(b Carrara, 13 Dec 1601 or 12
Dec 1602; d Rome, 16 Aug 1653).
Italian sculptor. He received his earliest artistic training
and his gift for handling marble from his uncle, a
stonecutter in the quarries at Carrara. In 1611 he
accompanied his uncle to Naples, and there he entered the
workshop of Michelangelo Naccherino, one of the most
prominent Neapolitan sculptors. In 1622 he moved to Rome and
almost immediately came to the attention of Gianlorenzo
Bernini, who made him one of his principal studio
assistants. In that capacity Finelli participated in a
number of Bernini’s most important projects of the 1620s.
The young sculptor’s virtuosity in carving marble and his
facility in using the drill to achieve pictorial effects are
nowhere more evident than in his contributions to Bernini’s
group Apollo and Daphne (1622–4; Rome, Gal. Borghese).
The delicately carved twigs and roots that spring from
Daphne’s hands and feet are the work of Finelli. By 1629 his
association with Bernini had come to an end, and he
established himself as an independent artist with his marble
statue of St Cecilia (1629–30) for the choir of S
Maria di Loreto, Rome. While generically akin to Bernini’s
St Bibiana (1624–6; Rome, S Bibiana), Finelli’s
statue departs from Bernini’s dynamic conception and is
reserved and more classicizing in style, closer to
Alessandro Algardi’s stucco Saints in S Silvestro al
Quirinale and to Pietro da Cortona’s painted Saints in S
Bibiana.
