About Galleria Romanelli, Florence

The Galleria Romanelli was established by Pasquale Romanelli (1812-1887) and continued by his son Raffaello Romanelli (1856–1928). Both were sculptors in their own right, but also employed other sculptors who retailed their work through the gallery.

Raffaello Romanelli (1856–1928)

Raffaello Romanelli (1856–1928) was the principal incumbent of a dynasty of Florentine sculptures who achieved considerable commercial success in the late nineteenth century. Raffaello developed the studio of his father Pasquale and ensured a legacy for his son Romano, in the Romanelli studio which continues to this day. Raffaello’s success stemmed from a natural brilliance in carving marble coupled with a business acumen which brought him international acclaim. His style favoured realism and he sought to portray great accuracy in his subject matter, something he honed in his early years working primarily as a portraitist.

Raffaello Romanelli was the son of Florentine sculptor Pasquale Romanelli who had worked under Lorenzo Bartolini and took over his studio in Borgo San Frediano. The first commission for the young Raffaello was to sculpt in marble the hand of Lorenzo Bartolini, which was gifted to the Russian Princess Orloff. Sating early ambitions for a life at sea with a secondment in the Merchant Navy, the young Raffaello returned home and enrolled at the Florence Academy, studying under such masters as Professor Augusto Rivalta and Emilio Zocchi and winning the annual prize for sculpture at the academy in 1876. Thereafter Raffaello was given room at his father Pasquale’s studio on the Borgo San Frediano inside a deconsecrated church, where the high ceilings accommodated the sculpting of equestrian monuments which were a mainstay of Romanelli’s production. In 1880 Raffaello’s statue of the Roman hero, Gaius Mucius Scaevola, won him a scholarship to study for a year at the Rome Academy of Arts. The piece was later exhibited in the National Gallery of Fine arts in Florence. During these formative years Raffaello was recognised for his exceptional talent as a portraitist, and in 1884 he modelled the face of a San Frediano boy, ‘Me ne Impipo’ which is today still preserved in terracotta at the Galleria Romanelli, Florence. After the death of his father in 1887, Raffaello took over direction of the studio in Borgo San Frediano.

From the 1890s Raffaello’s fame found momentum with a multitude of commissions such as the monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi and a statue of Donatello for the Basillica of San Lorenzo, Florence. Another important Florentine figure immortalised by Raffaello’s hands was Benvenuto Cellini, whose bronze bust stands in the middle of the Eastern side of Florence’s Ponte Vecchio. In December 1888 Raffello was made a Accademico Corrispondente at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts and in 1862 a Professor of the Academy. Raffaello achieved international acclaim by winning a competition to make the monument to Tsar Alexander II of Russia and worked profusely for the royal court of Romania, becoming friends with King Carol I and Queen Elisabeth of Wied, producing a bust of King Carol himself and of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter Princess Maria of Edinburgh, who had become the wife of King Carol I’s nephew, the future King Ferdinand I of Romania. At the turn of the century Raffaello oversaw delivery of garden statuary, fountains and sculpture to Peles Castle, the Romanian royal palace in the Carpathian Mountains. Romanelli exhibited in Florence, Milan, Turin and Paris but with the outbreak of the First World War turned his attention to the United States, participating in the 1915 Panama—Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco.

Raffaello Romanelli worked up until his death in April 1928, bequeathing the studio to his son Romano Romanelli.