Innocenzo Spinazzi

Innocenzo Spinazzi was born in Rome on 18 July 1726, in the Pigna district, to Angelo Maria Spinazzi, a silversmith, and Lisa Buard, who was originally from Liege. He trained first in his father's workshop and then apprenticed under the sculptor Giovanni Battista Maini in Rome, where he also studied classical statuary and assembled a personal collection of casts after antique and modern works. In 1750 he won the Concorso Clementino at Rome's Accademia di San Luca. Early in his career he received a commission connected to St Peter's Basilica in Rome.

In 1769 he moved to Florence, and the following year Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, also known as Leopold I, named him official court sculptor. In Florence he restored major antiquities in the Medici collections, including the Niobe group, and carved copies of famous classical statues, among them the Venus de' Medici, a version of which is now held by the National Galleries of Scotland. He is best known for a series of veiled marble figures, most notably Faith of 1781, carved for the apse of Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi in Florence, and Religion of 1794, created for a funerary monument and now in the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna in Turin. One of his most significant public commissions was the monumental tomb of Niccolo Machiavelli, executed in 1786 and inaugurated in 1787 in the Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence. From 1784 until his death he held the chair of sculpture at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence. He died in Florence on 19 November 1798, after a long illness.

Modern scholarship, led by the entry in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani and by museum biographies such as that of the National Galleries of Scotland, treats Spinazzi as one of the principal sculptors bridging late Baroque Rococo and early Neoclassicism in Rome and Florence. He is consistently credited with a refined, linear classicism traced to his training under Giovanni Battista Maini, and with particular skill in veiled marble drapery, seen in figures such as Faith and Religion. No verbatim critical assessment from a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed for this profile; the consensus described here is drawn from museum and scholarly reference sources rather than reviews.

Spinazzi's market is small and dominated by attribution rather than firm documentation, typical of an eighteenth century sculptor who rarely signed his work. The highest price connected to his name is GBP 187,700, paid at Dreweatts in Newbury on 24 April 2024 for a pair of marble Capricorns described as attributed to Innocenzo Spinazzi, sold as part of the Alchemy of Design sale of the collection of Count Manfredi della Gherardesca. A marble bust of Raimondo Cocchi, also attributed to Spinazzi, appeared at Sotheby's in the 2023 sale Giovanni Pratesi, The Florentine Eye, with an estimate of EUR 3,000 to 5,000, though no confirmed hammer price is available. There is no catalogue raisonne and no gallery or estate representation; his works surface occasionally at auction and are otherwise held in museums and churches.

Because Spinazzi worked more than two centuries ago and rarely signed his sculpture, most works connected to his name in today's market, including the current auction high, are described as attributed rather than firmly documented. There is no catalogue raisonne, so provenance, archival records, and comparison with securely attributed works in churches and museums, such as the Machiavelli tomb in Santa Croce or the Faith statuette at the Victoria and Albert Museum, carry more weight than they would for a modern artist. Collectors should treat any single auction result as a data point on a very thin market rather than a stable benchmark, and should expect attribution qualifiers to affect both estimate and eventual price.