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Camillo Rusconi (14 July 1658 – 8 December 1728) was an Italian sculptor of the late Baroque in Rome. His style displays both features of Baroque and Neoclassicism. He has been described as a Carlo Maratta in marble.
He was schooled in Milan by the Jesuits, and at the age of 15 he went to study with Giuseppe Rusnati, a Milanese sculptor who had been part of Ercole Ferrata’s workshop in Rome. Rusconi had therefore felt the influence of Roman High Baroque sculpture before he went to Rome to work with his master’s master at the age of 28. Ferrata unfortunately died shortly afterwards, in 1686.
Rusconi inherited from his masters the styles of Algardi and Bernini, the two most influential Roman sculptors of the previous generation. In particular he was influenced by Bernini’s copious forms and expansive gestures: although he did not tap the expressive energies of the Baroque in the same way as Bernini, the grand manner, revealing powerful human passions and depicting virtuous actions, remained prominent in his work. The most important influence on Rusconi was, however, that of the painter Carlo Maratta, who dismissed many of the more extreme conventions of Baroque composition in favour of ordered grouping and clear presentation of individual figures and narrative; his manner became the court style that dominated late Baroque art in Europe.
Rusconi is known to have made small-scale works for private collectors, including a silver Crucifix and a silver statuette of St. Sebastian for the Marchese Niccolò Pallavicini.
Memorials to famous men, a typical 18th-century art form, also occupied Rusconi’s energies. His marble monuments to Giuseppe Paravicini (after 1695; Rome, S Francesco a Ripa) and to Raffaello Fabretti (c. 1700; Rome, Santa Maria sopra Minerva) both consist of portrait busts of the deceased set into oval wall niches and accompanied by putti bearing coats of arms or draperies with inscriptions. The much simpler memorial to Giuseppe Eusanio (marble; Rome, Sant'Agostino) has a circular, three-quarter profile portrait medallion. That to Prince Alexander Sobieski (marble, 1727–8; Rome, Santa Maria della Concezione) is a high relief wall tomb with two mourning putti on a sarcophagus, above which is an oval profile medallion of Sobieski.
Rusconi’s most famous funerary work is the monument to Gregory XIII (marble, 1715–23; Rome, St Peter’s), which consists of a seated statue of the Pope, hand extended in blessing, raised on a sarcophagus flanked by female allegorical statues of Fortitude and Religion. Gregory's calendar reform is referred to in the relief on the sarcophagus. Unlike the other papal tombs in the basilica the placement of the group, partly within a niche hollowed from an aisle pier and partly in front of it, makes it relatively accessible to the viewer. The pyramidal arrangement of figures and tomb, open gestures and broad drapery patterns express Baroque principles of composition; but the oblique line of sight from which the whole must be approached and the closeness of the figures to the spectator create a relative sense of intimacy more typical of the Barocchetto. Also, Fortitude pushes back some drapery in a gesture of curiosity; she wants to see the story of Gregory’s reform. This break with her normal allegorical function reflects the more casual, less heroic and more personal art of the 18th century.
Among Rusconi’s many pupils were Pietro Bracci, Giovanni Battista Maini, and Filippo della Valle, who continued his tradition in a more relaxed and less ambitious style. Rusconi was buried at Santa Maria della Concezione, Rome, after a magnificent funeral.
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