A Year: Day to Day Men: 21st of December

The Position Taken

Born in Bologna the twenty-first of December in 1788, Adamo Tadolini was an Italian sculptor. He was a member of a family of sculptors descended from his grandfather Petronio Tadolini, a classical sculptor of works in both marble and terracotta, as well as medals in bronze. This family dynasty of sculptors continued until his great-grandson Enrico Tadolini’s death in 1967. 

Adamo Tadolini attended Balogna’s Accademia di Belle Arti from 1808 until 1813 where he studied under the directorship of sculptor Giacomo De Maria. In 1813, he was awarded a gold medal, the Curlandese Prize from the Accademia, for his terra cotta relief depicting Venus and the Trojan hero Aeneas carrying weapons.  Tadolini was also awarded a four year scholarship to study in Rome. One of the works he created during this scholarship period was a plaster statue of the hero Ajax cursing the gods. 

Tadolini’s skill at sculpture caught the attention of Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, who at that time was the most celebrated artist in Europe with patrons from the wealthy as well as royal lineages. Canova was given by the Pope the title Minister Plenipotentiary in 1815 and, in the next year, the title of Marquis of Ischia, along with an annual pension of three thousand crowns. Tadolini was invited by Canova to enter into his studio and worked there until 1822. At that time he set up, with assistance from Canova,  his own studio at Via Del Babuino 150 in Rome. This studio is now the Canova-Tadolini Museum and houses the Tadolini family’s vast range of work. 

Among Adamo Tadolini’s many works are the 1823 marble statue “Ganymede and the Eagle” at Chatsworth House, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire; the 1838 marble “Saint Paul” at St. Peter’s Square in the  Vatican; King Carlo Alberto of Sardinia’s commission of “St. Frances de Sales” for St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican; the 1857 statue of King David which is part of the Column of the Immaculate Conception in Rome’s Piazza Mignanelli; the1858 bust of Cardinal Alessandro Lante Montefeltro della Rovere in the Bologna Cathedral: and the1859 bronze equestrian statue of Simón Bolívar, the original casting of three resides at Lima’s Plaza Bolívar.

Tadolini had two sons, Scipione and Tito, both of whom studied under their father at his studio workshop. Scipione Tadolini worked in a romantic form of the Neo-classical tradition whose works included “Saint Michael Overcoming Satan” now in Boston College. Upon the death of his father on the sixteenth of February in 1863, Scipione took ownership of the studio.