Agostino di Duccio

AGOSTINO di DUCCIO. - Sculptor and architect, (b. in Florence in 1418, d. ca. 1481). His artistic training is unknown; nevertheless, the influence of Donatello is found in him, especially in the very flattened relief, and at the same time a kinship with the technique of the Florentine goldsmiths and bronze sculptors can be seen in his manner.

His vision of reality is essentially linear, and this links him to his contemporary Botticelli, whom he also recalls in the expression of his languid and pensive figures. - See Plates XXXVI-XXXVIII.

After some works of lesser importance, A. in 1447 undertook to decorate the Malatesta Temple in Rimini, and in this he revealed all the finest qualities of his art, enlivening the architecture of six chapels with highly original sacred and profane figurations, to which the polychromy of the marbles and the color of the stuccoes lend animation and gladness. In 1457 he was called to Perugia to decorate the facade of S. Bernardino, which he himself had erected in the manner of Alberti, and there he left an outstanding monument of decorative art, in which statues and bas-reliefs are united, enlivened by polychromy. More sober and more coherent, that is, free from the plethoric filling of sculptural elements, is the Porta S. Pietro of the same city.

Among his isolated sculptures let us recall the most delicate Madonna with Child and Angels of the Museo dell'Opera del duomo of 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.