Bernardo Rossellino
Encyclopedia
Bernardo di Matteo del Borra Gamberelli (1409
1409 in Italy
An incomplete list of events which occurred in Italy in AD 1409:* Battle of Sanluri* Council of Pisa...

–1464), better known as Bernardo Rossellino, was an Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 sculptor and architect, the elder brother of the sculptor Antonio Rossellino
Antonio Rossellino
Antonio Gamberelli , nicknamed Antonio Rossellino for the colour of his hair, was an Italian sculptor. His older brother, from whom he received his formal training, was the painter Bernardo Rossellino....

. As a member of the second generation of Renaissance artists, he helped to further define and popularize the revolution in artistic approach that characterized the new age.

Biography

Bernardo Rossellino was born into a family of farmers and quarry owners in the mountain village of Settignano
Settignano
Settignano is a picturesque frazione ranged on a hillside northeast of Florence, Italy, with spectacular views that have attracted American expatriates for generations...

, overlooking the Arno river valley and the city of Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

. His uncle, Jacopo di Domenico di Luca del Borra Gamberelli may have given him his first lessons in stonemasonry. By 1420, Bernardo was certainly down in Florence and apprenticed to one of that city's better-known sculptors, perhaps Nanni di Bartolo, called "il Rosso (the redhead)." Such a relationship might explain the nickname of "Rossellino (the little redhead) given to Bernardo and applied to his brothers, Antonio, Domenico, and Giovanni. Curiously, there is no record of Bernardo's entry into Florence's Guild of Stone and Woodworkers, although matriculation information exists for his brothers.

More than from any single master, Bernardo learned from the experimental atmosphere that suffused Florence in the 1420s. He seems to have been captivated by the "new wave" approaches being put into practice by Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi was one of the foremost architects and engineers of the Italian Renaissance. He is perhaps most famous for inventing linear perspective and designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, but his accomplishments also included bronze artwork, architecture , mathematics,...

, Donatello
Donatello
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi , also known as Donatello, was an early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence...

, Ghiberti
Lorenzo Ghiberti
Lorenzo Ghiberti , born Lorenzo di Bartolo, was an Italian artist of the early Renaissance best known for works in sculpture and metalworking.-Early life:...

, and Masaccio
Masaccio
Masaccio , born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense...

. Perhaps more faithfully than their other followers, Bernardo Rossellino embraced and held true to the classical revival in both sculpture and architecture. Celebrated for his sculpture (the Leonardo Bruni Tomb, Empoli Annunciation group), he achieved particular distinction through his expanding role as an architect, achieving lasting fame for the work done or planned in Rome for Pope Nicholas V
Pope Nicholas V
Pope Nicholas V , born Tommaso Parentucelli, was Pope from March 6, 1447 to his death in 1455.-Biography:He was born at Sarzana, Liguria, where his father was a physician...

 and, especially for the rebuilding of the town of Pienza for Pope Pius II. Part of his artistic importance also lay in his entrepreneurial skills which enabled him to assemble a large and highly successful workshop that dominated the stoneworking field in Florence during the 1450s and 1460s.

In 1433, Bernardo is recorded as being in Arezzo
Arezzo
Arezzo is a city and comune in Central Italy, capital of the province of the same name, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about 80 km southeast of Florence, at an elevation of 296 m above sea level. In 2011 the population was about 100,000....

, employed by the Fraternita di Santa Maria della Misericordia to complete the facade of the Misericordia
Misericordia
Misericordia is the Latin translation of the Hebrew word "hesed" and refers to a number of places:* Misericordia Church, Sé, Braga, Portugal* Misericordia Community Hospital, Edmonton, Canada...

's headquarters. His first job present a considerable challenge. The lower storey of this palace had been completed a half century earlier in the, then, popular Gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....

 manner. Thus the problem confronting Bernardo was much the same as that which L.B. Alberti was to encounter a quarter century later when asked to complete the facade of Santa Maria Novella. Bernardo's solution for the unfinished second storey was a three bay design which used a typically Gothic mixed-element frame in the central bay flanked by classical paired pilasters and aediculae, the features of which were taken from the most progressive sources available. Set within the Gothic frame of this second storey is a relief of the protectress of Arezzo, the Madonna of Mercy, spreading her mantle out over the community's citizenry. She is flanked by the kneeling saints Laurentius and Persentinus. Bernardo received his final payment for the project in June 1435, specifically for the two free standing figures of Saints Gregory and Donatus which occupy the aediculae on either side of the Misericordia relief. Rossellino's solution for the Arezzo palace facade fused Gothic and Renaissance elements in a deft, if somewhat awkward, combination aimed at achieving the Renaissance goal of unified harmony. He also clearly displayed, in this initial effort at both sculpture and archiecture, a genius for the sort of creative eclecticism that became a major feature of the "Rossellino manner."

