By Terri Jo Ryan

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Baylor University is more than an institution of higher learning: It is also a museum of sorts, with examples of fine art scattered across campus.

One of the state’s “adopted sons,” Italian-born sculptor Pompeo Luigi Coppini, is responsible for some of that luster.

Coppini was born May 19, 1870, in Moglia, Mantua, Italy. He grew up in Renaissance arts capital Florence, where he studied at the Accademia dell’Arte del Disegno.

Although he didn’t know English and only had $40 in his pockets, Coppini immigrated to the United States in March 1896. In less than two years, he had married an American girl — Elizabeth diBarbieri of New Haven, Conn. — and he became an American in 1902.

A German-born American artist, sculptor and stonecutter named Frank Teich (1856-1939) encouraged Coppini to come to Texas in 1901 to work, as he was, in the flourishing field of Confederate monuments.

Coppini was commissioned in 1901 to create the equestrian statue of Confederate unit Terry’s Texas Rangers at Austin. That same year, Coppini crafted the models used to develop statues of Jefferson Davis and other Confederate figures. The statues were erected on the Capitol grounds in Austin in 1903.

Around that time, he also executed the first of two bronze sculptures for Baylor, a depiction of Baylor’s second president, Rufus C. Burleson (1823-1901), who served from 1851 until 1861 and then from 1886 until 1897.

Coppini lived and worked in San Antonio until 1916, when he moved to Chicago. By 1920 he had moved to New York City to facilitate the production of the Littlefield Fountain Memorial for the University of Texas at Austin.

In 1937, Coppini established a studio in San Antonio to work on a major commission for the Texas Centennial: the cenotaph to the heroes of the Alamo, which stands today at Alamo Plaza in San Antonio.

He founded the Classic Arts Fraternity in San Antonio, known today as the Coppini Academy of Fine Art. It serves as a museum of his work.

In 1939, Coppini crafted a sculpture of the seated Judge Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor (1793-1873), the university’s namesake and co-founder.

Coppini was so touched by Baylor President Pat M. Neff’s awarding him an honorary doctor of fine arts degree in June 1940 that the artist donated a photo album with commentary in his own hand about some of his projects to what is now the Texas Collection at Baylor University.

Coppini died in San Antonio on Sept. 26, 1957, and was buried there in Sunset Memorial Park in a crypt he designed himself.

Sources: The Texas Collection at Baylor University, Handbook of Texas Online, CoppiniAcademy.com, TexasEscapes.com.