Italian sculptor Jago combines the discipline of traditional marble carving with a practice that continually redefines the possibilities of the medium. Working in one of the defining materials of Western sculpture, he has repeatedly pushed this ancient art form into unexpected territory: transforming a papal portrait into a reflection on human vulnerability, sending a representation of a foetus into orbit, opting to leave the marks of vandalism visible on a public sculpture. Beyond these innovative approaches, Jago engages with the enduring traditions of sculpture, creating his own large-scale interpretation of David.
Beneath the visual impact of these works lies a deeper investigation into sculpture itself: what the medium can communicate, where it can exist, and how it can engage with contemporary questions surrounding identity, fragility, technology and society.
Marble, for Jago, is not simply a material to be mastered. It is a way of examining the human condition.
From Making Objects to Carving Stone
Born Jacopo Cardillo in Frosinone, Italy, Jago grew up surrounded by creativity. His father worked as an architect and set designer, while his mother taught art history. She humanised the old masters for him, reminding Jago that Michelangelo’s Pietà had been created by a young man, a perspective that presented the great sculptors not as unreachable icons but as individuals who had learned, experimented, and developed their own artistic language.
As a child, he was already fascinated by the process of making. Alongside playing football, he spent time creating handmade suits of armour from discarded materials, transforming wire from lunch bags, cardboard, tape and other everyday objects into his own imagined armour pieces.
Following these early experiments with materials, Jago went on to study at the Frosinone Academy of Fine Arts, where he deepened his engagement with sculpture. In 2010, he left the academy to pursue an independent path. Financial constraints led him to explore alternative materials and methods, including working with river stones before eventually dedicating himself to marble. Rather than limiting his practice, these circumstances became part of its development, turning necessity into a source of invention.
Unlike many contemporary sculptors, Jago carves directly into marble, taking responsibility for the decisive cuts rather than delegating them to fabrication processes. He also chooses not to use assistants when carving, preserving the direct relationship between his own hand, the tool and the stone. For Jago, the solitude of the studio is not simply a personal preference but a condition that allows concentration, intuition and responsibility to remain present in every decision.
This direct relationship with marble also shapes his understanding of the artist’s role. He often describes a block of stone as holding countless possible forms, with the artist’s responsibility being to recognise and reveal the one that should be brought into the world. Sculpture, therefore, becomes a process of discovery as much as creation: every cut represents a choice, bringing one possibility into existence while leaving countless others unrealised.
Beyond the Surface: Identity, Vulnerability and Human Experience
Throughout Jago’s work, familiar symbols of authority, religion and human life become a means of exploring the experiences that shape us. Rather than preserving these images as static symbols, he reinterprets them to reveal the human condition beneath their traditional meanings.
At just 24 years old, Jago received his first major international recognition with a marble portrait of Pope Benedict XVI, which was awarded the Pontifical Medal at the 54th Venice Biennale. Several years later, he returned to the same work and transformed it into Habemus Hominem (2016). By removing the papal garments, he stripped away the visual language of institution and power, leaving behind the body of an elderly man. The work became less a portrait of a religious figure than an exploration of ageing, mortality and the vulnerability hidden beneath public identities.
This exploration of the human condition also shapes Pietà (2021), where Jago reinterprets one of the most enduring subjects in the history of sculpture. Instead of the traditional image of the Virgin Mary holding the body of Christ, he depicts a father cradling his dead son, shifting the focus from a religious narrative to a universal expression of grief, loss and parental love.
Natura Morta extends Jago’s dialogue with art history, confronting Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit (c. 1597–1600) with a basket of carved marble weapons. The work reinterprets the still-life tradition by replacing its familiar symbols of beauty and decay with objects associated with destruction, turning a genre historically concerned with fragility into a meditation on the violence of the present.
Human Vulnerability, Life and Existence
Jago’s attention to human vulnerability extends to the beginning of life in Figlio Velato (The Veiled Son, 2019), where he depicts a newborn covered by a translucent veil. Drawing from Giuseppe Sanmartino’s Veiled Christ in the Sansevero Chapel, he uses the technical challenge of carving fabric and skin from marble to explore protection, fragility and the responsibility society has towards vulnerable life.
