Teresa Talani, Gem Engraver in the Age of Napoleon

Authors

  • Gabriella Tassinari University of Milan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13130/2035-4797/4720

Keywords:

Teresa Talani, Bonaparte, Giovanni Moro/ Moor, Giovanni Battista Sommariva, Giuseppe Bossi, gemme, Napoli, Milano

Abstract

This article deals with the gem engraver (Maria) Teresa Talani, acting in the last decade of the 18th - first quarter of the 19th centuries. In her time she was appreciated and famous, but now is little known. The original carvings by Talani that still survive and are published are quite few; here a catalogue of her cameos and intaglios is proposed. Moreover, in the present study are published some very interesting documents, that give fundamental information for a clearer understanding of Talani’s figure and to resolve complicated matters concerning such artist. Teresa Talani was born not in Rome, as many scholars assert, but in Bergamo, perhaps daughter of Giovanni Moro / Moor, gem engraver living in Venice. Teresa Talani was wife of Vincenzo Talani, an art dealer with several links to Neapolitan court; they stayed in Naples for a long time. In the age of Napoleon the artist moved to Milan, working for powerful and prestigious patrons, such as the Napoleonic court and the Count Giovanni Battista Sommariva.

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Author Biography

Gabriella Tassinari, University of Milan

She achieved the degree in Archaeology and the specialization in the same subject at the University of Milan. She has worked on roman cemeteries in Lombardy, on roman ceramic and on glyptic, both ancient and from the period between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. She has written on nineteenth-century gems and jewels, on some famous collections and engravers. She is currently studying the collections from casts of intaglios and cameos made by Giovanni Pichler and roman Dehn’s and Cades’s manufactures.

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Published

2015-03-01

Issue

No. 18 (2014)

Section

ARTICLES