Bernardo Rossellino was back in Florence in 1436 to establish his own workshop and to join a crew of stonemasons already at work constructing the Aranci Cloister of the Badia. Payment records, supported by stylistic evidence, indicate that his principal contributions (1436–38) to this project included a handsome stone doorframe and an unusual cross window, both of which are identifiable today. It also is possible that he proposed the addition of the pilaster strips which divide the surfaces of the loggias of the two-storey courtyard into a systematic grid. Documents indicate that Bernardo assumed a more decisive role at the suburban monastery of Santa Maria alle Campora whose cloister (1436) challenges that of Michelozzo
Michelozzo
thumb|250px|[[Palazzo Medici]] in Florence.Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi was an Italian architect and sculptor.-Biography:...

 at San Marco as the first such structure to have been erected in accordance with a Renaissance aesthetic. In 1444, he received a commission to sculpt two altar figures for the oratory of the Annunciation in the church of St. Stephen in Empoli. In these two representations of the Virgin Annunciate and of the Archangel Gabriel, we find a further development of the artist's decoratively graceful and classical style as well as a recognition of the sculptural styles of Donatello, Ghiberti, and Michelozzo.

Although the stock and trade of the Rossellino shop would have been the supply of building material and simple tasks of stonemasonry, several projects, combining sculptural and architectural features, were of particular significance during the 1440s. One, undertaken in the Palazzo Pubblico
Palazzo Pubblico
The Palazzo Pubblico is a palace in Siena, Tuscany, central Italy. Construction began in 1297 and its original purpose was to house the republican government, consisting of the Podestà and Council of Nine....

 of Siena
Siena
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...

 called upon him to design a grand entry way into the Sala del Concistoro. This richly decorated and gracefully classical doorframe is arguably the finest example of the type done in the first half of the fifteenth century and it is certainly one of the most sumptuously elegant of the entire Renaissance. Another project was the triumphal arch wall tomb erected in Florence's church of Santa Croce for the statesman, historian, and humanist scholar Leonardo Bruni
Leonardo Bruni
Leonardo Bruni was an Italian humanist, historian and statesman. He has been called the first modern historian.-Biography:...

 (d.1444), who had served as the State Chancellor of Florence. No documentation survives for the tomb but two early 16th-century sources credit Bernardo Rossellino for the project and his authorship generally has been accepted. There, however, has been debate concerning the dating of the tomb, with some supporting a date in the late 1440s and others, believing that Bernardo could not have conceived its classical character prior to his stay in Rome, preferring a date after 1455. There is, however, nothing in its design that would preclude the earlier dating. In fact the Bruni Tomb seems a logical continuation of the classicizing manner which Bernardo recently had displayed in his design for the Concistoro door frame in Siena. Accordingly, the Bruni Tomb might best be dated to the years 1446-48. Bernardo Rossellino's Bruni Tomb consisted of a shallow wall niche framed by pilasters and topped by a semi-circular arch. The effect suggests a triumphal arch leading to both the immortal fame desired by the humanist scholar and spiritual deliverance sought by the pious Christian. Bruni's sarcophagus is placed within the niche and it, in turn, supports a brocade-draped bier upon which rests Bernardo's portrait effigy of the statesman. A tondo
Tondo (art)
A tondo is a Renaissance term for a circular work of art, either a painting or a sculpture. The word derives from the Italian rotondo, "round." The term is usually not used in English for small round paintings, but only those over about 60 cm in diameter, thus excluding many round portrait...

 containing the Madonna and Child flanked by half-length angels appears within the arch above the bier, while two large angelic putti, bearing Bruni's coat-of-arms ascend the archivolt
Archivolt
An archivolt is an ornamental molding or band following the curve on the underside of an arch. It is composed of bands of ornamental moldings surrounding an arched opening, corresponding to the architrave in the case of a rectangular opening...

