ONOFRI, VINCENZO. - Bolognese sculptor, first recorded in 1493 for the payment for two statues of Bl. Albertus Magnus and of Raymond of Peñafort in St. Dominic's in Bologna; he is documented until 1524.
He carried on his activity almost exclusively in Bologna, where his most important works remain. In the Mortorio in St. Petronius, signed "Vincentius de Bononia fecit", a terracotta group similar to that of Niccolò dell'Arca in St. Mary of the Life, he approaches the master, though tempering his manner through the influence of Sperandio and of Francia, to whose paintings he draws especially close in the polychrome altarpiece with the Virgin, St. Lawrence and St. Eustace in St. Mary of the Servants (1503). Influences foreign to the Bolognese milieu are not lacking in his works: the attempt to assimilate Tuscan forms, which reached him through Francesco di Simone Ferrucci, is evident in the famous funeral monument, in terracotta and marble, to Cesare Nacci, bishop of Amelia, in St. Petronius (1504), forms that become hard, almost metallic, deeply hollowed out: there nonetheless persists, especially in the decorative details, a search for elegance and refinement that brings him close to Tuscan models.
These return again in the monument beneath the organ, likewise in St. Petronius (1505), and in the one executed for Antonio Busi, after 1506, at Poggio a Persiceto near Bologna. Not all scholars accept the attribution to O. of the bust of Beroaldo (Bologna, St. Martin's). Other works attributed to him are in the Davia-Bargellini Gallery in Bologna, in the Glyptothek in Munich, and in the Louvre in Paris.
Bibliography4 works
Maria Donati