Francesco Maria Nocchieri

{{short description|Italian sculptor}}

Francesco Maria Nocchieri, born in Ancona,The engraving of Nocchieri's Apollo with the antique Roman muses in Paolo Alessandro Maffei's Raccolta di statue antiche e moderne... dato in luce da Domenico de Rossi, Rome, 1704 (pls. CXI-CXX) is titled "Opera di Francesco Maria Nocchieri Anconitano". was a seventeenth-century Italian sculptor of minor reputation active in Rome, where he spent time in the large studio of Bernini. He worked largely as a restorer of antiquities. He was among the many Roman sculptors patronised by Christina, Queen of Sweden in her retirement in Rome;Lilian H. Zirpolo, "Christina of Sweden's Patronage of Bernini: The Mirror of Truth Revealed by Time" Woman's Art Journal 26.1 (Spring - Summer 2005:38-43) for Christina he executed an Apollo (1680) to complement a set of Roman sculptures of Muses that had been found at Hadrian's Villa, which were doubtless restored by Nocchieri;The Muses are at the Prado; they were identified as the group known to have come from Hadrian's Villa by Paul-Gustave Hübner "Le groupe des muses de la Villa d'Hadrien", Revue archéologique (Société française d'archéologie classique) :359- the Apollo is now at La Granja de San Ildefonso.[http://www.museodelprado.es/es/submenu/enciclopedia/buscador/voz/coleccion-de-esculturas-de-cristina-de-suecia/ Museo Nacional del Prado:Colección de esculturas de Cristina de Suecia] The largest collection of Nocchieri's sculptures today are in the Gardens of Aranjuez, Madrid.

A terracotta bozzetto at the Ashmolean Museum represents Apollo holding his lyre, attentive to the Muses.acc. no.WA.OA291. Nicholas Penny, Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum: 1540 to the Present Day, 3 vols., Oxford 1992:68; [https://web.archive.org/web/20090105151731/http://www.culturalpropertyadvice.gov.uk/search_spoliations/index.html?sectionDetail=10&iID=ashmolean Cultural Property, purchased ca. 1950]