The neoclassical sculptor Giuseppe De Fabris was born on this day in 1790. Originally from Nove di Bassano near Vicenza, De Fabris principally worked in Milan, Rome, and Venice. He began his training in the studio of the sculptor Gaetano Monti in Milan. He was also enrolled at the accademia di Brera, with the help of his benefactor Count Giacomo Mellerio. De Fabris relocated to Rome in 1815, and he was just in time to befriend the great neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, who died in 1822. In 1826 De Fabris worked on, together with the sculptors Antonio Bosa, Rinaldo Rinaldi, Bartolomeo Ferrari, Luigi Zandomenenghi, and Jacopo De Martini, the Monument to Canova installed in at Basilica dei Frari in Venice. The emotional, yet peaceful, expressions De Fabris imbued his sculptural figures were particularly well suited to funerary momentums, and in 1843 he conceived and executed the tomb for the architect and theorist Andrea Palladio in Vicenza. Such a reputation for his mastery in the genera earned De Fabris the commission for Pope Leo XII’s funerary moment in 1836, which is above the entrance to the Chapel of the Relics, between the Chapel of the Pieta and the Chapel of St. Sebastian, in the northern (right) nave of the St. Peters Basilica. De Fabris is most famous for his 1840 sculpture of Saint Peter himself, which now stands prominently on the left, in front of the façade, in Saint Peters Basilica in Rome.
Monument to Antonio Canova, 1826, marble, Basilica dei Frari, Venice
Monument to Andrea Pallasdio, 1843, marble, Cimitero Maggiore, Vicenza
Monument to Leo XII, 1836, marble, St. Peters, Rome
Statue of St. Peter, 1840, marble, Basilica of St. Peters, Rome