Details of Sculptor

Surname

Vanina

Alternative Surname

Vannini

First Name

Peter

Initial of Surname

V

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

1753-1770

Year of Death

Biographical Details

Vanina produced plaster casts of antiquities, historic and contemporary subjects. He rented premises at 6 St James’s Street, London, from George James, which he kept until June 1765. Soon after Vanina was granted a 14-year extension to his lease by John Finlayson, a coal merchant, he was approached by James Lock, a hatter. Lock offered him £520 plus £52 10s p.a. to sell him the sublease. Vanina accepted Lock’s offer in December 1764 and he had moved out by Midsummer’s Day 1765, when Lock first paid rates for 6 St James’s Street. On 19 December 1767 Vanina placed a notice in the Public Advertiser in which he described himself as a ‘caster in Dover-Street, Piccadilly, formerly in St James’s Square’ (p 4). It announced his intention to sell by subscription sets of figures in plaster of paris ‘by the best masters, about two and a half feet high, taken from original models recently purchased and brought from Rome, including Castor and Pollux after the antique, a young Mars ditto, and a Venus de Medicis after Legros’. This set was to be marketed at five guineas. A second set comprising a David and Goliath, a Samson after the antique, and a ‘Susannae after Fiamingo’ would be offered at four guineas the set. Clients were informed that half the payment should be made on subscribing and the rest on delivery. He also advertised as available at the same premises several large statues from original models and bronzes.
In 1758 when Sir Edward Littleton approached Michael Rysbrack for plaster copies of his own portrait bust, Rysbrack replied that making multiples was ‘a thing Entirely out of my way’, going on to say that he had consulted ‘Mr Vannini, the Caster in Plaster of Paris. (Whom I Employ when I want) what the expense will be, of a Mould off of your Honour’s Bust, and each Cast out of it ... For the Mould the Expence will be three Guineas, and each cast, out of it; will be 16 Shillings’ (Webb 1954, 199 quoting Rysbrack’s letter of 21 January). A second letter, dated 28 February, assured Littleton that Vannini was confident that making a mould from his bust would not damage it (ibid). There may also have been a connection with Peter Scheemakers, for Staffordshire figures of Shakespeare after Scheemakers’s monument in Westminster Abbey often bear the incised mark ‘P.V’ on the back of the pedestal, indicating that they are taken from a signed plaster model by Vanina. Scheemakers had himself marketed sets of plaster casts of his own models from the antique in 1748 and it is conceivable either that Vanina was responsible for those, in which case he was working in England earlier than available documentation indicates, or that Vanina capitalised on Scheemakers’s business venture. It is also possible that Vanina made scaled-up versions in plaster of the clay models prepared by sculptors, so that dimensions could be translated accurately to marble.
Vanina had a wide selection of plaster busts and figures, some of them of a considerable size (5, 21). He had a repertoire of finishes, including ‘plaster bronzes’ and ‘figures bronzed’. Plaster bronzes may simply have been coloured with bronze filings to resemble bronze, but ‘figures bronzed’, if different, may have been a more elaborate technique whereby copper was applied to the surface of the plaster, a method which had been used on Italian terracottas since the 15th century. He coloured at least one to imitate terracotta (37). There is no evidence that he worked in materials other than plaster.
James Christie held two auctions at Vanina’s house in Dover Street in 1770, selling his stock in trade on 4-5 April 1770 and his household possessions on 3 July 1770. The first catalogue carried the information that Vanina was going abroad. It listed ‘a great variety of plaister figures, busts, brackets, basso relievos, equestrian statues in bronze and white; also, all his models, by the most esteemed artists, together with some real bronzes, two fine schiola marble tables, &c / The statues are original casts from the Antique’. There were 90 lots. The purchasers included John Cheere and Richard Parker.
Vanina and his wife were named as legatees in Michael Rysbrack’s will of 5 March 1768. Rysbrack left Vanina one guinea in his will, but £25 to his wife, Anna Maria Vanina (PROB 11, microfilm 954, quire 28, 223).
Gordon Balderston/IR
Literary References: Vertue III, 141; Webb 1954, 190, 193, 199, 201; Survey of London, XXIX-XXX, Parish of Westminster, pt 1, south of Piccadilly, 3 vols, 1960, 433-58; Gunnis 1968, 408; Clifford 1992, 64-5; Bindman and Baker 1995, 250, 385 n12; Dawson 1999, 154
Auction Catalogues: Vanina 1770 (1); Vanina 1770 (2)