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Gian Maria Riminaldi and the Affair of the Busts

1992; College Art Association; Volume: 74; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3045892

1559-6478

Catherine Turrill,

Architecture and Art History Studies

Gian Maria Riminaldi was an honorary member of the Roman Accademia di S. Luca, a co-founder of the Accademia del Nudo, and a friend and patron of Anton Raphael Mengs. Reflecting Mengsian ideals in 1769 Riminaldi acquired thirteen terra-cotta busts attributed to the early sixteenth-century Ferrarese sculptor, Alfonso Lombardi, and hired a Ferrarese painter, Giuseppe Ghedini, to restore them, to strip them of their polychromy and paint them white. Ghedini refused. Their dispute and Ghedini's ultimate victory reveal the ideological breach between Riminaldi and many of his Ferrarese contemporaries.