Giovanni Dupré

Giovanni Dupré (1 March 1817 – 10 January 1882) was an Italian sculptor, of distant French stock long settled in Tuscany, who developed a reputation second only to that of his contemporary Lorenzo Bartolini.

Biography Born in Siena, Dupré began in his father's carving workshop and that of Paolo Sani, where he was occupied with producing fakes of Renaissance sculptures. In 1859–64 he sculpted the funeral monument for contessa Berta Moltke Ferrari-Corbelli in the left transept of the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence. He followed it with the Putti dell'Uva (the "Grape Children"); the Madonna Addolorata for Santa Croce, Florence (1860), and the bas-relief of the Triumph of the Cross, accompanied by figures representing all the ages of Christianity, in a lunette over its main entrance.

In 1863 Dupré created his finest work, the Pietà (1860–65), for the family tomb of the marchese Bichi-Ruspoli in the cemetery of Misericordia, Siena. This group was awarded the Grande medaille d'honneur at the International Exhibition in Paris. The San Zanobi for the façade of the Duomo di Siena, the Risen Christ for the Dupré memorial chapel, the colossal allegories of the Cavour monument in Turin (1872), the bronze bust of Savonarola set in his cell at the monastery of San Marco, Florence (1873), and a number of minor works complete the list of Dupré's productions.

His last work, the St. Francis inside the Cathedral of S. Rufino in Assisi, was finished by his eldest daughter and pupil, Amalia. Time failed him to execute the crowning figure of the Madonna for Santa Maria del Fiore. He died in Florence.

At the height of his reputation, he served on vetting juries for several international exhibitions.

His memoirs, Pensieri sull'arte e ricordi autobiografici (Florence, 1879, 2nd ed. Milan 1935) were translated into English by Edith Marion Story Peruzzi (Edinburgh, 1886), daughter of the American expatriate sculptor William Wetmore Story. Dupré's daughter Amalia achieved some reputation as a sculptor.

One of his students was Augusto Rivalta.

Works and collections

Many works of Giovanni Dupré can be found gathered in two particular places in Tuscany. The recently closed Dupre Museum in Fiesole, a suburb of Florence was curated until recently by Dupre's relative Amalia Dupre.

The other significant treasury of Dupré works, a gipsoteca featuring plaster molds for many of his most famous marble sculptures including the Abel and two sculptures for the Loggia of the Uffizi, is held in the museum pertaining to Siena's Contrada dell'Onda in via Fontanella 1, and displayed since 1961 beneath the Contrada's Chapel.

Plaster molds held here include two works depicting Bacchus as a child: Bacco Festante and Bacco Dolente, a remarkably sensitive depiction of a female child with angel's wings praying called Angel of Prayer, Cain, Abel, various busts, and two group pieces each depicting one adult with two children. Two other funerary monuments depicting sleeping baby girls, of extraordinary sensitivity, comparable in delicacy with his Berta Ferrari monument in Basilica San Lorenzo in Florence, can be found in the Municipal Museum and the Museum of the Works of the Duomo in central Siena.