. Bernardo drew upon a variety of sources in arriving at his design for the tomb, including 14th-century wall tombs in Rome done by members of the so-called Cosmati
Cosmati
The Cosmati were a Roman family, seven members of which, for four generations, were skilful architects, sculptors and workers in decorative geometric mosaic, mostly for church floors...

 school, as well as the recently executed tomb of Baldassare Coscia (Antipope John XXIII)
Tomb of Antipope John XXIII
The Tomb of Antipope John XXIII is the marble and bronze tomb monument of Antipope John XXIII , created by Donatello and Michelozzo for the Florence Baptistry adjacent to the Duomo...

 by Donatello and the Brancacci tomb by Michelozzo. What sets the Bruni tomb apart and established it as the "standard" upon which so many subsequent later Renaissance tombs were based (including that for Carlo Marsupini executed a few years later for Santa Croce by Bernardo's probable pupil, Desiderio da Settignano
Desiderio da Settignano
Desiderio da Settignano, real name Desiderio de Bartolomeo di Francesco detto Ferro was an Italian sculptor active during the Renaissance.-Biography:...

) was its sense of unity.

By any estimation, these two works (the Siena portal and the Bruni Tomb) stand out as highpoints in the evolution of the Renaissance style. Even before his trip to Rome in the 1450s and his contact with Leon Battista Alberti, Bernardo was able to demonstrate a thorough appreciation for the nature of the antique revival that was so fundamental to the Renaissance movement. His understanding of the essential elements of antiquity is also apparent in the finest architectural achievement of Bernardo's early years, the Spinelli Cloister at Santa Croce in Florence (1448–51). No documents exist to connect Bernardo with this project but the entry portal is clearly a simplified version of his Siena door frame and his authorship of the Spinelli Cloister may be accepted. The rhythmic beauty of the cloister, perhaps the loveliest of the early Renaissance, is due to a carefully formulated series of mathematical ratios and Euclidean relationships that echo those employed by Brunelleschi at the Hospital of the Innocents. The crisply executed architectural sculptures of the Spinelli Cloister (doorframes, capitals and corbels, entry portal) are stylistic signatures of the "Rossellino manner" and are unique to his workshop. Bernardo's style is also to be found in the tabernacle he executed (1449–51) for the Florentine church of Santa Maria Nuova (since relocated to San Egidio). In 1451, his shop received an important sculptural commission for a tomb for the Beata Villana in Santa Maria Novella (now dismembered and in fragmentary state). Its execution was left in the hands of Bernardo's brother, Antonio and other members of the workshop (including Desiderio da Settignano) due to Bernardo's departure for Rome.

During these same years, Bernardo was employed by the wealthy banker Giovanni Rucellai to remodel several old dwellings into a new family palace. This initial work for Rucellai involved internal systemization, the construction of a cross-vaulted passage leading from the street (the Via della Vigna nuova) to a new courtyard and loggia for which he also was responsible. Evidence of Bernardo's presence may found in one of the corbels in this corridor which is identical to those used in the Spinelli Cloister and was a probable "leftover" from that project.

Bernardo's career took an important turn when he traveled to Rome in 1451 to join the vast architectural team then engaged by Pope Nicholas V to revitalize the ancient city and its environs. Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...

's mid-sixteenth century biography of the artist greatly exaggerated Bernardo's actual role in most of the projects. Although his retainer exceeded that of all other stonemasons in the papal employ, he is documented at only two projects: as furnishing hoists for the large round tower at the Vatican Palace and in doing restoration work at the early Christian church of San Stefano Rotondo (window and door frames, vaulting, stone paving). His primary task in Rome, apparently, was to draw up plans, likely under the supervision of Alberti, for rebuilding the Vatican and the Basilica of St. Peter's, projects which, due to the death of the pope in 1455, were never carried out. In spite of this, Bernardo's long sojourn in Rome had significant meaning for him, solidifying his commitment to reviving the spirit of antiquity in his works and exposing him to the concepts of Alberti.

