Filippo Albacini

Place: Rome

Born: 1734

Death: 1813

Biography:

Filippo Albacini, also known as Carlo Albacini, was an Italian sculptor and restorer of Ancient Roman sculpture born in Rome in 1734 and died in 1813. He was a pupil of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, an eminent sculptor and restorer of Rome. Albacini was notable for his copies after classical originals such as the Farnese Hercules and the Capitoline Flora from Hadrian's Villa, for the Grand Tourist market. He also restored classical sculptures, notably the Farnese marbles, which Albacini worked on in 1786-89, in preparation for their transfer to Naples. Some of his restorations were free, by modern standards. Albacini was the principal restorer for Thomas Jenkins, whose pre-eminent client was Charles Townley; Townley's collection is at the British Museum. He catalogued the immense collection of antique sculpture, some of its freely restored, left by Cavaceppi, and he assembled the collection of casts of Greco-Roman portrait busts that was sold by Filippo Albacini and can be seen in the Capitoline Museums, the Vatican Museums, in Naples, and at the Prado and Casa del Labrador, Aranjuez, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, and especially at the National Gallery of Scotland, where the presence of a large group of plaster casts purchased from Albacini's son in 1838 was the subject of a colloquium on the varying reputation and cultural significance of casts of classical sculptures and the varying parameters of ethical restorations.