2024-05-06 02:25:31
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were three cities of reference in the world: Paris, St. Petersburg and Naples. Under Vesuvius the Austrian Charles VI of Habsburg reigned. The sovereign, born in Vienna, would go down in history essentially for being the father of Maria Theresa, the great empress. In Naples, in those times of splendor, there also lived a South Tyrolean in search of fortune. It was Anton Picher who the Neapolitans called Pikler, with a k, obviously! Anton was born in Bressanone and had abandoned his native Isarco valley in search of fortune. Habsburg Naples was the ideal place to make a new life. So it was. Working as a goldsmith, first, and then becoming an incomparable master carver of coral cameos and semi-precious stones.
With his skill and talent he soon supplanted the fame of the local Sorrento artisans. Anton Pikler’s notoriety grew day by day and became public knowledge. His highly refined works soon became the object of desire on the part of the nobility, rich merchants and high-ranking prelates. His business was enormously successful and his shop became the busiest place in Baroque Naples. He was known as a sovereign. Indeed, he was as famous and revered as, and even more so, than the true “King of Naples”.
Pichler’s Naples was also the refined Naples of the Vicos and Metastasios. It was also the Naples in which the genius of Giuseppe Sanmartino was also at work, that is, the sculptor who achieved immortality with a single work. He was responsible for the creation – for the astonishing chapel of the enlightened and controversial Prince Raimondo di Sangro VII Prince of Sansevero – of that masterpiece carved in marble which is the Veiled Christ. A work which in itself is an unmissable “Wonder Destination” in the Naples of wonders. In Naples Anton Pichler from Bressanone gave life to an authentic “dynasty” of masters of glyptic art. For over a century, saying “cameo” meant saying nothing more than a jewel “signed” by Pichler. In fact, in addition to his father Anton, his son Giovanni Johann Pichler and his talented nephew Luigi Luis Pichler also rose to the level of “myth”. A dynasty of great craftsmen-artists that lasted a century and a half and became extinct towards the mid-nineteenth century when Luigi Pichler died in Rome where the family had moved in the meantime. It must be said that the cameos “signed” by Antonio Pichler and, even more so, those made later by his son Giovanni Pichler were highly coveted. It was not only the Neapolitan, and subsequently Roman and Vatican nobility, who disputed them. It was the entire nobility of eighteenth-century Europe that aspired to own and exhibit a cameo carved by Pichler, so much so that today several miniatures carved in coral by Anton, or by Giovanni or by Luigi are exhibited in none other than the British Museum in London, in Milan, New York and the Vatican.
To tell the truth, Giovanni Pichler, who was a true Neapolitan (having been born in Naples on 1 January 1734), increased his fortune by moving to Rome when the Habsburgs had to leave the throne in the shadow of Vesuvius to the Spanish branch of the Bourbons. The poet Vincenzo Monti, in extolling the refined ability of Giovanni Pichler, defined him as an “immortal”. The fact is that a cameo “signed” by Pikler was worth a fortune. They were highly coveted by the nobility and the VIP world of the Grand Tour of the time. In Rome, where Giovanni opened a workshop starting in 1743 (before he had also worked in Milan and Pesaro), he was also a friend of Goethe and his official portrait painter Tischbein. Among his clients, it is fair to remember, there were also the Emperor of Austria Joseph II of Habsburg, nobles, cardinals and all the leaders of the time as well as Pope Clement XIV. Pius VI also wanted to be portrayed in one of his precious cameos.
Finally, a couple of curiosities. As happened with his father Anton, Giovanni also married twice. Anton had a total of 11 children, while Giovanni had “only” nine. Among these also Giacomo and Luigi, both excellent engravers in their own right. Luigi was also a friend and collaborator of Canova. A mention goes to his beloved and beautiful daughter Teresa who was none other than Ugo Foscolo’s “muse”.
To confirm that Giovanni Pichler, at the time, was truly considered an “immortal”, it should be remembered that one of his busts (now in the Capitoline Museums) was placed in none other than the Pantheon (before it became the tomb of the Savoy kings), among the super-large ones in Italy next to Raphael’s tomb.
2024-05-06 02:25:31