The volume “Francesco Antonio Franzoni (1734-1818) an artist from Carrara at the court of the Popes” (Rosella Carloni, Artemide, 2025, pp. 471) reconstructs the path of this prolific artist, who was a talented carver, skilled restorer, profound connoisseur of stone materials and lively merchant of marbles and antiquities, to restore an identity to a figure often confined to marginal channel of specialist in zoomorphic figures. Trained in Carrara, he was active in Rome for most of his career which did not stop until the last years of his life, dividing his time between Rome and his city of origin. A refined decorator of Roman aristocratic homes, he was esteemed by the popes and the main interpreters of the culture and art of his time, from the Viscontis to Canova, becoming at the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the new century a point of reference for the vast undertakings of Pius VI and Pius VII.

The discovery of the sources, thanks to accurate archival research, has brought to light not only new works, but the complex network of relationships and business with artists and excavators, Italian and foreign, and has highlighted an effective organization of the laboratory which allowed it to respond to the growing demands of the market with a diversified production that ranged from the carving of marble furnishings to the restoration of antiquities and pastiches, where ancient and modern, with original solutions that denoted the taste of the time.

Francesco Antonio Franzoni (Carrara 1734 – Rome 1818) was an Italian sculptor and restorer. Born in 1734 in the city of Carrara and educated there, Francesco Antonio Franzoni settled in Rome in the 1760s where he opened a laboratory specializing in the restoration of ancient Roman sculptures, for which there was an insatiable demand thanks to recent archaeological finds. He worked on the restoration, completion and finishing of sculptures destined for the Vatican Museums and provided the marble reliefs and sculptural details for its interiors, in particular the guarded chariot Biga room del Braccio Nuovo, assembled in 1788 from ancient elements. He worked for Pope Pius VI, for whom he created a room with animal sculptures, some made up of ancient fragments, in the Palazzetto del Belvedere; he also worked for the papal family at Palazzo Braschi. He died in Rome in 1818.

Carlo Franza