Details of Sculptor

Surname

Angelini

Alternative Surname

First Name

Giuseppe

Initial of Surname

A

Year of Birth/Baptism

1742

Flourished

1742-1811

Year of Death

1811

Biographical Details

An Italian-born sculptor who worked in England in the 1770s. In his edition of J T Smith's Nollekens and His Times (II, 58) Whitten claims that Angelini was born in 1735, but when he joined the Royal Academy Schools on 14 December 1772 he gave his age as thirty.
He had studied in Rome under Bartolomeo Cavaceppi and is known to have carried out a considerable amount of restoration work with his master in the 1760s. He attended the Academy of Saint Luke before coming to England c1770. J T Smith writes that he lodged in Union Street at the back of the Middlesex Hospital until 1776, when the premises were taken by G B Locatelli. Angelini’s address is, however, recorded in the list of exhibitors at the Society of Artists as ‘at Mr Dufour’s, Berwick Street’ in 1775 (Graves 1907, 3). That year he exhibited a group entitled Chastity rejecting profane love (14).
He was employed by Joseph Nollekens, with whom he must have worked in Cavaceppi’s studio in Rome. Angelini was often mistaken for his master from ‘his dashing method of dressing in a fashionable coat and red morocco slippers.’ One of the works executed by him in England was a life-size group of the Virgin and Child (1), which he was unable to sell. He was forced to dispose of it by means of a lottery (Smith 1828, II, 122). He was apparently in financial difficulties by 1777, for that year he applied for assistance to the Royal Academy, which granted him a ‘charitable donation’ of 25 guineas. Angelini was clearly well thought of by his colleagues, for the disbursement was recommended by Nollekens, Edward Burch and Agostino Carlini, as well as the engraver Francesco Bartolozzi and the history painter Benjamin West (RA Council Minutes, vol 1, June 1777, fol 240).
Angelini returned to Rome soon after. A letter of 1777 from Thomas Banks to Ozias Humphrey seems to suggest that ‘Sigr. Angelini the Sculptor’ was expected in Rome imminently (Bell 1938, 21). Angelini was certainly in his native city by 1779, for on 10 November the young Antonio Canova visited his studio and noted the over-life size statue of G B Piranesi, which Angelini was executing for the architect’s tomb. The work bears some similarity to Nollekens’s statue of Sir Thomas Salusbury at Great Zoffley. Angelini was one of the sculptors who was approached by Henry Webber to execute models for Josiah Wedgwood in 1787 (2-11, 13). He died in Rome in 1811. J T Smith described Angelini as ‘an artist of superior talent’.
Literary References: Smith 1828, II, 122; Honour 1959, 242; Hutchison 1960-62, 135; Gunnis 1968, 18; Pyke 1973, 7; Wilton Ely 1976, 592-5; Penny 1977 (1), 11; Haskell and Penny 1981, 88; Emmerson 1995, 22-33; Gennaccari 1996, 153-285; Coltman 2009, 100 n54
Archival References: RA student register