Bernardino Cametti
Born Rome, 1669; died Rome, July 1736.
Italian sculptor. His family came from Gattinara in Piedmont—a town famous for its engravers—and he served a long apprenticeship in the workshop of Lorenzo Ottoni in Rome. His first known works are the marble relief of the Canonization of St Ignatius (1695–8; Rome, the Gesù, chapel of S Ignazio), based on a design provided by Andrea Pozzo, and the monument to Count Vladislav Constantine Wasa (1698–1700; Rome, Stimmate di S Francesco), commissioned by Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Albani (later Clement XI). In the Lazio region Cametti was also active at Frascati, where he produced a relief (1704) for the façade of the cathedral; and at Palestrina, with the funerary monuments to Prince Taddeo Barberini and Cardinal Antonio Barberini (both 1704; S Rosalia), where he experimented with a new concept in tomb design which he used again in the monument to Gabriele Filippucci (c. 1706; Rome, S Giovanni in Laterano).
Cametti’s masterpiece is his Diana the Huntress (c. 1720; Berlin, Gëmaldegal.), which was originally located in the centre of a fountain at the Palazzo Orsini in Rome. It combines the elegance of French sculpture with Baroque monumentality. The sculptor was the only Italian artist to enjoy the privilege of having a studio at the Académie Française, Rome, and to maintain close links with the French artists living in the city. For the chapel of the Monte di Pietà in Rome, Cametti sculpted his Almsgiving (1721–4), while the St Cesario (c. 1723–4) was placed adjacent to the high altar of the Pantheon. The monuments to Giovanni Andrea Muti and his wife Maria Colomba Muti (both 1725; Rome, S Marcello) demonstrate the artist’s remarkable aptitude for portraiture, inherited from Ottoni, as well as the meticulous care that he lavished on sculptural details.
Besides his work in Rome, Cametti provided numerous works for other locations in Italy. He sent his SS Simon and James the Lesser (1722; Mus. Opera Duomo) to Orvieto and his statues of St Luke and St Mark (1716; Madonna di S Luca) to Bologna. Victor-Amadeus II of Savoy commissioned him to carry out two marble bas-reliefs in Turin, the Annunciation (1729) and the Intercession of the Blessed Amadeus in the Victory by the House of Savoy over the Armies of Louis XIV (1735; both Superga, Basilica).
Donatella Germanó Siracusa. "Cametti, Bernardino." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T013443 (accessed March 22, 2012).
