Details of Sculptor

Surname

Capizzoldi

Alternative Surname

Capitsoldi

First Name

Initial of Surname

C

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

1755-74

Year of Death

Biographical Details

C F Bell suggests that he can perhaps be identified with Giovanni Battista Capezzuoli, who was working in Florence about 1760 and again in 1777 and who appears to have come to England. Gunnis states that Capizzoldi was born in Italy and worked in Florence, but yielded to the persuasion of Joseph Wilton RA, whom he met in Florence, and accompanied him to England in 1755. On his arrival in London Capizzoldi took the attic storey of a house in Warwick Street, Golden Square, where he proceeded to improve the appearance of his poorly furnished sitting-room by painting chairs, pictures and curtains on the bare walls. Nathaniel Smith was a frequent guest and J T Smith noted that he was served with breakfast, or an oyster and a pot of porter.
During his stay in England he worked with Wilton, and when the latter received the commission from Parliament to execute the Westminster Abbey monument to General Wolfe it was Capizzoldi who carved the relief depicting Wolfe’s death (1). This was described as a ‘spirited and interesting bronze bass-relievo, inlaid in the lower part of the monument, exhibiting the seige of Quebec’ (JT Smith 2, 1828, 176). The work was unveiled in 1772, but it is not known whether the Italian was still in England at the time. He had certainly returned home by 1774, for in that year Thomas Banks met him in Rome and received instruction from him on marble-cutting. Banks wrote to Nathaniel Smith on 4 February 1774 ‘Your good friend Capitsoldi has been truly kind to me; he has improved me much by the instructions he has given me in cutting the marble, in which the Italians beat us hollow’ (Smith 2, 1828, 194).
Literary References: Smith 2, 1828, 170; Bell 1938, 20-1; Gunnis 1968, 78; Pyke 1973, 24; Baker 2000, 85-6, 93