DANIELE da VOLTERRA (DANIELE RICCIARELLI). – Painter and sculptor, b. at Volterra ca. 1509, d. in
Rome on 4 Apr. 1566. His first artistic education, attested by Vasari and above all 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 chapel of the Crucifix in S. Marcello, whose decoration he brought to completion.
In contact with the Roman artistic milieu, he was deeply influenced by Michelangelo, while also incorporating Raphael-like motifs and accents into his art, as can be seen in the splendid frieze with the Stories of Fabio Massimo (Rome, palazzo Massimo), uneven in tone and still full of reminiscences of Sodoma and Beccafumi. Between 1541 and 1546, D. da V. frescoed the Orsini chapel in the church of Trinità dei Monti in Rome with Stories of the Cross: today only a Deposition remains, very poorly preserved, in which D. da V.’s art reaches its highest expression through an intelligent and profound spiritual and formal adherence to Michelangelo’s world. In the same church he executed an Assumption (the only painting by his hand in the decoration of the Della Rovere chapel, which was entirely carried out by pupils), a less inspired and more cumbersome work. The small panel in the Uffizi with the Massacre of the Innocents, signed by him, although its receding planes and rigorous balancing of the masses suggest Raphael, is, in the sculptural power of its individual groups, always profoundly Michelangelesque. By order of Paul IV, D. da V. covered the nudes in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, for which he was called “Braghettone.” Michelangelesque also as a sculptor, the only sculptures by him that remain are the vigorous bronze bust of Buonarroti and the elegant stucco decorations of the Sala Regia in the Vatican.