Agostino Carlini
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Agostino Carlini (1718?-August 1790) was an Italian-born sculptor (born in Genoa) who settled in England.
He was also one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. He features in a group portrait, by Johann Zoffany, of the founders, and is one of three sitters (with Francesco Bartolozzi and Giovanni Battista Cipriani) in a 1777 portrait by John Francis Rigaud, displayed in the National Portrait Gallery in London. He was Keeper of the Royal Academy from 1783 until his death in 1790.
He worked, with fellow Italian sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi at Somerset House, and on statues at Custom House in Dublin. He is particularly noted for various church monuments, including a memorial to Lady Sophia Petty at All Saints' Parish Church, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and one commissioned by Joseph Damer in 1775 to commemorate his wife Caroline, which stands in the north transept of Milton Abbey in Dorset.
Also in 1775, Carlini was commissioned by Dr William Hunter, first Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy schools, to make a cast of the flayed corpse of a recently executed smuggler. The figure was posed as a Roman statue, the "Dying Gaul", and given the pseudo-classical title "Smugglerius".