During Bernardo's long absence his workshop had been left in the talented hands of Antonio Rossellino, together with his other brothers, Domenico and Giovanni, all of whom concentrated upon the sculptural side of the stonemasonry business. Once back in Florence, Bernardo assumed his oversight of the workshop's production but increasingly turned his attention to more lucrative architectural matters. Thus, those sculptural projects often associated with the Rossellino name such as the tombs for Giovanni Chelini in San Domenico, San Miniato al Tedesco, for the Beato Lorenzo da Ripafrata and for Filippo Lazzari, both in San Domenico, Pistoia, for Gemignano Inghirami in San Francsco, Prato, and for the Beato Marcolino, San Giacomo, Forli likely involved only his overall approval and not his chisel. This probably also was the case with the mortuary chapel and tomb monument for Cardinal James of Portugal constructed at the Florentine church of San Miniato ai Monte which, in its multiplicity of artistic elements and multi-media impact, seems to predict the Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 (i.e., Bernini's Cornaro Chapel). His involvement with the Tomb of Orlando de' Medici in Santissima Annunziata, Florence was more personal but it is interesting to note that its conception is more architectural than sculptural.

Among those Florentine building projects with which Bernardo was involved in this last phase of his career was the amalgamation of several buildings into a palace for his former patron at the Santa Croce monastery, Tomasso Spinelli. The unifying facade of the Spinelli Palace utilized the cost-saving technique of faux stonework incised into plaster but the entry corridor is remarkable for its use of illusionary perspective.

Bernardo also returned to Giovanni Rucellai's palace to apply a unifying front of stonework to its public face along the Via Vigna Nuova. It is this facade, divided into bays by three tiers of classically-inspired pilasters rising above a base of mock stonework opus quadratum
Opus quadratum
Opus quadratum is an ancient Roman construction technique, in which squared blocks of stone of the same height were set in parallel courses, often without the use of mortar.-Technique:...

and topped by an abbreviated entablature, that sets this building apart from all other Florentine townhouses. While there is evidence pointing to Bernardo's involvement in constructing the Rucellai facade, the name of Alberti has most usually been connected with its design. In any case, Bernardo Rossellino's artistic prominence was recognized when he was appointed capomaestro (chief architect) of the Florence Cathedral in 1461 (by that time, largely an honorific title).

Despite his previous accomplishments, the true measure of Bernardo Rossellino's architectural place in history lies in the extraordinary project he undertook for Pope Pius II Piccolomini at Pienza between 1459 and 1464. There, in a sweeping transformation of a rural community, Bernardo erected an imposing family palace, a grand cathedral, town hall, bishop's palace and canons' house, all set compactly about a trapezoidal square and bringing together the architectural tastes of Florence, Siena, and Rome. He also supervised the construction or renovation of palaces and townhouses for several cardinals and members of the papal court, and a quantity of houses for the citizens of this transformed community. For the Piccolomini Palace, a massive three-storey block set about a spacious courtyard, he designed three articulated facades resembling the front of the Rucellai palace (which the Piccolomini Palace may well predate) and opened up a garden front of three tiers of loggias from which a splendid panorama might be viewed. At the Cathedral he affixed a classicizing exterior to a Teutonic "hall church
Hall church
A hall church is a church with nave and side aisles of approximately equal height, often united under a single immense roof. The term was first coined in the mid-19th century by the pioneering German art historian Wilhelm Lübke....

" Within the Cathedral, the elegant Altar of St. Andrew and the ornate baptismal font in the lower church serve as reminders of the continuing sculptural output Bernardo's Florentine workshop. The real significance of Pienza, however, lies not in the merits of the individual units, but in Bernardo Rossellino's ability to see the various projects as a urban totality. The inspiration for Pienza may have come from the Albertian atmosphere of his earlier experience in Rome. While other architects of the Early Renaissance were forced to deal with townplanning on a theoretical basis, Bernardo was given the rare opportunity to actually put his ideas into practice. The result was one of the most pleasing and harmonious cityscapes in the history of urban design.

Final projects included designs for the Piccolomini-Todeschini Palace in Siena, a bell tower for the church of San Pietro in Perugia (modeled after that in Pienza), and possibly for the Piccolomini Palace built alongside the thermal pool at Bagno di Vignoni.

Bernardo died in Florence on 23 September 1464. His pupils/assistants included his younger brother Antonio, Desiderio da Settignano, Matteo Civitale, Buggiano, Mino da Fiesole. The workshop continued under the leadership of Antonio but accepted only commissions for sculpture.
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