Today almost everyone is familiar with his admired and respected work, but almost nobody knows his name. This is all thanks to the heroic in their expression and standing over four meters high statues of apostles in the Basilica of St. John on the Lateran (San Giovanni in Laterano). Despite the fact that only four of them were his doing, he was the best-known and experienced of a number of artists employed to carry out this task. Undoubtedly, his best figure is that of St. Matthew, full of majesty, mystery and strength. The apostle and evangelist supporting an enormous book, at the same time rests his foot on a sack with coins pouring out of it – was it possible in more expressive way to show the metamorphosis of a man, who directed by God’s will, from a tax collector turned into one of Christ’s companions and later the author of a Gospel, which spread the message of Christ to subsequent generations of Christians.

Rusconi came to Rome from Milan around the year 1684 and for two years he perfected his skills in the workshop of Ercole Ferrata. His initial works were of purely decorative character – these were formed in plaster cast elements of altars and walls in the churches of San Silvestro in Capite, San Salvatore in Lauro, Santa Maria dell’Orto, and Santa Maria in Vallicella. As an independent artist, but still unsure of his style, Rusconi completed the personifications of the four cardinal virtues in stucco, in the Church of Sant’Ignazio di Loyola. However, his most prestigious work, was of course the funerary monument of Pope Gregory XIII in the St. Peter’s Basilica (San Pietro in Vaticano), in which successfully he competed with the greatest artists, employed in the design of other papal sarcophaguses.

The artist also educated several well-known and valued sculptors, the continuators of his style. The best of these were Pietro Bracci and Giovanni Battista Maini.

The most important structures of Camillo Rusconi in Rome:

• Church of Sant’Ignazio di Loyola

Personifications of virtues (Courage, Justice, Strength, Sensibility)
in the Ludovisi Chapel (1685),monumental statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola (plaster cast)

• Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva

Funerary monument of  Cesare Fabretti, approx. 1700

• Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano

Figures of apostles: St. Andrew (1709), St. James the Elder, St. John the Evangelist and St. Matthew (1718)

• Basilica of San Pietro in Vaticano

Funerary monument of Pope Gregory XIII (1725), statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola

• Church of Santa Maria della Concezione

Funerary monument of Prince Alexander Benedict Sobieski, 1728