'Arnolfo di Cambio'
[1] (c.
1240 –
1300/
1310[2]) was an
Italian architect and
sculptor.
Biography
Arnolfo was born in
Colle Val d'Elsa,
Tuscany.
Particular of the tomb of Riccardo Cardinal Annibaldi, at
St. John Lateran. This was the first major work of Arnolfo in
Rome.
He was
Nicola Pisano’s chief assistant on the marble
pulpit for the Duomo in
Siena (
1265-
1268), but he soon began to work independently on important tomb sculpture. In 1266-1267 he worked in
Rome for King
Charles I of Anjou, portraying him in the famous statue housed in the
Campidoglio. Around
1282 he finished the monument to Cardinal de Braye in the church of
San Domenico in Orvieto, for which he modified an antique Roman statue of the Abundance. In Rome Arnolfo had known by the
Cosmatesque art, and its influence can be seen in the
intarsio and polychrome glass decorations in the churches of
San Paolo fuori le Mura and
Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, where he worked in 1285 and 1293, respectively. In this period he also worked to the
presepio of
Santa Maria Maggiore, to
Santa Maria in Aracoeli, to the monument of
Pope Boniface VIII (1300) and the bronze statue of
St. Peter in
St. Peter's Basilica.
In 1294-1295 he worked in Florence, mainly as an architect. According to his biographer
Giorgio Vasari, he was in charge of construction of the
cathedral of the city, for which he provided the statues once decorating the lower part of the façade destroyed in 1589. The surviving statues are now in the Museum of the Cathedral. Also attributed to Arnolfo is the design of the Church of
Santa Croce. Vasari assigned him also the urban plan of the new city of
San Giovanni Valdarno.
The monumental character of Arnolfo's work has left its mark on the appearance of Florence. His funerary monuments became the model for Gothic funerary art.
Giorgio Vasari included a biography of Arnolfo in his ''
Lives of the Artists''.
Selected works
The tabernacle over the high altar of
St. John Lateran is derived from a design by Arnolfo di Cambio and decorated with paintings by Barna da Siena in 1367-1368. The cage above contains silver reliquaries which are said to hold the heads of SS. Peter and Paul.
Architecture
★ Old basilica di
Santa Maria del Fiore,
Florence
Sculpture
★ Monument to
Pope Adrian V (1276) -
San Francesco,
Viterbo
★ Monument to Riccardo Cardinal Annibaldi (1276) -
San Giovanni in Laterano,
Rome
★ Statue of Charles I of Anjou (
1277) -
Campidoglio,
Rome
★ Fountain of the Thirsty People (Fontana Minore) -
Perugia
★ Tomb of Cardinal
Guillaume de Braye (c. 1282) -
San Domenico,
Orvieto
★ Monument of pope Boniface VIII - the Museum of the Opera del Duomo - Florence)
References
★
Lo stil novo del Gotico italiano, , Michele, Tomasi, Medioevo,
Footnotes
1. The name "Arnolfo di Lapo" by which he is mentioned in some sources was an invention by his biographer Giorgio Vasari. See Tomasi, 2007.
2. The traditional date of 1302 has been recently discovered to be wrong. See Tomasi, 2007.
External links
★
Arnolfo di Cambio in the "History of Art"
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
![Don\](images/articles/thumbs/beachrainthumb.jpg "Don\")
