Alessandro Algardi

Alessandro Algardi (31 July 1595 – 10 June 1654) was an Italian high-Baroque sculptor who spent nearly his entire career in Rome. During his later years, alongside Francesco Borromini and Pietro da Cortona, he ranked as one of the main competitors to Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the city. Today, he is best known for his portrait busts, which combine lively energy with a sense of dignity.

Algardi was born in Bologna and began as a young apprentice in Agostino Carracci’s studio. His talent for sculpture soon led him to work for the modestly skilled Giulio Cesare Conventi. His earliest known pieces, two chalk statues of saints, are in Bologna’s Oratory of Santa Maria della Vita. By age twenty, he received commissions from Ferdinando I, Duke of Mantua, and also created figurative designs for local jewelers. After a brief stay in Venice, he moved to Rome in 1625, carrying a letter of introduction from the Duke of Mantua to Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, the late pope’s nephew, who hired him to restore ancient statues.

For nearly a decade, Algardi struggled to gain traction in Rome, as Bernini and his workshop dominated major commissions thanks to Borghese and Barberini patronage. Friends such as Pietro da Cortona and fellow Bolognese Domenichino supported him. His early Roman work included terracotta pieces and some marble portrait busts, while he supported himself with smaller items like crucifixes. In the 1630s, he worked on the Mellini family tombs in the Mellini Chapel at Santa Maria del Popolo.

Algardi’s first major commission came in 1634, when Cardinal Ubaldini contracted for a funeral monument for his great-uncle, Pope Leo XI, a Medici who reigned less than a month in 1605. Work began in 1640 and was mostly finished by 1644. The design mirrors Bernini’s Tomb of Urban VIII, with a central seated pope in full regalia offering a blessing, flanked by two allegorical female figures at his feet. But where Bernini’s tomb is dynamic—the pope’s vigorous pose balanced by active figures and skeletal Death writing the epitaph—Algardi’s version is far calmer. The allegories of Magnanimity and Liberality have an impassive, ethereal dignity. Some see the helmeted Magnanimity as Athena or a symbol of Wisdom, while Liberality echoes Duquesnoy’s Santa Susanna but with more elegance. The tomb is somberly monotone, lacking the polychromatic energy that enlivens Urban VIII’s monument.

Between 1635 and 1638, Pietro Boncompagni commissioned a colossal statue of Philip Neri with kneeling angels for Santa Maria in Vallicella, completed in 1640. Soon after, Algardi created a sculptural group of the beheading of Saint Paul for San Paolo in Bologna, showing a kneeling, resigned saint and an executioner poised to strike. These works, along with two reliefs—The Martyrdom of St Paul and The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (a contemporary replica of the latter is in the Victoria and Albert Museum)—established his reputation. Like Bernini, Algardi embraced the Baroque taste for dramatic attitudes and emotional expressions, but his sculpture maintains a restrained sobriety compared to his rival’s.

When Pope Urban VIII died in 1644 and the Pamphilj Pope Innocent X took over, the Barberini family fell from favor, reducing Bernini’s commissions. Algardi, however, was welcomed by the new pope and his nephew, Camillo Pamphilj. His portraits were highly valued for their formal severity, contrasting with Bernini’s more lively style. A large hieratic bronze of Innocent X by Algardi is now in the Capitoline Museums.

Algardi was not known for architectural skill. Though he oversaw the project for the papal Villa Pamphili (now Villa Doria Pamphili) outside Rome’s Porta San Pancrazio, he likely received professional guidance from architect Girolamo Rainaldi and help supervising construction from assistant Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi. The casino showcased the Pamphili collection of ancient and contemporary sculpture, on which Algardi advised. In the grounds, he and his studio created sculpture-encrusted fountains and garden features, some of which survive.

In 1650, Algardi met Diego Velázquez, who secured Spanish commissions for him. This led to four chimney-pieces in the Royal Palace of Aranjuez, figures on the garden’s Neptune fountain, and the tomb of the Count and Countess de Monterey in the Augustinian monastery at Salamanca.

Algardi’s large, dramatic high-relief marble panel *Pope Leo and Attila*, also called *Fuga d’Attila* or *Flight of Attila*, was created from 1646 to 1653 for St Peter’s Basilica. It revived the use of large marble reliefs in Roman churches, which had been rare due to cost. The panel shows two main figures: a stern, courageous pope and a dismayed, frightened Attila.