SILVESTRO da SULMONA (dell'AQUILA). - Sculptor, son of Giacomo, also called S. dell'Aquila after his birthplace, he has very often been confused with his great-nephew, S. d'Arischia (born there in 1550).
He is the leading figure in Abruzzese sculpture during the final decades of the fifteenth century: documents also mention him as a painter. First recorded in 1471; in 1476–80 he carved the monument to Cardinal Agnifili in S. Massimo at Aquila, signed «Opus Silvestri Aquilani»; the lunette now set into the side door of S. Marciano, recalling the school of Antonio Rossellino, also belonged to the monument; his knowledge of Florentine models is likewise evident in the scheme of the tomb. The characteristics of his art suggest further contacts with the figurative culture of his time. In the monument to Maria Camponeschi in S. Bernardino (on which he was still working in 1496), the Tuscan scheme of the funerary monument is made heavier by statues in niches within the pilasters and by rich ornaments in the taste of the late fifteenth-century Roman school; in the S. Sebastiano (1478), now in the Museum of Aquila, memories of Rossellino are combined with motifs from Verrocchio. In 1500 S. was working on the mausoleum of S. Bernardino, in the church of the same name, rich in statues and ornaments, completed in 1505 chiefly by assistants.
Typical are several groups in painted terracotta of the Madonna and Child (in S. Bernardino at Aquila and in S. Maria di Collemaggio), which remained models for sixteenth-century Abruzzese sculpture. - Vedi tav. XL.