Page:Nollekens and His Times, Volume 2.djvu/131

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119

LOCATELLI.

John Baptist Locatelli was a native of Verona, and when he came to England first lodged at No. 9, in the Hay-market, with the father of Charles Rossi, Esq. now an Academician. His next residence was in Bentinck-street, Berwick-street; and his last in England was in Union-street, at the back of Middlesex Hospital, which had been, before the year 1776, the time he entered the premises, occupied by another Italian Sculptor of the name of Angelini; and there it was that the friendly Rossi was placed under Locatelli's roof, as his pupil; but from whom, I can safely say, Rossi acquired no part of his present excellence as a Sculptor. Angelini was an artist of superior talent. He carved a group of the Virgin and Child, in marble, as large as life, and of which he unfortunately could find no better mode of disposing than by lottery. He also carved for Nollekens, and was often, to the no little mortification of his employer, mistaken by strangers as the master of the studio, not only from his superior manners, but by his dashing mode of dressing in a fashionable coat and red morocco slippers. Locatelli became an