Agostino Carlini

Who was Agostino Carlini?

Agostino Carlini RA was an Italian sculptor and painter, who was born in Genoa but settled in England.

He was also one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. He features in a group portrait, by Johann Zoffany, of the founders, and is one of three sitters in a 1777 portrait displayed in the National Portrait Gallery in London. He was Keeper of the Royal Academy from 1783 until his death in 1790. He exhibited a portrait in oil in 1776. He died in London.

He worked, with fellow Italian sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi at Somerset House, and on statues at Custom House in Dublin. He is particularly noted for various church monuments, including a memorial to Lady Sophia Petty at All Saints' Parish Church, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and one commissioned by Joseph Damer in 1775 to commemorate his wife Caroline, which stands in the north transept of Milton Abbey in Dorset.

Also in 1775, Carlini was commissioned by Dr William Hunter, first Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy schools, to make a cast of the flayed corpse of a recently executed smuggler. The figure was posed as a Roman statue, the "Dying Gaul", and given the pseudo-classical title "Smugglerius".