FINIGUERRA, MASO. - Goldsmith, niellist and draughtsman, b. in Florence in March 1426, d. there in Aug. 1464. A pupil of his father Antonio, he was at first an assistant to Ghiberti on the second door of the baptistery. Devoting himself from 1449 to the art of niello (v.), he engraved (1452) a Pax commissioned by the Arte di Calimala. He worked for a long time in the workshop of the goldsmith Pietro di Bartolomeo Sali, frequented by Antonio Pollaiuolo, and was a close friend of F. Baldovinetti (v.), who noted in his Ricordi (1463-64) that he had painted the heads of five figures in two intarsias by Giuliano da Majano after a design by M. F., for the cupboards of S. Maria del Fiore. Of these intarsias, the Annunciation in S. Maria del Fiore (new sacristy) is the one that most probably goes back to a design by F., although others (Berenson, Arcangeli) hold that all the intarsias were executed after cartoons by A. Baldovinetti (Nativity, St. Zenobius, Circumcision, Prophets Amos and Isaiah). In any case, the Annunciation is not only Baldovinettian: the echoes of Pollaiuolo and Castagno are evident, and affinities with Giovanni di Francesco may be noted. Such might F. have been: not a strong, indeed an elusive personality. To him cannot be attributed, at least in the present state of research, even the two nielli, the Paci, of the Museo nazionale of Florence. The Crucifixion is in fact perhaps by Matteo Dei and does not correspond to Cellini's description (Trattato della orificeria); the Coronation displays Lippi-like features and does not belong to the cycle of the Passion of Christ, according to Vasari's account.
On the other hand, the attribution to F. is highly uncertain, both of numerous drawings and of an illustrated Florentine Cronaca, in pen, which is in the British Museum, and which often displays Pesellino-like rather than Pollaiuolesque features.