Francesco Mochi

Francesco Mochi (29 July 1580 – 6 February 1654) was an Italian early-Baroque sculptor active mostly in Rome and Orvieto.

He was born in Montevarchi and died in Rome. His early training was with the anti-Mannerist Florentine painter Santi di Tito, where he formed a taste for pictorial clarity and the primacy of disegno, exemplified in the sculpture of Giambologna and his studio and followers. He moved to Rome around 1599 and continued his training in the studio of the Venetian-trained sculptor Camillo Mariani. Mochi was a contemporary of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's father, Pietro, as well as later with the son.

Career

Mochi worked with Stefano Maderno on a prominent papal commission, the Cappella Paolina in Santa Maria Maggiore, where he contributed his still somewhat immature Saint Matthew and the Angel, in travertine. His first major work was the Annunciation of the Virgin by the Angel, composed of two statues (the Angel completed 1605, the Virgin Annunciate, 1608,Orvieto, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo). "A fanfare raising sculpture from its slumber", as Rudolph Wittkower called it, it prefigures the baroque with its restrained emotiveness.