ARNOLFO di CAMBIO. - Sculptor and architect, b. at Colle Val d'Elsa around 1240-45, d. at Florence on 18 March 1302. He is remembered as an assistant of Nicola Pisano in the contract of 1266 for the pulpit of the cathedral of Siena and in other records of payments of 1267 and 1268 relating to this work, completed in 1269. It cannot be established in a persuasive manner - contrary to the opinion of some scholars (Venturi, Ragghianti, Barsotti, Carli) - that A. collaborated on the Sienese pulpit, on the ark of St. Dominic at Bologna (1265-67), conceived by Nicola Pisano, or on the capitals of the cathedral of Siena, permeated with generic reminiscences of Nicola's art. It appears, on the other hand, quite probable that A. executed the sculptures of the tympanum in the monument to Adrian V (d. 1276) in the church of St. Francis at Viterbo. Certainly from A.'s hand must be considered the monument to Cardinal Annibaldi (d. 1276) in St. John Lateran at Rome, today dismembered, of which the recumbent statue of the deceased is preserved in the basilica, and the high relief with the ceremony of the Mass in the cloister of the same basilica. In 1277 we find A. at Perugia, where his services were requested by Fra Benvegnate, engaged in the work of the conduit and the fountain on the piazza maggiore. Around 1277 A. must have sculpted the honorary statue of Charles of Anjou in the museum of the Campidoglio, and the fragment of a Gothic arch with a headless figure in the same museum also belongs to him. And to approximately the same period is to be assigned the much-discussed portrait of a pontiff in the museum of Palazzo Venezia at Rome. In 1281 A. is again at Perugia, where three "thirsty ones" remain by him in the picture gallery - which originally must have constituted the plastic decoration of a fountain - and the headless figure of a writing personage, recently discovered by Mariani. Of 1282 is the tomb of Cardinal Guillaume de Braye in the church of St. Dominic at Orvieto (Hoc opus fecit Arnulfus), of 1285 the tabernacle in the basilica of St. Paul at Rome (Hoc opus fecit Arnulfus cum suo socio Petro). To an epoch not very distant from the date of the ciborium of St. Paul is to be assigned the Presepe in St. Mary Major at Rome. Of the tomb of Honorius IV (1287) only the recumbent statue of the Pontiff remains, today in St. Mary in Aracoeli. Dated (1293) and signed is the tabernacle in St. Cecilia at Rome. For Boniface VIII A. executed the sacellum, consecrated in 1296, and the tomb; few remains of them survive in the Vatican Grottoes: the statue of the Pontiff lying on the funeral bed, two angels drawing the curtains and the bust of the Pope blessing. Under Boniface VIII must have been modeled the bronze statue of St. Peter in the Vatican basilica, attributed by some scholars erroneously to late antiquity. A.'s name occurs for the last time in a Florentine document of the 14th century in which he is called "capomaestro" of the cathedral of St. Mary of the Flower, which, in its first aspect, was adorned with various groups of statues, executed by A. himself. Of these remain the Madonna Regina, the so-called Santa Reparata, the Virgin of a Nativity in the Museum of the Opera, as well as, from the Dormitio Virginis, the recumbent Madonna and a young apostle who embraces her feet, and two corroded busts of apostles in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum of Berlin.
The attempt, made by some scholars (Keller), to consider A. more than anything else as an entrepreneur of sculptural complexes, that is, responsible in the first place for the design, whose execution would then have been largely abandoned by the master to his assistants, is to be rejected in the most resolute manner. Still less founded is the thesis of those (Weinberger, Paatz) who assign the Florentine works to a pupil of A. and the Roman ones to another, both active under A.'s direction. That the master availed himself of the work of assistants is beyond doubt, especially for the works of greater size such as the tabernacles of St. Paul and St. Cecilia and the tomb of Guillaume de Braye. But these are generally secondary parts that scarcely influence the stylistic appearance of the Arnolfian works, which all speak a well-defined and homogeneous language.
Still vividly discussed is the problem of A. as architect, to whom Vasari had assigned at Florence, besides the cathedral, the third circuit of the walls, the ancient loggia of Orsanmichele, later destroyed, the Loggia dei Lanzi and the piazza della Signoria, the three chapels of the choir of the Badia, the design of the church and the first cloisters of St. Croce, the marble facing of the Baptistery, the Palazzo Vecchio; moreover numerous buildings in the surroundings, among which houses, villas and the castles of St. John Val d'Arno and Castel Franco. This list was subsequently enlarged with the addition of the church of St. Mary Major and of St. Remigio, of the Bigallo and of the Trinity. Against this excessive enlargement of the limits of A.'s architectural activity modern criticism has risen, which has ended by restricting the paternity of A. as architect to the cathedral of Florence alone. Recently, moreover, some critics have wished anew to enlarge the list of buildings executed or designed by A., including in it (Paatz) the Badia (1284-1310) and the church of St. Croce (1294-95 ff.), as well as the Palazzo Vecchio, founded in 1298.
Constant elements of A.'s art are adherence to the stylistic manners of Nicola Pisano and the broad predominance of suggestions drawn from the classical figurative world, in the face of which the assonances with French Gothic art, unduly accentuated by some critic (Keller), reveal themselves as insignificant. Undeniable, on the other hand, are in the Annibaldi monument and in the ciborium of St. Paul the reminiscences of the Campanian pulpits, especially in the relationship between figures and mosaic background, and the affinity of the Charles of Anjou with a headless statue of the 13th century from the Porta di Capua, today in the museum of that city. For which reason Salmi thinks, not without foundation, of a sojourn of A. in the Mezzogiorno before 1276.
While in A.'s architectural works (ciborium of St. Paul and of St. Cecilia at Rome and the Florentine cathedral) one notes a progressive accentuation of Romanesque forms and a contemporary weakening of Gothic tension, in the sculptures the firm and solid plastic compactness of the youthful works is lightly animated and dissolved in the later ones. But these are in any case tenuous differences, scarcely evident, within a line of development essentially constant and little varied, characterized by a solemn and majestic conception of structure, by an acute sense of the essential in circumscribing the plastic organism within clear, ample, synthetic contours, by grave, strong, solemn psychological traits. - Vedi Tavy. I-II.
Bibliography18 works
Géza de Francovich