Antonio Frilli

Who was Antonio Frilli?

Antonio Frilli was a Florentine sculptor who specialized in marble and alabaster statues for public and private customers.

In 1860, Frilli established his first and exclusive Atelier in via dei Fossi, Florence, where he worked with a few assistants on medium-size refined painted alabasters and big white Carrara marble statues for private villas and monumental cemeteries. His works decorate famous cemeteries such as Porte Sante and Allori in Florence. A marble portrait of Frilli was carved in his Atelier after his death, and it was placed on his family tomb in Cimitero degli Allori.

Frilli and his gallery were well known in Europe, the United States and Australia, as he took part in several world's fair exhibitions. He was in Philadelphia for the Centennial Exposition of 1876, and in 1881 his statues and garden furnitures were exhibited in the Italian Pavilion in Melbourne, Australia.

In 1904, two years after Frilli's death, his son Umberto took part in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, where one of his father's works – a sculpture on a "Woman on a Hammock" in white Carrara marble – won the Grand Prize and 6 gold medals.