The origins of human life provide another perspective on Jago’s investigation of the human condition in The First Baby (2019), a small marble sculpture representing a human foetus that was sent to the International Space Station. The work creates an unusual meeting point between classical craftsmanship and modern scientific progress, placing an ancient sculptural material within a context far removed from its traditional artistic setting.
These reflections on human life take on a public dimension in Look Down (2020), a monumental marble sculpture of a chained newborn installed directly on the pavement of Naples’ Piazza del Plebiscito. By placing the figure at ground level, he transforms the encounter between sculpture and viewer into a physical experience, requiring passers-by to move around the work and confront its presence.
When the sculpture was vandalised by a group of local teenagers, instead of restoring it to its previous state, Jago chose to preserve the marks on the surface, allowing the damage to become part of the work’s history. He treated these traces of human contact as another layer of meaning, reflecting the relationship between art, society and the passage of time.
Jago’s exploration of the human body moves from its visible forms to the internal rhythms that sustain life. In Apparato Circolatorio, presented at the Italian Pavilion at Expo Osaka 2025, Jago turned his attention to one of the most fundamental processes of the human body: the heartbeat. Through thirty ceramic hearts arranged to represent the phases of a single cardiac cycle, he transformed an invisible biological rhythm into a physical installation, reflecting on the relationship between life, time and the human body.
The Body as Identity, Memory and Transformation
While much of Jago’s work begins with the human figure, the body in his sculptures is rarely presented as a fixed ideal. Instead, it becomes a site where identity, cultural memory and transformation are continually examined and reshaped.
Narciso revisits the ancient myth of self-reflection, questioning the distance between how individuals see themselves and how they are perceived. The work examines the instability of self-image, with the figure’s reflection shifting from male to female and challenging assumptions about identity and perspective.
Aiace & Cassandra draws on classical mythology to explore trauma, conflict and the tension between truth and denial. Contrasting smooth, flawless skin with battle-worn marble surfaces, Jago materialises the emotional and psychological scars carried by its figures.
His monumental female David represents one of the clearest expressions of Jago’s engagement with sculptural tradition, offering his own interpretation of a subject that has long fascinated sculptors, including Donatello, Verrocchio, and Michelangelo. Rather than reproducing the traditional image of David as a symbol of masculine heroism, Jago reimagines the figure as a woman. The work is not simply a reversal of gender, but a reconsideration of the values the subject has long embodied — heroism, ideal beauty, and strength. By transforming the identity of this enduring figure, Jago asks whether such cultural symbols remain fixed or can acquire new meanings in the present. In doing so, he shifts a canonical emblem of masculine power into a contemporary reflection on female strength, showing how even the most established cultural forms can be reinterpreted for new generations.
The project has developed through three distinct forms: a gesso version, a gilded bronze version, and the monumental marble sculpture currently being carved. The gesso David established the final composition of the figure and served as the first full articulation of Jago’s reinterpretation. Exhibited at the Gallerie d’Italia in Naples, it provided the structural and anatomical foundation for every subsequent stage of the project.
The gilded bronze version extended the work’s reach far beyond the studio. Travelling internationally aboard the Italian Navy’s tall ship Amerigo Vespucci, it was displayed at venues including the Gallerie d’Italia before becoming part of the Jago Museum Capri project at Villa Lysis. During its presentation at Taormina’s Ancient Theatre, Jago covered the sculpture in tape as a protest against increasingly restrictive digital censorship mechanisms, transforming the work into a commentary on visibility, control and the politics of representation.
The marble David represents the ultimate physical challenge: a Carrara block more than four metres high and weighing several tonnes. The sculpture is being carved in the Port of Naples, the only place that welcomed Jago when he returned to Italy. He has described the harbour as becoming part of the project itself, where its people, daily rhythms and atmosphere have become inseparable from the act of making.
