BELLI, VALERIO. - Engraver of gems and medallist, b. in 1468 at Vicenza (for which reason he was called Valerio Vicentino), d. there in 1546, after having resided for a long time in Rome and Venice.
His stay in Rome exercised great influence upon him, since it enabled him to free himself from the fifteenth-century taste for perspective (crystal cross in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London) and instead to approach a mannered Renaissance decorativism. Besides various engraved works in crystal and hard stones, derived from artists of the period and now lost, and besides numerous struck medals, from 1525 to 1532 he worked on a small silver casket with crystal engravings, commissioned from him by Clement VII, which represents his masterpiece, because of its refined and accurate execution and its skillful movement of masses (Florence, Palazzo Pitti).
