CAVALLINI, PIETRO. - Painter and mosaicist of the Cerroni family, b. in Rome between 1240 and 1250, d. there at a very great age, perhaps a centenarian. In 1273 he signed a notarial deed in the archive of S. Maria Maggiore: «Petrus dictus Cavallinus de Cerronibus». In 1291 he executed in mosaic the band beneath the semi-dome of the apse in the basilica of S. Maria in Trastevere; some time later, probably in 1293, with the collaboration of assistants, he covered the interior of the church of S. Cecilia in Trastevere with paintings. In 1308 he was in Naples, where later, but before 1320, he was employed in the decoration of the church of S. Maria Donna Regina. Having returned to Rome, he worked, on the commission of Pope John XXII (1316-34), on some figures in mosaic on the facade of the ancient Ostian basilica, later transferred in part to the interior, onto the wall of the triumphal arch facing the presbytery.
Besides these works, which still exist, Ghiberti, and on his sole authority Vasari, record others that have been lost, among them above all the decoration of the presbytery of the church of the Aracoeli and the fresco decoration of the walls of the basilica of S. Paolo; the latter, executed between 1270 and 1280, was destroyed by the rebuilding of the basilica after the fire of 1823. Of the decoration of S. Paolo, however, there remain some drawings traced around 1640 by Antonio Eclissi, today preserved in cod. lat. barberiniano no. 4406 of the Vatican Library, and these may interest us because, if nothing else, they show the iconographic schemes used in that work by C.
For about twenty years, therefore, C. was already active in Rome when, on the commission of Bertoldo Stefaneschi, in 1291, he executed in mosaic the band beneath the semi-dome of the apse of S. Maria in Trastevere, where in seven panels he depicted scenes from the life of the Virgin and the Virgin in glory between Sts. Peter and Paul with Stefaneschi kneeling. The iconographic schemes used by C., here as in his other works, are still those of the Byzantine tradition, although he sometimes interprets them, seeking to render with greater "credibility" the relationship, altered in the course of the centuries, between setting and figures.
Nevertheless the tone of his representation is always lofty and has the value of a true and proper celebration. The types too are the traditional ones, although the master tends to eliminate from his images whatever in them may appear as manneristic convention. The forms of Cavallini's images give a sense of consistency and softness together. Color indeed in C. substantiates the form, which is rounded in the transitions of the graded planes by means of uninterrupted variations of tone.
The same stylistic characteristics appear at S. Cecilia in Trastevere, where on the counter-facade wall the upper zone of the scene of the Last Judgment survives from the whole decoration of the church, that is, the Christ among the Apostles, some angelic figures and groups of the elect and the damned. However, at S. Cecilia C. paints directly on the wall with a freer technique than the mosaic with its conventions of Eastern tradition. This allows him, especially in the chromatic field, not so much innovations as refinements of very notable importance. The forms seem really molded in a rich paste dense with humors that reveals itself in the already vivid light of local tones. The types of the images too free themselves ever more from those consecrated by tradition but, rather than different, even through some easy comparisons with ancient Roman portraiture, they appear as 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 Christ as judge who sits in their midst has his face illuminated by a light of the highest spirituality deriving from a perfect inner peace that makes of this image something new. In Naples, where he lived for at least ten years, C. probably provided the idea for the whole decoration of the church of S. Maria Donna Regina, but to his hand belong only those pairs of apostles, saints and prophets that, within eight panels, four on each side, appear toward the presbytery at the sides of the windows; the rest is the work of followers and continuators who worked even after C. had left the city.
These Cavallini images in Naples, painted more than twenty years after those of S. Cecilia, when the master must have been around 70 years old, show a further development of the master's forms and human spirituality, certainly determined by deepenings and new experiences realized by him, more than by the knowledge he certainly had in Rome of the works of Giotto, by the influence exerted on him by the great personality of Arnolfo, whom C. knew and with whom he perhaps had familiarity in the years when they were together intent on working in the churches of S. Cecilia and S. Paolo. This is not to mention whether C. himself is that Socio Petro of the Arnolfian inscription of the ciborium of S. Paolo.
What remains of the mosaics of the ancient facade of S. Paolo, later than the works in Naples, does not permit a judgment. Vasari also assigns to C. a work of sculpture: the great wooden crucifix of the chapel of the Sacrament at S. Paolo. The Vasarian attribution, which for a long time had been entirely neglected, deserves instead every consideration. That sculpture is certainly the masterpiece of Roman plastic art at the beginning of the 14th century and is the work of a master whose culture and whose experience do not differ from those proper to C. in those years.
Besides the three great pictorial cycles mentioned above, other works are assigned to the master; among them all, 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 Card. d'Acquasparta in the church of the Aracoeli, but even in these paintings it is perhaps not possible to recognize anything but the hand of faithful followers, some of whom, almost always of slight worth, repeated like a weary echo the master's forms well beyond the middle of the 16th century in Lazio, in Campania and also in Umbria where, especially at Perugia, at the beginning of the century, several works of Cavallinian intonation are found.
An austere, meditative, religious temperament, like Cimabue (v.), like Duccio (v.), C. belongs to the generation preceding that of Giotto. Nourished by the culture that was proper to the lofty and Byzantinizing Roman painters, he was always inclined to deepen every traditional attitude in order to resolve it into an experience of his own. This led him, through the knowledge of Eastern Neo-Hellenistic art, of which examples were then frequent in Italy, to ascend as far as the sources of ancient classicism.
With the progress of the years the intonation of Cavallini's artistic language gradually changes, not only as a refinement of expressive means, but also as a surpassing of those ideas and those "medieval sentiments" that appeared in his first works. In the frescoes of S. Maria Donna Regina in Naples his figures express essentially the world of the master's highly poetic imagination, and express it with accords so direct and immediate as to give us a sense of fulfillment such as is proper to classical art. - See Plates LXX-LXXI.
Bibliography10 works
Emilio Lavagnino