Pietro CAVALLINI. — Painter and mosaicist of the Cerroni family, born in Rome between 1240 and 1250, died there at an advanced age, perhaps a centenarian. In 1273 he signed a notarial act in the archive of S. Maria Maggiore: “Petrus dictus Cavallinus de Cerronibus.” In 1291 he was working on the mosaic of the band beneath the apse semidome in the basilica of S. Maria in Trastevere; shortly afterward, probably in 1293, in collaboration with assistants he painted the interior of the church of S. Cecilia in Trastevere. In 1308 he was in Naples, where later, but before 1320, he was employed in decorating the church of S. Maria Donna Regina. Returning to Rome, he worked at the behest of Pope John XXII (1316–34) on some mosaic figures on the façade of the ancient Ostian basilica, later partly transferred inside to the wall of the triumphal arch toward the presbytery.
Besides these works, which still exist, Ghiberti and, following him, Vasari mention others that have been lost, among which especially the decoration of the presbytery of the church of the Aracoeli and the frescoed walls of the basilica of S. Paolo; the latter, executed between 1270 and 1280, was destroyed when the basilica was rebuilt after the fire of 1823. Of the decoration of S. Paolo, however, some drawings made around 1640 by Antonio Eclissi survive, now preserved in cod. lat. barberinianus of the Vatican Library no. 4406; they are of interest at least because they show the iconographic schemes used by C. in that work.
Thus for about twenty years C. was already active in Rome when, commissioned by Bertoldo Stefaneschi, in 1291 he executed the mosaic band beneath the apse semidome of S. Maria in Trastevere, where in seven panels he depicted scenes from the life of the Virgin and the Virgin in glory between SS. Peter and Paul with Stefaneschi kneeling. The iconographic schemes used by C. here, as in his other works, are still those of Byzantine tradition, though he sometimes interprets them in an attempt to render more “credibly” the relationship, altered over the centuries, between setting and figures.
Nevertheless, the tone of his representation is always solemn and has the value of a true celebration. The types are also traditional, though the master tends to eliminate from his images whatever might appear conventionally mannered. The forms of Cavallini’s images give a sense of both solidity and softness. In him, color substantiates form, which is rounded in passages of graduated planes through uninterrupted variations of tone.
The same stylistic features appear at S. Cecilia in Trastevere, where on the counterfaçade wall there survives from the entire church decoration the upper portion of the scene of the Last Judgment, namely Christ between the Apostles, some angelic figures, and groups of the elect and the reprobate. Yet at S. Cecilia C. painted directly on the wall with a freer technique than that of mosaic, free from the conventions of Oriental tradition. This allowed him, especially in the chromatic field, not so much innovations as improvements of notable significance. The forms seem truly modeled in a rich paste dense with moisture that reveals itself in the already vivid light of its own tones. The types of the images also increasingly free themselves from those hallowed by tradition; more than being different, and even in some easy comparisons with ancient Roman portraiture, they appear animated by a new spirit. The apostles of S. Cecilia, imposing, statuesque, solemn, belong to a new generation of images that here reveals itself for the first time. The judging Christ seated among them has a face illumined by a very lofty spirituality deriving from a perfect inner peace that makes this image something new.
In Naples, where he lived at least a decade, C. probably conceived the entire decoration of the church of S. Maria Donna Regina, but only those pairs of apostles, saints, and prophets that appear in eight panels, four on each side, toward the presbytery beside the windows, belong to his hand; the rest is the work of followers and continuators who also operated after C. had left the city.
These Cavallini images from Naples, painted more than twenty years after those at S. Cecilia, when the master must have been around seventy, show a further development in form and human spirituality, certainly determined by deeper reflections and new experiences realized by him, more than by any knowledge he certainly had in Rome of Giotto’s works, from the influence upon him
The strong personality of Arnolfo exercised an influence on C., whom he may have known and perhaps even worked alongside in the years when they were both engaged on the churches of S. Cecilia and S. Paolo. Indeed, it is not impossible that C. himself is the Socio Petro named in the Arnolfian inscription on the ciborium of S. Paolo.
As for the remaining mosaics of the old façade of S. Paolo, which postdate the works in Naples, no definitive judgment can be formed. Vasari attributes to C. a work in sculpture as well: the great wooden crucifix in the chapel of the Sacrament at S. Paolo. This attribution by Vasari, long neglected, deserves serious consideration. That sculpture is certainly the masterpiece of Roman plastic art at the beginning of the fourteenth century and is the work of a master whose culture and experience are not unlike those of C. in those years.
In addition to the three major pictorial cycles mentioned above, other works are assigned to the master; among these, the closest to him are the decoration of the apse of the Roman church of S. Giorgio in Velabro and the lunette of the tomb of Cardinal d’Acquasparta in the church of the Aracoeli. Yet even in these paintings it may not be possible to recognize more than the hand of faithful followers, some of whom, almost always of modest talent, repeated the master’s forms like a weary echo well into the mid-1300s in Lazio, Campania, and even Umbria, where, especially in Perugia, at the beginning of the century, several works of Cavallinian tone are to be found.
Of austere, meditative, and religious temperament, like Cimabue (q.v.) and Duccio (q.v.), C. belongs to the generation preceding Giotto’s. Nourished by the culture proper to the Roman court and Byzantine-influenced painters, he was always inclined to deepen every traditional attitude so as to resolve it into a personal experience. This led him, through the knowledge of Neo-Hellenistic and Eastern art, of which examples were then frequent in Italy, to ascend back to the sources of ancient classicism.
As the years advanced, the tone of Cavallini’s artistic language gradually changed, not only as a refinement of expressive means but also as a surpassing of those ideas and “medieval sentiments” that appeared in his earliest works. In the frescoes of S. Maria Donna Regina in Naples, his figures express essentially the highly poetic imaginative world of the master, and they do so with such direct and immediate harmony as to give us a sense of fulfillment that is proper to classical art. – See Plates LXX–LXXI.