ANTELAMI, BENEDETTO. - Architect and sculptor. The surname is an appellation that was given, from the 12th century onward, to the master masons and builders originating from the Intelvi Valley, who formed a powerful guild in Genoa. Two works bear his signature and the date: the high relief with the Deposition in the cathedral of Parma (1178) and the architrave of the northern door of the baptistery of Parma (1196). The Deposition was part of the pontile of the Parma Cathedral together with other fragments: four stylophorous lions, today placed in the Bernini chapel of the Cathedral, three historiated capitals in the museum (the fourth is missing) and another chiseled relief representing Christ in glory flanked by the four symbols of the evangelists, by the four doctors of the Church, and by three angels, also in the museum (a third relief, which together with the Deposition and the Christ in Glory was walled into the parapet of the pontile, has been lost). Between the pontile and the baptistery, chronologically, the episcopal throne in the choir of the Parma Cathedral must be placed. To A. belong, besides the rich plastic decoration on the exterior and interior of the baptistery, partially executed by assistants, also the design and construction of the building, completed in its essential parts, including the dome, in 1216. Works of A. are also the cathedral of Borgo San Donnino and some of the many sculptures that adorn it (certainly the two prophets within niches of the facade, which remained unfinished), in which, however, the preponderant intervention of mediocre followers is noticeable. In 1219 he began the construction of the abbey of S. Andrea at Vercelli (almost completed in 1223), decorating its central portal with the Martyrdom of St. Andrew.
A. must have spent his years of apprenticeship and artistic education in Provence, since the recollections of the complex sculptures of the facades of the church of St-Gilles and above all of the portal and cloister of St. Trophime at Arles assert themselves copiously and vigorously from the master's earliest works, forming the substratum of his art, even while mingling with a growing influence of the Gothic art of northern France, which appears particularly alive at S. Andrea of Vercelli. But A., far from passively accepting such French elements, elaborated and thoroughly transformed them, conferring on his creations a frankly Lombard imprint in the tight and compact robustness of volumes, shunning both the trite and restless picturesqueness proper to the Provençal school and the ascensional sweep and refined elegance that characterize the Gothic architecture and sculpture of the churches of the Île-de-France. Even in the vast iconographic themes developed by A., especially in the Parma Baptistery which is his masterpiece, one catches, even in their partial derivation from France, strongly original accents and an uncommon subtlety in choosing and mutually connecting the themes. A., whose importance within the sphere of medieval Lombard architecture and sculpture still awaits better definition by criticism, can be considered, for robustness of genius and breadth of culture, one of the most powerful personalities of the era of transition from Romanesque to Gothic art. - See Pl. CXIX.
