Giuseppe Ceracchi
Giuseppe Ceracchi
Italian, 1751 - 1802
Italian sculptor, active also in England and the USA. Ceracchi is best known for his portrait busts of the heroes of the American Revolution, executed during his two visits to the USA (1791–2 and 1794–5), where he made a significant contribution to the introduction of NEO-CLASSICISM. The son of a goldsmith, he studied in Rome with Tommaso Righi (1727–1802) and at the Accademia di S Luca. Following his arrival in London in 1773, Ceracchi worked for AGOSTINO CARLINI and modelled architectural ornament for ROBERT ADAM (ii). He also taught ANNE SEYMOUR DAMER to model in clay, and c. 1777 he produced a life-size terracotta statue of her as the Muse of Sculpture (marble version, London, BM) holding one of her own works, a Genius of the Thames. His bust of Admiral Keppel (marble version, 1779; Mausoleum, Wentworth Woodhouse, S. Yorks) was considered ‘extremely like’ by Horace Walpole when the terracotta model (1777; London, RA) was shown at the Royal Academy in 1777. Ceracchi produced the only bust of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1778; terracotta and marble versions, London, RA), modelled from life, although the finished marble may not be his work. The portrait is based on Roman busts of Emperor Caracalla. In 1778 Ceracchi also worked with Agostino Carlini on the sculptural decoration of Somerset House, London, producing figures of Temperance and Fortitude in Portland stone for the Strand façade.
The historical groups and busts that Ceracchi exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1776 to 1779 reflect high ambitions. In 1779 he exhibited a design for a monument to William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham, which failed to win a commission. In the same year his second attempt to be elected an ARA proved unsuccessful. These setbacks probably prompted Ceracchi’s departure for Vienna, where he made enquiries concerning the likelihood of employment in the USA. He then travelled to Rome via Amsterdam. In 1785 he was commissioned to execute a monument to Baron Derk van der Capellen, the Dutch champion of American liberty. Ceracchi had carved the group, comprising four colossal statues, in Rome by 1789, but was not paid; the figures eventually found a home in the gardens of the Villa Borghese. In Rome he made friends with Goethe, who recorded that he carved a bust of Winckelmann (untraced).
Ceracchi left Europe in 1790, arriving in Philadelphia in 1791; he hoped to receive the commission for the monument to George Washington that Congress had resolved to erect as early as 1783. Although he produced models for an elaborate allegorical monument ‘perpetuating the memory of the American Revolution’, the scheme was not realized. By way of soliciting support for the commission, however, Ceracchi began to model a series of portrait busts of prominent Americans, in Philadelphia, New York and Boston. Around 36 busts were eventually produced, notably marble portraits of Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia, PA Acad. F.A.), Alexander Hamilton (New York, Pub. Lib.) and several of George Washington (e.g. New York, Met.; see fig.). Other than that by Houdon, Ceracchi’s bust of George Washington in New York is the only one to have been modelled from life.
In 1792 Ceracchi travelled to Amsterdam, Mannheim and Rome, where he began a monument to the unification of the Bavarian and Palatine states under the rule of the Elector Palatine (not completed). However, his Republican sympathies made him unpopular in Rome, and in 1794 he returned to Philadelphia, where he produced a revised version of his monument to Washington with the image of the statesman replaced by the Goddess of Liberty. In 1795 Ceracchi went to France. Around 1800 he received a number of official commissions for portrait busts (e.g. General Massena and General Bernadotte, both untraced). His unsteady career concluded in Paris when he joined an anti-Bonaparte conspiracy and was discovered and sent to the guillotine. J. T. Smith recorded a story, perhaps apocryphal, that Ceracchi rode to the scaffold dressed as a Roman emperor in a chariot he had designed for the occasion, having been disowned by the painter J.-L. David with whom he had apparently been living. His portrait, by John Trumbull, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. [Julius Bryant. "Ceracchi, Giuseppe." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 4, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T015507.]
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