ONOFRI, VINCENZO. — Bolognese sculptor, first recorded in 1493 for the payment for two statues of Blessed Alberto Magno and Raimondo di Peñafort in S. Domenico in Bologna; he is documented until 1524.
He carried out his activity almost exclusively in Bologna, where his most important works remain. In the Mortorio in S. Petronio, signed « Vincentius de Bononia fecit », a terracotta group similar to that of Niccolò dell'Arca in S. Maria della Vita, he approaches the master, while tempering his manner under the influence of Sperandio and Francia, whose paintings he especially resembles in the polychrome altarpiece with the Vergine, s. Lorenzo e s. Eustachio in S. Maria dei Servi (1503). His works also show influences foreign to the Bolognese milieu: the attempt to assimilate Tuscan forms, which reached him through Francesco di Simone Ferrucci, is evident in the famous funerary monument, in terracotta and marble, to Cesare Nacci, bishop of Amelia, in S. Petronio (1504); these forms become hard, almost metallic, and deeply incised. Nevertheless, above all in the decorative details, there remains a pursuit of elegance and refinement that brings him close to Tuscan models.
These recur once more in the monument beneath the organ, likewise in S. Petronio (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, S. Martino). Other works attributed to him are in the Galleria Davia-Bargellini in Bologna, in the Glyptothek in Munich, and at the Louvre in Paris.