MANZ, GIACOMO

born Dec. 22, 1908, Bergamo, Italy died Jan. 17, 1991, Ardea original name Giacomo Manzoni Italian sculptor who in the mid-20th century revived the ancient tradition of creating sculptural bronze doors for ecclesiastical buildings. His sober realism and extremely delicate modeling alternately achieved austere severity and sensuousness of form and surface, lending a new spirit of vitality to figurative bronze sculpture. Manz, who had to leave school at an early age to learn a trade, was apprenticed to local craftsmen who taught him to carve wood and to work in metal and stone. After service in the Italian army (192728), Manz went to Paris to try his luck as a sculptor, but after three weeks he collapsed from hunger and was deported back to Italy. In those difficult years he began to concern himself with various themes, including diverse representations of Roman Catholic cardinals. Although Manz generally made only one cast of each work, he executed numerous variantsoften in vastly divergent sizesof favourite themes. Ultimately, he produced more than 50 seated or standing cardinals. He also sculpted many tender figures of female nudes. In spite of the antifascist connotations of some of the works that he produced shortly before World War II, Manz's reputation was sufficiently well established by 1940 for him to be appointed professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where he taught until 1954. His most noteworthy work of the war years was Francesca, a seated nude that won the Grand Prix of the Rome Quadriennale in 1942. In 1948 the artist was awarded the first prize for Italian sculpture at the Venice Biennale. Two years later he was commissioned to create a set of monumental bronze doors for St. Peter's in Rome; the portal was dedicated in 1964, after the death of Pope John XXIII, whose official portrait Manz had executed. Among his other commissions were doors for Salzburg Cathedral (1958), the Church of Sankt-Laurents in Rotterdam (1969), and a relief of a Mother and Child (1965) for Rockefeller Center in New York City.