NANNI D'ANTONIO di BANCO. - Sculptor, born in Florence probably in 1390, died there in 1421.
In 1406 he was enrolled in the Arte dei maestri di pietra e legname; between 1407 and 1408 he worked with his father on the framing of the Porta della Mandorla in S. Maria del Fiore; in 1408, together with his father, he received the commission to execute a statue of Isaia for the façade of the same church and subsequently, alone and still for S. Maria del Fiore, he made a statue of s. Luca, completed in 1413. In 1414 he was commissioned to carve the pediment of the Porta della Mandorla, a work which he continued until the year of his death (1421). Other sculptures by him are the statues of s. Filippo, s. Eligio, and the ss. Quattro Coronati in Orsanmichele, and a relief image of a prophet in a panel on the exterior of the same building.
N., unquestionably endowed as were few other sculptors of his age, especially in the formidable image of s. Luca, his masterpiece, demonstrates that he understood the spirit of the new times and knew how to look to the art of Donatello, only a few years his senior, and of Jacopo della Quercia. Yet he did not thereby abandon his own austere vision of form, powerfully articulated in plastic values, at times simplified with archaistic taste (ss. Quattro Coronati), at others emphasized by flowing, undulating lines indicating the boundaries between areas of shadow and light (pediment of the Porta della Mandorla). - See pl. CVI.