AGOSTINO di Duccio. – Sculptor and architect (b. in Florence in 1418, d. ca. 1481). His artistic training is unknown; however, one notes in him, especially in his very low-relief work, the influence of Donatello, and at the same time one discerns in his manner a kinship with the technique of the Florentine goldsmiths and bronze sculptors. His vision of reality is essentially linear, and this aligns him with his contemporary Botticelli, whom he also recalls in the expression of his languid and thoughtful figures. – See Plates XXXVI-XXXVIII.
After some minor works, A. in 1447 undertook the decoration of the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, and in this work he displayed all the best qualities of his art, enlivening the architecture of six chapels with highly original sacred and profane figurations, which are given animation and cheerfulness by the polychromy of the marbles and the color of the stuccoes. In 1457 he was called to Perugia to decorate the façade of S. Bernardino, which he himself had built in the manner of Alberti, and there he left a notable monument of decorative art, in which statues and bas-reliefs are enlivened by polychromy. More restrained and more coherent, that is, free from the excessive accumulation of sculptural elements, is the Porta S. Pietro of the same city.
Among his isolated sculptures we may recall the very refined Madonna with Child and Angels in the Opera del Duomo Museum in Florence, in which, as in his other sacred works, the lightness of the lines and the delicacy of the relief produce a sense of refined elegance.