COSMATI. - Under this generic denomination are included the marble-workers active in Rome, in various localities of Latium and generally of central Italy, from the 12th century to the early 14th century, belonging to different families in some of which the name Cosma often recurs. They were essentially decorators who executed church furnishings such as ambos, ciboria, chairs, chancel screens, combining a certain classicizing taste with the predilection for color spread by the Byzantines in southern Italy, that is, enriching their works with inlays of porphyry, serpentine and bands of mosaic, but always leaving, unlike what the Campanian or Sicilian marble-workers did, ample breathing room to the white background that frames and limits, contending with them, the colored surfaces. In this sense they were refined decorators since they kept alive the balance between the surface to be decorated and the polychrome ornament. When they turned to architecture they did not concern themselves with the complex constructional problems of the Lombards and, without worrying about volumetric research, they raised their buildings sometimes within the most ancient temples devoid of chromatic decorations (S. Maria di Falleri) with a native taste for classicizing proportions, rhythmically alternating solids and voids, marking every monotonous recurrence of motifs with harmonious pauses.
Numerous are the families and the works. A marble-worker Paolo was active at the beginning of the 12th century at Ferentino, and had 4 sons (Giovanni, Pietro, Angelo, and Sassone), who together erected in Rome the ciborium of S. Lorenzo (1148) and then those of S. Marco, of the SS. Cosma and Damiano, of the SS. Apostoli (the last three of which no longer exist) and, without Pietro, that of S. Croce in Gerusalemme. Nicola, son of Angelo, worked at Gaeta (probably not on the bell tower, as others maintain), sculpted with Vassalletto the candelabrum of S. Paolo, erected the ciborium of S. Bartolomeo all'Isola and finally worked at Sutri with his son Iacopo, of whom imprecise testimonies remain. Drudo de Trivio erected the ciborium of Ferentino, collaborated with Luca di Cosma on the chancel screens of Civitacastellana and with his son Angelo on a ciborium in Lanuvio.
A marble-worker Ranuccio worked in S. Maria Maggiore at Tuscania and his sons Pietro and Nicola on the door of S. Maria in Castello at Tarquinia; Giovanni and Giuttone, sons of Nicola, at S. Andrea in Flumine at Ponzano and then on the altar and ciborium of S. Maria in Castello; other relatives of theirs also worked in various centers of Latium.
Lorenzo di Tebaldo first executed in Rome an altar at S. Stefano del Cacco, then with his son Iacopo built the splendid ambos of S. Maria in Aracoeli, the door of S. Maria di Falleri and the main door of the cathedral of Civitacastellana. Iacopo worked at S. Bartolomeo, began with admirable technical perfection the cloister of S. Scolastica and the portico of Civitacastellana which he completed with his son Cosma (1210). The solemn arch that interrupts the linear rhythm of the entablature draws on classical motifs and anticipates in the serenity of its vision the Brunelleschian motif of the Pazzi chapel. Cosma with his sons Luca and Iacopo made the pavement of the crypt of Anagni and completed the cloister of Subiaco.
Cosma di Pietro Mellini designed the chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum, in Gothicizing forms; he had three sons: Iacopo, decorator of pavements, Giovanni, who executed various tombs at S. Maria Maggiore, at the Aracoeli and elsewhere, and Deodato who sculpted an altar of the Maddalena at the Lateran and the Gothicizing ciborium of S. Maria in Cosmedin.
Another great family of Roman marble-workers was that of the Vassalletto. Pietro collaborated on the ciborium of S. Paolo, the only work entirely figured of Roman production, executed an ambo at S. Pietro (1190), works not well specified at Segni (1185), the schola cantorum of S. Saba, demonstrating more than anyone else in the firmness of his carving the assimilation of classical modes partly also taken from the decorative repertoire of the Etruscans. His masterpieces are the cloisters of S. Paolo fuori le mura and of S. Giovanni in Laterano, which he began alone and completed with his son Vassalletto, works of admirable balance for the rhythmic scansion of the pillars, the happy proportions of the small arches, the refined decorative elegance, the firmness of carving and the liveliness of the color distributed in veins of mosaic on the paired and always varied small columns, or congealed in discs and rectangles beneath the cornice carved with foliage and masks. With greater sobriety of color and a more refined sense of proportions the same marble-workers raised the portico of the basilica of S. Lorenzo fuori le mura.
Still to be remembered is the family of the Salvati: Pietro de Maria, who built the cloister of the abbey of Sassovivo near Foligno, Pietro Amabile active in Umbria and Abruzzo. Many works splendid for the use of broad colored elements that underscore the architecture are anonymous, as in Rome the chairs of S. Balbina and of S. Cesareo, the ambos of S. Clemente and of S. Lorenzo, the ambos and the schola cantorum of S. Maria in Cosmedin, where Pasquale marmorano signed the candelabrum. The enumeration could be extended to the pavements, true carpets of precious color, in which the motifs continually vary with an almost inexhaustible liveliness and fantasy.
Educated to a taste for color that has distant origins in classical art and that it is possible to see preserved in the early Middle Ages in rare fragments of paving, supported in this direction by relations with Byzantine art, which had in the abbey of Grottaferrata a center of expansion close to Rome, the C. [Cosmati], in preparing church furnishings, refined themselves by looking to the antique and not rarely reached the masterpiece even in works of architecture. They sometimes touched a Renaissance vision, like the Florentines authors of S. Miniato al Monte, and later in the course of the 14th century underwent Gothic influences; called to work in the cathedral of Gurk (ca. 1200) and as far as the abbey of Westminster in London, they certainly exercised a fascination on that great sculptor who was Arnolfo and on Maitani when he was planning the facade of the cathedral of Orvieto. Their decorative system continued to be used for pavements in Rome down to the threshold of the 16th century. - See pl. XXXIX.
