MARCELLINI, Carlo Andrea

Italian sculptor, stuccoist and architect. After training in Florence as a goldsmith, he studied with the painter Felice Ficherelli (1605-c. 1669). In 1671 he went to Rome, having been chosen for the Tuscan Accademia Granducale. He studied sculpture under Ercole Ferrata and Ciro Ferri, showing a predilection for modelling rather than the marble carving expected by his patron, Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

In 1672 he won first prize at the Accademia di S Luca for a terracotta relief of Decaulion and Pirra. He modelled the angels (1673-74) for the ciborium at the Chiesa Nuova (Santa Maria in Vallicella), which was designed by Ferri and cast by Stefano Benamati, and a terracotta relief of the Fall of the Giants (1674), pendant to a Niobid relief by Giovanni Battista Foggini (both Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence). When recalled to Florence in 1676, he was working on a more than life-size marble bust of Galileo Galilei (Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence), a blocky image, ruggedly carved even in its finished portions.