CAVALLINI, PIETRO (fl. c. 1270–c. 1330)
The painter and mosaicist, Pietro Cavallini is generally
considered the most important Roman artist of his day
and one of the protagonists in the revival of the visual
arts in Italy during the late Duecento. His art, which is
characterized by vivid naturalism, is a masterful synthe-
sis of contemporary Byzantine and northern European
styles and iconography with the artistic traditions of
classical and early Christian Rome. Evidently much
admired and sought after, Cavallini worked for most of
his life in Rome. There, beginning with the papacy of
Nicholas III (r. 1277–1280), the recently consolidated
power base of the popes offered him signifi cant oppor-
tunities for employment. He was also active in Naples,
where he worked for the Angevin king Charles II; and, as
is sometimes argued, possibly in Assisi. Some scholars
(though they are in the minority) maintain that Cavallini
was the principal master of the fresco cycle The Legend
of Saint Francis, traditionally attributed to Giotto, in
Assisi. Whatever the truth may be regarding Cavallini’s
supposed links with Assisi, Giotto—who was younger
than Cavallini and whose known career began when
Cavallini had already reached artistic maturity—was
probably inspired by and indebted to Cavallini’s in-
novative work.
Cavallini’s known career in Rome and Naples: c.
1273–1325. Cavallini’s career is sparsely documented,
but some details about his life and work were included
in Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Commentarii (mid-l400s) and
Giorgio Vasari’s Vite (1550, revised 1568). Cavallini
was a member of the noble de’ Cerroni family (if the
notarial act of 1273 is in fact a reference to him). He
is believed to have been active from the 1270s to the
1280s as a fresco painter in the venerated Roman ba-
silica San Paolo fuori Ie Mura. This work, his earliest
known commission, was destroyed in a fi re in 1823.
The general appearance of the paintings, however, can
be seen in surviving copies, most notably in watercolors
executed for Cardinal Francesco Barberini in 1634. The
subjects were episodes from the Old Testament (on the
south wall of the nave); and scenes from the New Tes-
tament, with particular emphasis on Saint Paul, patron
of the basilica (on the north wall). It would appear that
Cavallini largely restored or at most reworked a vast
fi fth-century fresco cycle. This experience, however,
would have given him a valuable opportunity to study
early Christian iconographic traditions and principles of
design, and possibly to study techniques of late antique
painting as well.
Cavallini’s skill as an artist is manifest in somewhat
later fresco work that is extant: fragments in the Roman
church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. This cycle was
partially destroyed in the eighteenth century and redis-
covered in the early twentieth century; it is generally
dated to c. 1293, the year the Tuscan sculptor Arnolfo
di Cambio signed and dated the ciborium, which ap-
parently formed part of a wider scheme of redecoration
in which Cavallini was intensely involved. According
to Ghiberti, the frescoes once fi lled the whole interior.
The surviving frescoes depict the Last Judgment on the
entrance wall and episodes from the Old and New Tes-
taments on the side walls. Cavallini’s style, especially
evident in the solemnly enthroned apostles in the Last
Judgment, is characterized by a remarkable sensitivity
to the properties of light, which are fully exploited in
order to defi ne the volumetric forms of fi gures wrapped
in weighty but soft expanses of fabric. Another aspect
of this sensitivity is an expressive play of color, made
possible by the artist’s ability to create subtle transitions
in tone; these transitions are particularly striking in the
seraphim in the Last Judgment. The iconography of the
frescoes in Santa Cecilia would have been considered
innovative by Cavallini’s contemporaries: these frescoes
blend Byzantine iconographic traditions—highly struc-
tured and symmetrical Last Judgment schemes—with
a recent French practice of depicting the apostles with
the symbols of their martyrdom.
Cavallini’s work in Santa Maria in Trastevere is also
extant. Both Ghiberti and Vasari recorded Cavallini’s ac-
tivity in this church, where a mosaic cycle depicting six
episodes from the life of the Virgin and a central donor
panel survive. The work, generally dated to the 1290s,
once bore the artist’s signature in the dedicatory panel,
which could still be read in the seventeenth century. Each
framed scene carries Latin verses that were composed
by Cardinal Giacomo Gaetano Stefaneschi, brother of
Bertoldo Stefaneschi, the patron of the project. Although
Cavallini was working in a different medium he man-
aged in these mosaics to evoke the refi ned effects in
lighting that he had produced in the frescoes in Santa
Cecilia. Furthermore, the design of each episode in the
mosaics is informed by monumental clarity. In the Pre-
sentation in the Temple, for example, human fi gures that
express great tactile power are rhythmically positioned
in front of and around architectural features that defi ne
and create space.
According to Vasari, Cavallini’s masterpiece in
Rome was a fresco cycle in the apse of Santa Maria
in Aracoeli (c. 1298). These frescoes were destroyed
in the second half of the sixteenth century. However,
Cavallini executed another fresco cycle for the same
church; it included a Virgin and Child between Saints,
surviving fragments of which were discovered in 2000
in the the chapel of San Pasquale Baylon. The frag-
ments are imbued with a classical monumentality and,
through skillful handling of chiaroscuro, also convey
a pronounced plasticity. Other Roman works convinc-
ingly attributed to Cavallini on the basis of style and
technique include a fresco over the tomb of Cardinal
Matteo d’Acquasparta in Santa Maria Aracoeli (c. 1302)CAVALLINI, PIETRO