Carved using the traditional point‑pantograph technique, the sculpture progresses section by section, with each area completed before the scaffolding is lowered to reveal the next portion of stone. At this scale, the work is physically demanding and conceptually exacting, with each decision carrying a weight that reflects both the ambition of the project and the tradition it engages.
Yet the scale of the sculpture does not lessen Jago’s attention to the smallest details. For him, even the most subtle elements of the figure require the same understanding of form, movement and structure as the sculpture as a whole. He has compared carving hair to jazz: beneath its apparent spontaneity lies an underlying structure, while every surface must retain its own movement and volume. He also speaks of the quiet satisfaction—and slight sadness—of devoting equal care to details that will ultimately remain hidden from view, knowing that these moments belong primarily to the experience of making rather than to the viewer’s encounter with the finished sculpture.
For Jago, no gesture is insignificant in the making of a monumental sculpture. Every decision contributes to the final work, reflecting his belief that small, seemingly insignificant actions accumulate into major achievements, and that the attitude behind each gesture matters more than the gesture itself. For him, this process requires the discipline to remain present through repetition, fatigue and the long periods of labour that allow a work of such scale to emerge.
Building New Contexts for Sculpture
In 2023, Jago transformed the abandoned Church of Sant’Aspreno ai Crociferi into the Jago Museum Napoli, placing a contemporary art space within the Rione Sanità district. The project connected sculpture with the wider social and cultural renewal taking place in the area.
Jago’s decision to create these spaces emerged from his search for a structure that aligned with his way of working and artistic vision. It reflects a broader conviction that the conditions in which sculpture is encountered are part of the work itself, rather than merely a backdrop. Instead of adapting to existing systems, he developed places where the making, presentation and experience of sculpture could coexist.
His recent expansion to Villa Lysis in Capri continues this approach, transforming the historic cliffside estate into a setting where exhibition, production and landscape come together. More than a place to display finished works, Villa Lysis reflects Jago’s belief that the environment in which sculpture is experienced is inseparable from the work itself. Within this context, works such as the gilded bronze David, the marble installation Water (2025) and Medusa (2026) form a sculptural landscape that reflects his ongoing investigation into transformation, material and identity.
Alongside these projects, Jago has presented major solo exhibitions at Palazzo Bonaparte and delivered masterclasses at the New York Academy of Art. His documentary, Jago: Into the White, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2024, while his studio practice reaches an audience of more than a million people across social media. His honours include the Pontifical Medal, the Gala de Arte Montecarlo (2013), the Premio Pio Catelnel (2015), the Premio del Pubblico at Arte Fiera Bologna (2017), and the inaugural Gina Lollobrigida Award (2024).
In conversation with The Exclusivist, Jago discusses the precision, risk and intuition involved in carving monumental marble, the discoveries that emerge through direct engagement with the material, and the independent philosophy behind the spaces he has created.
Q&A With Jago
The Geometry of the Irreversible
You have compared carving marble to a spoken word: once the chisel strikes, it cannot be recalled. As a sculpture approaches its final stages, where the stone reaches its thinnest structural threshold and every decision becomes permanent, how does the working environment of your studio shift? How do you read the material at that point, and have unexpected internal fractures ever taken a piece in a direction you hadn’t originally intended?
Just as micro-expressions on a face can convey 80% of a message, so too can the final millimetres of a work of art. That final, incredibly thin layer has the power to shift the work’s message, even to take it in an unexpected direction. It is in those final millimetres that the meaning of the sculpture reveals itself. That space is open to countless interpretations, and if different artists were to finish the same piece, each would bring their own sensibility to it, opening the work up to multiple meanings.
The finishing stage is not only the most exciting part; it is also the most crucial, because that is where the magic happens. In that subtle space, you often find yourself moving beyond the original idea and discovering something different within the stone, something the project did not initially suggest. At that point, I work with a single oblique light in a completely dark room, always in silence. The space shapes and influences me, and I try to finish the sculpture in complete isolation, because with marble there is no going back.
When it comes to defining a work, bringing it to completion, or finishing it, one must act not only on intuition, but also with determination and final certainty.
