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(2) Antonio Bonazza
(b Padua, 23 Dec 1698; d Padua, 12 Jan 1763). Son of (1) Giovanni Bonazza. He is among the greatest and most original Venetian sculptors of the 18th century; his activity was widespread, and his art distinguished by its vivid and picturesque naturalism. He is first recorded working in collaboration with his father and brothers Tommaso and Francesco on the marble reliefs depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds (1730) and the Adoration of the Magi (1732) in the Cappella del Rosario of SS Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, which are characterized by tender naturalistic detail. Later he produced the eight slightly rigid stucco Virtues (1741) in S Maria del Torresino, Padua, and the fourteen marble reliefs of the Stations of the Cross in the parish church at Cornegliana (Padua). In 1742 he created his masterpiece, a series of garden sculptures executed for the Villa Widman at Bagnoli di Sopra (in situ). Here, alongside mythological figures, are a soldier, an oriental, a Moor, a huntsman, a peasant, a gentleman and gentlewoman, and a quarrelsome old man and woman, engaged in a witty comedy reminiscent of Carlo Goldoni’s contemporary plays; indeed Goldoni was a guest at the villa. Bonazza was also a gifted portraitist, as demonstrated in the portraits in pietra tenera of Benedict XIV and Cardinal Rezzonico (later Clement XIII) (both 1746; Padua Cathedral) and the vivid portrait in marble of the doctor Alessandro Knis Macoppe (U. Padua).
Part of the Bonazza family
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