Ippolito Buzzi - Architectural Sculpture

Architectural Sculpture

In the other main aspect of his career, Buzzi was a member of the team of sculptors who cooperated under the direction of Giacomo Della Porta in the redecoration of the transept in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, 1597–1601, under the direction of Clement VIII Aldobrandini, providing high reliefs in what has been called one of the most harmonious manifestations of Late Mannerism in Rome.

Della Porta was also responsible for the architectural framework and the overall design of the richly sculptural monument that was erected by Clement VIII Aldobrandini to commemorate his parents Salvestro Aldobrandini and Luisa Dati, in the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva; Buzzi, again part of Della Porta's team, executed the allegorical figure of Prudence and the sculpture in a niche of Clement VIII himself, probably his most prominent commission, though he was doubtless provided with a design.

In a similar commission, this time under the direction of Flaminio Ponzio Buzzi was one of the team of sculptors working in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore on the funerary Pauline Chapel commissioned by Paul V Borghese, 1611. Ponzio was somewhat constrained in his architectural framing by the necessity of making the architecture correspond to the chapel facing it across the nave, of Sixtus V Peretti, by Domenico Fontana, completed in the previous generation. Here Buzzi contributed one of five relief panels illustrating Scenes of the Pontificate of Paul V and one of those beneath the papal tomb, where Pietro Bernini was responsible for another panel and the caryatid figures, while Buzzi's countryman Silla executed the sculpture of Paul V blessing.

Another project of Paul V was the Acqua Paola (1612), erected in emulation of the stylistically more successful Acqua Felice. The architect for the fountain where the aqueduct arrived in Rome was Flaminio Ponzio, and Buzzi was part of the team, though his contribution may have been limited to the sculptural Borghese coat-of-arms supported by two putti, that crowns the cornice of the triumphal arch feature, through which nothing may pass.