As for fractures—if there are any—they’re discovered early on, and sometimes they aren’t that important or decisive; sometimes they can even help you find the courage to remove more than you had originally planned. They can even lead the work in a new direction. I have spent much of my life carving abandoned, shapeless blocks, so for me a fracture is not a mistake but part of the final meaning, an added value.
Vertical Engineering
David is your first monumental four-metre vertical block. Once the stone passed its mid-point and a lot of material had been removed, how did the height, balance, and sheer weight of the remaining marble affect the way you had to work physically? Did that stage push you close to the practical limits of what one sculptor can realistically do?
I’ve never created such a large work before; this is the first time I’ve tackled something like this, and I’m doing it in the most traditional way possible, using a point pantograph, just as Master Canova employed this technique at its highest level. On the one hand, this forces me to spend a great deal of time on it; I’ve already been working on David for three years now. On the other hand, that time is necessary because it allows me to achieve the quality I demand of myself. I couldn’t have done it any other way.
Step by step, I bring out the elements that actually move me closer to the finished work, and I have to work differently because, at this scale, I couldn’t rough out the entire piece all at once. I had to start and finish each section completely, working from top to bottom: rough sketch, sketch, and final touches on the head; rough sketch, sketch, and final touches on the torso; rough sketch, sketch, and final touches on the legs, which is exactly what I’m doing. Right now, I’m sketching the legs, their anatomy and proportions, and then I’ll move on to the final touches, which I’ll focus on between September and December.
Obviously, this is a process that, on the one hand, technically follows a traditional method, which I love and consider the best in terms of the quality of the result and the creative freedom of the artist who creates it. On the other hand, this technique forces me to work on a four-metre scale in an unconventional way: in stages, using different pantographs, with different reference points that I have to devise each time. I’m working in a way that, in a traditional academic setting, I wouldn’t feel comfortable teaching or recommending, because it’s risky and requires constant practice; the initial planning was crucial to being able to work safely and effectively over these three years.
The work was divided into three parts: head and shoulders, torso, and legs, with the scaffolding lowered each time I finished a section, starting from the top. Now that I’ve reached the ground, I’m no longer working with the scaffolding. This is interesting for me because I don’t see the work slowly taking shape; I always see each part finished. I can even enjoy the completed work, even though everything else is still missing. There’s always this exercise in imagination, which is really wonderful.
The Reset
You have said that you have no set formula for how you select your next subject. When you finally finish a work that has taken years of your life, how do you physically and mentally cross that bridge from absolute exhaustion to a blank slate? Does the next project find you while you are still working, or do you have to step away from the stone completely before the next idea surfaces?
Ideas come to me constantly; my challenge is to select the ones that truly matter, the ones to which I intend to devote my time and life. I already have a long list of projects that I have partially developed through the creation of models, and that I will certainly begin once I have finished David. But there are many other works that, I must say, I have not shared, have not posted on social media, have not publicised, and that are not on my website, even though they are already completed and right here in front of me in my studio at this very moment.
While working on such a large piece, I inevitably have to carve out time to attend to other things, things I feel the need to do, things I have to do, and this is unavoidable. Taking a little break every now and then helps, if you can manage it, because it creates new enthusiasm and desire; for me, nurturing that desire is important. On the one hand, I am eager, so to speak, to finish the work and see it completed; on the other hand, I enjoy every single moment of the process because it is wonderful: it is a journey of discovery. In fact, I am doing something I have never done before, so it is a pure discovery of myself, of others, and of the work itself.
I don’t need to step back, wait, or search for a new idea, because the creative process takes so much time that, if you listen to yourself, the images come naturally. When working on such large-scale projects, you take notes on everything else, then sift through them: that way, you already have a perspective; at least, that’s what happens to me.
Institutional Autonomy
The conventional art world is often perceived as operating on a kind of feudal logic: galleries and museums acting as gatekeepers between the artist and the public. By converting a deconsecrated church into the Jago Museum, you effectively dismantled any barrier for your own work. Was this always part of your vision, or did it emerge as a result of frustrations you encountered along the way?
