Biography

Italian sculptor. His family came from Gattinara in Piedmont - a town famous for its engravers - and he served a long apprenticeship in the workshop of Lorenzo Ottoni in Rome. His first known works are the marble relief of the Canonization of St Ignatius (1695-98; Rome, the Gesù, chapel of S Ignazio), based on a design provided by Andrea Pozzo, and the monument to Count Vladislav Constantine Wasa (1698-1700; Rome, Stimmate di S Francesco), commissioned by Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Albani (later Clement XI). In the Lazio region Cametti was also active at Frascati, where he produced a relief (1704) for the façade of the cathedral; and at Palestrina, with the funerary monuments to Prince Taddeo Barberini and Cardinal Antonio Barberini (both 1704; S Rosalia), where he experimented with a new concept in tomb design which he used again in the monument to Gabriele Filippucci (c. 1706; Rome, S Giovanni in Laterano).