Ercole Ferrata

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Ercole Ferrata (Como, 1610 — Rome, 1686) was an Italian sculptor of the Roman Baroque school, who trained with Alessandro Algardi.

[edit] Biography

Ferrata became one of Algardi's prime assistants, ane when the master died, along with another pupil, Domenico Guidi, he completed the unfinished Vision of Saint Nicholas at San Nicola da Tolentino; the innovative arrangement of two independent but interactive groups is Algardi's.

Ferrata also appears to bridge the classical restraint of Francois Duquesnoy and his master and the expressive emotionalism of Bernini. He is best known for two works in Sant'Agnese in Agone (Rome), the Bernini-inspired The Death of St Agnes[1](1660-64) as well as the marble relief Stoning of St Emerenziana ](1660). The latter has a restraint influenced by his mentor, Algardi [2]. Under the leadership of Bernini, he sculpted the Angel with a Cross for the Ponte Sant'Angelo and reportedly completed the elephant statue holding the obelisk in front of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Early in his career he worked with Cosimo Fanzago and Giuliano Finelli in Naples. He also made the statue of Saint Catherine of Siena [3] for the Chigi Chapel in the Duomo di Siena. With Francisco Aprile he sculpted Sant'Anastasia in Santa Anastasia in Rome

In 1673, when Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany established an informal academy in the Villa Madama in Rome, to give promising students an opportunity to study from antiquities, he placed it under the direction of Ercole Ferrata and the painter Cirro Ferri, who had been collaborating with Pietro da Cortona in frescoes for Palazzo Pitti ^[1]. In 1677, when the Grand Duke arranged to get his antique sculptures released from Rome, Ercole Ferrata was recalled to Florence to unpack and see to them. "A rather colourless, plodding sculptor whose gifts were best displayed in executing or imitating the conceptions of more imaginative artists, Ferrata nonetheless enjoyed a deserved reputation as an authority on the antique".^[2]

When a headless torso had been discovered a few years previously, during the opening of a new road to the Chiesa Nuova, the Oratorians sent it to be "restored" by Ercole Ferrata, who essentially created the Faun Carrying a Kid, which after purchase by Queen Christina, was sold in 1724 to Philip V of Spain^[3]. Ferrata is less known for the documented fact that he provided the elegant arms for the Venus de' Medici^[4]. "He showed remarkable flair in making just the kind of attractive additions to a mutilated statue which most appealed to connoisseurs", according to Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny.^[5]

Ferrata's pupils included the Florentine Giovanni Battista Foggini and Melchiorre Caffà, who acted as Ercole's studio assistant. Camillo Rusconi moved to Rome in 1686 to work briefly in Ferrata's studio.

[edit] Sources

Web Gallery of Art: Ercole Ferrata
Artcyclopedia: Ercole Ferrata
Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). Pelican History of Art: Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750, 1980, Penguin Books Ltd.
Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Ancient Sculpture 1500-1900. (Yale University Press) 1981.