When you begin a journey, you naturally assume the world works in a certain way, not only through school or academia, but even within the family. Tradition becomes the rule. On one hand, it is easy to say, “This is how things work; I’ll try to fit into that system.” On the other hand, the system, for its own natural and legitimate reasons, may not align with what you do, and it might reject you. At that point, you have two choices: you can become angry and blame the system, which is the easiest thing to do, or you can try to forge your own path because you love what you do and do not want to give up on who you believe you are.
For me, it happened exactly like that. I tried to understand how certain dynamics worked, but I was not suited to them. I did not have the qualities required to operate within a particular institutional structure, whether in terms of my way of thinking or my personal affinity with it, because I simply was not the right fit. That system is perfect; it works very well and proves itself every day. And if an artist finds meaning or direction within that context, that is wonderful; they should take advantage of that opportunity. But for me, it was different. I took another path, without a clear goal at first, and that goal gradually took shape along the way.
The realisation that we live in an age of communication was crucial. Today it seems obvious, but when I first started sharing my thoughts, my aesthetic values and my images, even within a small circle, people from the “other world”, the world of art that was considered truly important, asked me how I thought I could make my way, how I could reach an audience interested in buying my work or engaging with it.
Today, there is not a single gallery in the world without an Instagram or Facebook profile. Even those who feel distant from that world, who criticise it for not being elite or niche, are still part of it. They communicate through those platforms, even if they claim not to be captivated by them. They have been drawn into the contemporary world of communication in the same way. That is simply a fact.
As for the museum, for me it is an attempt to protect or preserve an idea of beauty. Art history tells us this, and the museums we visit tell us this. Take the Guggenheim: an individual who made certain choices and transformed his vision into a place where people could experience it. Today, it feels completely natural to walk into the Guggenheim Museum. I could list endless examples, but let us take it as an institutional model.
The Unexecuted Project
Is there a project you keep returning to that remains out of reach, whether because of scale, structure, or something the material itself won’t yet allow? If so, what is it, and what stands between you and it?
I am certain that a project that cannot be realised is one that falls outside the right measure. I believe in the right measure, and I believe that happiness comes from being in tune with your own measure, from being grounded in it. This does not mean lacking ambition, being timid, or limiting your desires. It means knowing exactly where you stand, understanding the moment you are living in, and recognising the difference between what is possible at that stage and what still belongs only to the realm of imagination. Because if you envision a project that is right for your measure at that point in your life, then the universe will conspire in your favour.
It may take ten years, but by taking one step at a time, in keeping with the moment you are living in, you will eventually achieve something great. You can accomplish extraordinary things by remaining true to your own measure; it does not mean limiting yourself. When I speak about the “right measure”, I do not mean thinking small, aspiring to self-effacement, or giving up on your curiosity. I mean acting in accordance with who you are.
You first have to answer a few simple questions: Where am I right now? Who am I at this stage? Only then can you gain perspective. The projects I have not been able to carry out — at least not yet — are the ones that failed to take the right measure into account. They were out of proportion with who I truly was at the time, and for that reason they could not come to fruition.
The things I am doing today have grown naturally out of the stage I had reached, and that scale has grown with me until those ideas finally came to fruition. So you can have an ambitious idea, but you need to give that idea time. You cannot plant a seed, an idea, and expect it to become a huge tree capable of providing oxygen overnight. You have to give an idea time, because it needs to grow into its proper scale as you move forward. That is what I have come to realise. But perhaps it only applies to me; I don’t know.
The Long View
Jago’s work demonstrates that the future of marble sculpture lies not in abandoning tradition, but in reinterpreting it.
Direct carving on this scale and at this level—slow, physical, irreversible, and defined by absolute precision—is rare in contemporary sculpture. Jago is not reviving a lost discipline; he is advancing it, showing how a demanding, centuries-old practice can still generate new forms, new meanings, and new cultural relevance.
The Making of David directed by Lorenzo Promutico
Jago Official Website | Instagram | Jago Museums: Naples | Capri
