Angelo Vadalà | Figurative painter / Sculptor

Angelo Vadalà (1940-2024) was born in Messina, Italy.

He started painting five decades ago, when he was only 12.

At the age of 18, Vadalà left Sicily to live and study in Florence, officially to attend university and study architecture.

But after two years of study at the Florence University of Architecture, Vadalà found he was distracted by what the many museums of that beautiful city contained, and not by the stone and wood that housed the art.

From his study of architecture, Vadalà had received a foundation in the art and technique of draftsmanship.

Michelangelo | The young Saint John the Baptist, 1495-1496

The biographies of Michelangelo by Vasari (1550) and Condivi (1553) recount that following the artist’s return to Florence from Bologna in 1495, his first commission was for a marble sculpture of a “San Giovannino” for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’Medici (cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent), now identified as the present work.

Rather than following the model of Donatello’s Saint John the Baptist (Florence, Museo del Bargello) as other Florentine sculptors had done, Michelangelo depicted the Baptist as much younger, no more than a boy of six or seven.

Eugène Delaplanche | Figurative sculptor

Eugène Delaplanche (28 February 1836 - 10 January 1891) was a French sculptor, born at Belleville, Seine.

He was a pupil of the neoclassical sculptor Francisque Joseph Duret (French, 1804-1865), gained the Prix de Rome in 1864 (spending 1864-67 at the Villa Medici in Rome), and the medal of honor° in 1878.

Why the Michelangelo's David statue is so famous?

David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501-1504 by Michelangelo.

It is a 5.17-metre (17.0 ft)[a] marble statue of a standing male.

The statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence.

Originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, the statue was placed instead in a public square, outside the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504.

Donatello | The bronze David, 1440

David is the title of two statues of the biblical hero by the Italian early Renaissance sculptor Donatello, an early work in marble of a clothed figure (1408-09), and a far more famous bronze figure and dates to the 1430s or later. Both are now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence.

Nguyen Tuan, 1963 | Figurative sculptor

"Art is vital for me. It is almost a religion.

It means to believe in people, in life, in love.

It is a response to what is beautiful and simple.

As an artist I do what I do for no other purpose than to express my feelings" - Nguyen Tuan

La Bocca della Verità / The Mouth of Truth, Roma 1485

The Mouth of Truth / Bocca della Verità is an ancient Roman marble disc with a relief carving of a man's face.

According to legend the face's mouth closes if a liar sticks his hand in it.

The massive marble mask weighs about 1300 kg and probably depicts the face of the sea god Oceanus. The eyes, nostrils and mouth are open.

Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Vacanze Romane, 1953

Louis-Ernest Barrias | Romantic / Art Nouveau sculptor

Louis-Ernest Barrias (1841-1905) was a French sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school.

In 1865 Barrias won the Prix de Rome for study at the French Academy in Rome.

Barrias was involved in the decoration of the Paris Opéra and the Hôtel de la Païva in the Champs-Élysées.

His work was mostly in marble, in a Romantic realist style indebted to Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.