CIUFFAGNI, BERNARDO di PIERO DI BARTOLOMEO. - Sculptor, born in Firenze in 1381, died there in 1457. An assistant to Ghiberti on the second door of the Baptistery, between 1410 and 1433 he carved for the façade of S. Maria del Fiore the statue of St. Matthew the Evangelist and those of David and Isaiah, now inside the church. In 1417 he had also begun to carve for the campanile the statue of Joshua, later completed by Nanni di Bartolomeo known as il Rosso. From 1447 to 1450 he was in Rimini for work on the Malatesta temple.
C. belongs to the generation of masters who followed the transition from traditional fourteenth-century forms to those animated by the new spirit characteristic of the age proclaimed at the beginning of the fifteenth century by Ghiberti and Donatello. His figures, however, although not devoid at times, as in the St. Matthew, of a notable grandeur of conception, in other cases (the Isaiah and the David) reflect the uncertainties and modesty of his temperament.