures of the “Madonna del Rosario” in Taggia and “Carità” in the Church of the Annunciation in Genoa, the splendid “Diana” carved for the palace of the Prince of Liechtenstein in Vienna, the exquisite “Immacolata” in Albisola Marina and, lastly, the theatrical “Triton Fountain” despatched for the Pontons Gardens in Valencia bear witness to the artist’s extraordinary skill and explain his international success. The magnificant marble structure of the High Altar for the Church of San Domenico in Cadiz, commissioned in 1683 to Stefano Frugoni, a sculptor and marble dealer in Cararra, also includes a statue by Ponsonelli, evidencing how relationships with his home town remained constant throughout his life; while the artists was rooted in the context of figurative culture in Genoa he retained strong ties with Carrara, over and above the purchase of that statuary white marble from the Polvaccio quarry which clients demanded should be “perfect, without cracks or stains”.