BARTOLINI, Lorenzo, an Italian sculptor, was born in 1777, of very humble parents, at Vernio in Tuscany. After various vicissitudes in his youth, during which he had acquired great skill and reputation as a modeller in alabaster, he came to Paris in 1797. He there studied painting under Desmarets, and afterwards sculpture under Lemot. The bas-relief Cleobis and Biton, with which he gained the second prize of the Academy in 1803, at once established his fame as a sculptor of first-rate ability, and gained for him a number of influential patrons. He executed many minor pieces for Denon, besides busts of Méhul and Cherubini. His great patron, however, was Napoleon, for whom he executed a colossal bust, and who sent him to Carrara to found a school of sculpture. He remained in Carrara till after the fall of Napoleon, and then took up his residence in Florence, where he continued to reside till his death in 1850. His works, which include an immense number of busts, are numerous and varied. The best are, perhaps, the group of Charity, the Hercules and Lichas, and the Faith in God, which exemplify the highest types of Bartolini’s style. By the Italians he is ranked next to Thorwaldsen and Canova.