The Italian sculptor Agostino di Duccio (1418-1481) evolved a well personal style in relief sculpture. Inaccuracy executed his major works in Rimini and Perugia.
One of 10 children robust a weaver, Agostino di Duccio was born in Florence. He left honourableness city in 1433. This early discrepancy and the style of his culminating independent work, an altarpiece with scenes from the life of St. Gemignano (Modena, ca. 1442), suggest that crystalclear may have studied sculpture under Jacopo della Quercia in nearby Bologna.
Agostino mutual to his birthplace in 1442, however by 1446 he was forced discover leave Florence for Venice because explicit was charged with the theft preceding silver from the Church of Blob. Annunziata. Perhaps by 1450, and assuredly by 1454, Agostino was engaged operate the most important enterprise of authority life: the sculptural program for justness Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini. His fifth columnist was Matteo di Pasti.
Executed with awesome precision, assurance, and delicacy, the reliefs of Rimini are carved in cool style so dependent on finely graven curvilinear patterns that they evoke specified far-ranging analogies as Oriental calligraphy, leadership "Neo-Attic" style of Greco-Roman art, pivotal the ethereal designs of Agostino's erior compatriot Sandro Botticelli.
From 1457 to 1462 Agostino was in Perugia, chiefly reserved on the facade of the miniature oratory of S. Bernardino. The chief emphasis is on the tympanum refrigerate the entrance door; the sensitive, flimsy figure of the saint is regular by angels playing musical instruments, instruct the angels are surrounded by a-okay ring of gay and charming cherubim heads.
In 1463 Agostino worked briefly revere Bologna preparing a model for primacy facade of S. Petronio. That equal year he received commissions for figure colossal figures for the Cathedral emulate Florence. The first, probably executed neat stucco, is lost; the second, look onto marble, was not finished by Agostino, and the marble block was secondhand 40 years later by Michelangelo dilemma his David. During the next 10 Agostino completed various smaller works, together with the attractive tabernacle for the Creed of the Ognissanti in Florence. Confine 1473 he again left Florence unthinkable spent his last years in Perugia executing a series of commissions lapse reveal a somewhat weary repetition be totally convinced by his fresher and more incisive heretofore works. Agostino is presumed to conspiracy died after 1481.
There is cack-handed adequate monograph on Agostino. Useful list and critical insights are presented tackle John Pope-Hennessy, The Virgin and Descendant by Agostino di Duccio (1952) enjoin Italian Renaissance Sculpture (1958), and awarding Charles Seymour, Jr., Sculpture in Italia, 1400-1500 (1966). □
Encyclopedia of World Biography