Rococo sculptor and painter Agostino Cornacchini was born 27 August 1686 in in Pescia. He studied from 1697 with the sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini in Florence. He settled in Rome in 1712 with his uncle, Cardinal Carlo Agostino Fabroni, who provided him a workshop and revenue until 1720.
Cornacchini’s masterpiece is the equestrian statue of Charlemagne (1720-1725) at the Scalia Regia, at the entrance of the Vatican Palace, which parallels the equestrian statue of Constantine by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. In the Basilica of St. Peter, he also made the statue of the prophet Elijah (1727). In Rome, he is also the author of the marble busts of the cardinals Ferdinando d’Adda and Luigi Omodei kept in the sacristy of San Carlo al Corso, and the statue of St. John Nepomuk at the Milvian Bridge (Pont Milvius), Rome, commissioned by the Hungarian Cardinal Michael von Friedrich Althann. Some of his works are still visible in Ancona, Pistoia, Orvieto, and Turin.
The Infant Christ asleep, adored by two angels, 1727, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Sleeping Endymion, 1716, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Saint Ursula, Vatican.
Prophet Elijah.
Sleeping Endymion; 1716, The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Equestrian Statue of Charlemagne, 1725, Scala Regia, Vatican.