Born in Carrara into a family of sculptors, Fontana was educated at the Carrara Academy of Fine Art and trained under his uncle Pietro Fontana before moving to Rome where he worked under Bertel Thorvaldson (1770-1844). In the 1840s, during the struggle for Italian independence, he served in Garibaldi’s army but went into political exile in 1848. He came to England in 1850, where he remained until his death, becoming a naturalised citizen in the 1860s. He exhibited both portrait subjects and ideal figures and groups regularly from 1852 until the year of his death. He received several public commissions, both in Britain and in Australia. His statue, the Prisoner of Love, was reproduced in parian porcelain by the Belleek factory.