Pompeo Marchesi

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Monument to Cesare Beccaria, by Pompeo Marchesi, on the staircase leading to the first floor of the Palace of Brera in Milan.

Pompeo Marchesi (born Saltrio, near Milan, 7 August 1790; died Milan, 6 February, 1858) was a Lombard sculptor of the neoclassical school.

He studied in Rome under Canova and received much encouragement from his master. The greater part of his life was spent in Milan, where for many years he was professor of sculpture at the Academy. He executed a large number of groups in marble and portrait busts. One of his earliest works was a colossal statue of St. Ambrose, patron of the city; for the Arco della Pace (Simplon commemorative arch), completed 1838, he made the reliefs of Terpsichore and Venus Urania. He decorated the façade of the Castello with twelve figures of great Italian captains, and that of the Palazzo Saporiti with reliefs in modern classic style. One of his best-known compositions is the group of the "Mater Dolorosa", in the church of San Carlo, at which he worked for many years.

Works outside of Milan are the colossal statue of Charles Emmanuel III in Novara; that of Philibert Emanuel of Savoy in Turin; the sitting figure of Goethe for the library in Frankfurt; two statues of the Emperor Francis I of Austria, one made with the assistance of Manfredoni, for Goritz, and another, unassisted, for the Hofburg in Vienna. He also executed the monument to Volta in Como; the monument of the singer Maria Malibran; others to Beccaria and Bellini and a bust of Professor Zuccala for the Atheneum of Bergamo. There is a portrait of him by Francesco Hayez in the Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan.

[edit] Sources

Boccardo, Nuova Enciclopedia Italiana, XIII (Turin, 1882);
Baedeker, Guide Book for Italy (New York, 1904).
This article incorporates text from the entry Pompeo Marchesi in the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.