DANIEL of Volterra (Daniele Ricciarelli). — Painter and sculptor, born in Volterra ca. 1509, died in Rome on 4 Apr. 1566. His earliest artistic training, attested by Vasari and especially by the youthful painting of *Justice* (Volterra, picture gallery), took place in the school of Sodoma and Peruzzi. Having gone to Rome at a very young age, he became a pupil of Pierin del Vaga and his assistant in the decoration of the chapel of the Crucifix in S. Marcello, which he completed.
In contact with the Roman artistic environment, he was deeply influenced by Michelangelo, though he also absorbed Raffaellesque motifs and accents into his art, as can be seen in the beautiful frieze with the *Stories of Fabius Maximus* (Rome, Palazzo Massimo), uneven in tone and still full of recollections of Sodoma and Beccafumi. Between 1541 and 1546, D. da V. frescoed the Orsini chapel in the church of the Trinità dei Monti in Rome with *Stories of the Cross*; only a *Deposition*—poorly preserved—remains today, in which the art of D. da V. reaches its highest expression within an intelligent and profound spiritual and formal adherence to Michelangelo’s world. In the same church he executed an *Assumption* (the only painting of his hand in the decoration of the Della Rovere chapel, entirely marred by pupils), a work less felt and more mechanical. The small panel in the Uffizi depicting the *Massacre of the Innocents*, signed by him, if in the gradation of planes and the rigorous balancing of masses suggests rather Raphael, in the sculptural power of the individual groups it remains deeply Michelangelesque. By order of Paul IV, D. da V. covered the nudes in Michelangelo’s *Last Judgment*, earning the nickname “Breeches-Maker.” Michelangelo also chose him as a sculptor; the only surviving works of sculpture by him are the vigorous bronze bust of Buonarroti and the elegant stucco decorations of the Sala Regia in the Vatican.