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Giusti, Alessandro
(b Rome, 1715; d Lisbon, 1799). Italian sculptor, active in Portugal. He studied drawing and painting under Sebastiano Conca and sculpture under Giovanni Battista Maini in Rome. There, around 1744, he was appointed by Manuel Pereira de Sampajo (1692–1750), at the time Portuguese Minister to the Holy See, to supervise the assembly of the chapel of St John Baptist in S Roque, Lisbon; this had been commissioned in 1742 by John V of Portugal (reg 1706–50) and arrived in dismantled form, having been made in Rome by Luigi Vanvitelli and Nicola Salvi. Giusti had already made four reliquaries for the chapel, and in Lisbon he directed this project between 1747 and 1748. Also in Lisbon he carved a marble bust of John V (c. 1745; Lisbon, Pal. N. Ajuda), which was influenced by Gianlorenzo Bernini, for the library of the new Palacio das Necessidades. This was first made in carved and gilded wood and was also cast in bronze (Mafra, Pal. N.). It depicts a splendidly majestic monarch, the personification of royal grandeur, wearing court armour and crowned with a laurel wreath, and is accompanied by symbols of the Arts and Sciences. It is a work that also commemorates the King’s important role as a patron of the arts as well as the consistency of his taste, which was predominantly Italian. Giusti also carved statues for the chapel of the Palacio das Necessidades in Lisbon, including the figures of St Philip Neri, St Luis de Sales and St Peter, the last of which is sited on the façade and corresponds to the statue of St Paul by his chief rival in Rome, José de Almeida, whose angular style contrasts with Giusti’s own more fluid style.
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