COSMATI. — Under this generic designation are grouped the marble-workers active in Rome, in various localities of Lazio and generally in central Italy, from the 12th century to the early 14th century, belonging to several families, in some of which the name Cosma often recurs. They were essentially decorators who produced church furnishings such as ambons, ciboria, cathedras, and plutei, combining a certain classical taste with the predilection for color diffused by the Byzantines in southern Italy; that is, enriching their works with inlays of porphyry, serpentine, and bands of mosaic, while always leaving, unlike the Campanian or Sicilian marble-workers, ample space for the white background that frames and contains the colored surfaces. In this sense they were refined decorators, maintaining a lively balance between the surface to be decorated and the polychrome ornament.
When they turned to architecture, they did not concern themselves with the complex structural problems of the Lombards, nor did they trouble themselves with volumetric research; instead, they erected their buildings, sometimes within the oldest temples devoid of chromatic decoration (e.g., Santa Maria di Falleri), with a native taste for classical proportions, rhythmically balancing solids and voids, and punctuating the monotonous recurrence of motifs with harmonious pauses.
There are numerous families and works. A marble-worker named Paolo was active at the beginning of the 12th century in Ferentino, and had four sons (Giovanni, Pietro, Angelo, and Sassone), who together erected in Rome the ciborium of San Lorenzo (1148) and later those of San Marco, of the SS. Cosma e Damiano, and of the SS. Apostoli (the last three no longer extant), and, without Pietro, that of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Nicola, son of Angelo, worked in Gaeta (probably not on the bell tower, as some believe), carved with Vassalletti the candelabrum of San Paolo, erected the ciborium of San Bartolomeo all’Isola, and finally worked in Sutri with his son Iacopo, of whom imprecise traces remain. Drudo de Trivio completed the ciborium of Ferentino, collaborated with Luca di Cosma on the plutei of Civitacastellana, and with his son Angelo on a ciborium in Lanuvio.
A marble-worker named Ranuccio worked in Santa Maria Maggiore in Tuscania, and his sons Pietro and Nicola on the door of Santa Maria in Castello in Tarquinia; Giovanni and Giuttone, sons of Nicola, on Santa Andrea in Flumine at Ponzano and later on the altar and ciborium of Santa Maria in Castello; other relatives of theirs also worked in various centers of Lazio.
Lorenzo di Tebaldo first executed in Rome an altar at Santo Stefano del Cacco, then with his son Iacopo constructed the splendid ambons of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, the door of Santa Maria di Falleri, and the main door of the duomo of Civitacastellana. Iacopo worked at San Bartolomeo, began with admirable technical perfection the cloister of Santa Scolastica and the portico of Civitacastellana, which he completed with his son Cosma (1210). The solemn arch that interrupts the linear rhythm of the entablature draws on classical motifs and anticipates, in the serenity of its vision, the Brunelleschian motif of the Pazzi Chapel. Cosma, with his sons Luca and Iacopo, made the pavement of the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano.
Cosma di Pietro Mellini, an architect, designed the chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum in Gothicizing forms; he had three sons: Iacopo, a decorator of pavements, Giovanni, who executed various tombs at Santa Maria Maggiore, the Aracoeli, and elsewhere, and Deodato, who carved an altar of the Maddalena at the Lateran and the Gothicizing ciborium of Santa Maria in Cosmedin.
Another great family of Roman marble-workers was that of the Vassalletti. Pietro collaborated on the ciborium of San Paolo, the only fully figured work in Roman production, executed an ambo in San Pietro (1190), and works not well defined in Segni (1155), the schola cantorum of San Saba, demonstrating more than any other the assimilation of classical modes, partly also drawn from the decorative repertoire of the Etruscans. His masterpieces are the cloisters of San Paolo fuori le Mura and of San Giovanni in Laterano, which he began alone and completed with his son Vassalletti; works of admirable equilibrium in the rhythmic spacing of the pillars, the felicitous proportions of the arcades, the refined decorative elegance, the firmness of carving, and the vivacity of color distributed in veins of giallolino on the coupled colonnettes, always varied, or concentrated in disks and rectangles beneath the capital carved with foliage and masks. With greater sobriety of color and a more refined sense of proportion, the same marble-workers erected the portico of the basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura.
Also to be remembered is the family of the Salvati: Pietro de Maria, who built the cloister of the abbey of