Details of Sculptor

Surname

Locatelli

Alternative Surname

First Name

Giovanni Battista

Initial of Surname

L

Year of Birth/Baptism

1734

Flourished

Year of Death

1805

Biographical Details

Locatelli was born on 17 November 1734 in San Tommaso Cantauriense, Verona, the son of Giovanni Antonio Locatelli. He trained in the studio of GA Finali, and his earliest known works are statues of Faith and Charity for the Madonna del Popolo Chapel in Verona Cathedral, executed in 1756. Locatelli subsequently worked in Venice, where he received patronage from English travellers. He appears to have come to the attention of Sir Robert Strange, the British Resident in Venice, amongst whose papers is a receipt for a work by Locatelli (17). The sculptor also worked in Milan, where, by his own account, he was employed by Count Firmin, M Tilot and Cardinal Crescenzi and also executed upwards of 70 statues and groups for the Battoni brothers. In 1777 he carved a statue in the mannerist style of the 13th century astrologer, Pietro d’Abano for the Prato delle Valle, Padua.
By 1778 Locatelli was in England, where, according to JT Smith, he first lodged with JCF Rossi’s father in the Haymarket, though the catalogue of the Royal Academy exhibition for that year gives his address as 9 Bentinck Street, Soho. His submission in 1779, a Venus on a couch, was probably the model for the Reclining Venus now at Stratfield Saye, an intensely erotic, crisply-carved, full-size statue, signed across the headband (3). Another Venus, this time rising from the sea, was ordered by Dr J C Lettsom at Camberwell (8) and yet another was sent to Lord Orford at Houghton Hall (4). At the turn of the 19th century, Eleanor Coade’s showrooms contained ‘a female statue lying on a couch as large as life, modelled by Locatelli from nature’, which may be related to the Stratfield Saye figure (Hughson 1806-11, vol 4, 529). Gunnis has suggested that the nude statue at Knole Park of the 3rd Duke of Dorset’s mistress, Madame Baccelli, lying on her belly with her legs crossed behind her, may be Locatelli’s work, on the grounds that the sculptor exhibited a bust of Baccelli in 1781 and the statue dates from around this time (5, 12).
In 1780 Locatelli took over Giuseppe Angelini’s studio at 1, Union Street, behind the Middlesex Hospital, and there he admitted both James Smith and JCF Rossi as pupils. Around this time, Locatelli and Rossi worked together on medallions for Middlesex Sessions House since Nollekens, who had prepared the models, was forced to go to Harrogate for his health and passed the commission to the Italian (18). Locatelli appears to have fallen on hard times in June 1780 for he applied to the Royal Academy for relief. The council, which included Agostino Carlini, Joseph Wilton, and the architect Sir William Chambers, granted him £50. They also found him the unenviable job of emasculating male anatomical casts and fashioning protective fig-leaves to cover the mutilated areas.
Chambers also gave Locatelli employment providing a chimneypiece for Somerset House (16). He worked too for Robert Adam, carving a chimneypiece featuring two caryatids with outstretched arms for Harewood House (15). It is possible that Adam and Locatelli already knew one other in Italy before the sculptor’s sojourn in England, for in Adam’s sale of 1818 there were works by Locatelli ‘modelled at Rome’(19, 20).
In 1782 Locatelli was commissioned by the 3rd Earl of Orford to produce a group of Theseus, Hercules and Cerberus (7). Its progress was monitored in the Norfolk Chronicle, which on 3 June 1784 reported that connoisseurs considered it comparable to the works of Giambologna. Unfortunately Orford failed to negotiate a price and when the work was completed in 1788 he balked at the asking figure of £2,400 and refused to pay. Locatelli took a unique stance by making his resentment against his patron public, circulating two strongly-phrased pamphlets and writing a letter of protest to a newspaper. Orford appointed a committee, including the sculptors Wilton, Carlini, Nollekens, William Tyler, Thomas Banks and John Bacon RA to arbitrate between them. The panel was very critical of the work and recommended a payment of only £1,300. To demonstrate his magnanimity, Orford added an additional £100. The affair, and particularly Locatelli’s publicity of it, brought opprobrium to the sculptor, who was roundly condemned for his insolence towards ‘an English nobleman, who has ever done honour to his country by a spirited encouragement of the arts’ (Anecdotes 1937, 148). JT Smith later recalled that Nollekens ridiculed the piece for its anatomical incorrectness. There has been no subsequent opportunity to assess its qualities since it was destroyed by fire in 1789. The immediate impact of the affair on the sculptor was a total collapse of his finances, and he was admitted to the debtor’s prison at the Fleet, from which he was released on 26 June 1789 (Fleet Prison: Entry Books for Discharges, NA, PRIS10/51, p.120).
In 1790 Locatelli exhibited for the last time at the Royal Academy, from 89, Queen Anne Street. He was still recorded at that address in 1792, paying 16 shillings in land tax (London Land Tax Records, LMA). JT Smith noted that he left England in 1796. In 1799 he was in Paris, where, despite the recommendation of the Minister of the Interior, he failed to gain work restoring antiquities in the Louvre. A deputation from the Musée Central des Arts visited Locatelli’s studio in the Rue des Saussaies and declared his sculpture too pedestrian to warrant his employment when French artists of superior merit were without work. Locatelli subsequently returned to Milan, where he participated in the decoration of the Foro Bonaparte.
He died on 18 May 1805 in Milan. Three years after his death he was described in an English sale catalogue as the ‘celebrated artist Locatelli’ which suggests that he had gained some measure of recognition during his years in this country. The only two known contemporary accounts of the Italian, by Walpole and JT Smith, are written in the light of the Orford dispute and are disparaging of his character and slighting of his talents.
MGS
Literary References: Norfolk Chronicle, 14 Sept 1782; Euro Mag 1803, 433; Smith 1828, vol 2, 122-6; Graves V, 1905-6, 78; Anecdotes 1937, 146-50; Hubert 1964, 160; Semenzato 1967, 72, 151; Gunnis 1968, 240-1; Postle 2004, 60; Craske 2014
Archival References: Strange Papers, f 117; RA Council Minutes, vol C, 1768-84, I, f286
Auction Catalogues: Anon man of fashion, 1793; anon sale, 1808; Adam 1818