Giovanni Fontana

Giovanni Fontana, originating from Carrara, trained at the Carrara Academy of Fine Art. He subsequently moved to Rine, but because of his liberal political views, he was forced to leave Italy in 1849. He travelled to Paris and continued to London, where he lived and worked until his death in 1893. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy in London between 1852 and 1886. He also received several important public commissions, including the Shakespeare fountain in Leicester square, London. Several of his works are in the Walker Art Museum in Liverpool, and in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

Fontana was celebrated for his mythological and allegorical figures like the present marble of the ancient hero and warrior playing the lyre, which is dated 1848, the year before he left Rome. He modelled the original plaster of David in 1844 for the Academia di Belle Arti in Carrara, who praised the sculpture in 1845.

David's serene classicising face, skillfully carved curling hair, and subtle contrapposto pose are noteworthy. When Fontana was in exile in London, he requested several sculptors in his circle to produce marble copies of his plaster David which was still in the Academia di Belli Arte in Carrara. In 1853, he asked his uncle and sculptor Pietro Fontana to produce a copy in marble and a few years later, in 1862, he asked his friend A. Camigi to carve a second marble reproduction as well as a reduced version (op. cit., M. de Micheli, G. Lorenzo and M. Bertozzi). Given that the present marble is dated 1848 it seems most likely that it was carved by Giovanni Fontana himself.

RELATED LITERATURE

A. Panzetta, Nuovo Dizionario Degli Scultori Italiani dell’ottocento e del primo novecento, vol. I, Turin, 2003, p. 371; https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/0900254715, 13/11/2023; M. de Micheli, G. Lorenzo and M. Bertozzi, Scultura a Carrara, Ottocento, Bergamo, 1993, pp. 242-243