the Museo Capitolino in Rome); it also led to impor-
tant commissions from high-ranking curial patrons,
including two altar canopies in Roman basilicas and
a small though highly infl uential series of sepulchral
monuments in Rome and Orvieto. Inscriptions of 1285
and 1293 establish that “Arnolfus” was responsible for
the altar canopies in two Roman churches: San Paolo
fuori le Mura and Santa Cecilia. These canopies, both
of marble with rich Cosmati-style ornamentation, seem
to have been part of larger redecorating projects at the
two churches, projects in which the fresco painter Pietro
Cavallini was also involved. For these commissions, or
at least for the canopy in San Paolo, Arnoifo may have
collaborated with Piero Oderisi.
Arnolfo’s best-documented sepulchral works include
tombs erected for Cardinal Guillaume de Bray (San
Domenico, Orvieto, after 1282); Pope Honorius IV
(Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Rome, after 1287); Cardinal
Riccardo Annibaldi (San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome,
after 1289); and Pope Boniface VIII (old Saint Peter’s,
Rome, after 1303). Boniface’s tomb, now destroyed,
was part of an entire chapel; a recorded inscription on
it mentioned “Arnolfus Architectus,” indicating that
Arnolfo had been responsible for both the architecture
of the chapel and its sculpture. Finally, a statue of a
deacon with a part of a curtain (now in the Walker Art
Gallery in Liverpool) is believed to be a fragment from
a fi fth sepulchral monument. Of these tombs, de Bray’s
was perhaps the most infl uential, and today—despite a
problematic reconstruction-—it is the best preserved.
This monument is a large wall construction with an
elaborate base; an effi gy and accompanying acolytes
who draw back curtains in the middle register; and a
kneeling resurrected de Bray, patron saints, a dedicatory
inscription, and a Madonna and Child at the summit.
Every surface that is not a fi gure is embellished with
mosaic inlay in the Cosmati style.
The multiple fi gures in de Bray’s tomb and the other
tombs were also a feature of Arnolfo’s unfi nished (and
now dismantled) facade for the cathedral of Florence (c.
1300); its original appearance is known from a sixteenth-
century drawing in the Opera del Duomo in Florence.
Many parts of this facade, both statuettes and relief
carvings, are also preserved in the Opera del Duomo.
Arnolfo certainly received the commission for the facade
in conjunction with his control of the architecture of the
cathedral itself. He is widely believed to have been the
architect of the cathedral, for which he was appointed
capomaestro (foreman) in 1300.
Architectural historians also attribute to Arnolfo
the designs of other building projects in Florence that
were begun during a boom in the last decade of the thir-
teenth century. These buildings include the Benedictine
church of the Badia, the Franciscan church of Santa
Croce, and the civic Palazzo della Signoria. They areclearly indebted to his knowledge of late Roman and
early Christian buildings and are characterized by bold
powerful massing, large unencumbered spatial volumes,
and—unlike the facade of the cathedral—a minimum of
ornamentation. Today, only the Badia, which was sub-
stantially remodeled by Giorgio Vasari in the sixteenth
century, gives little evidence of its original appear-
ance. The Palazzo della Signoria strongly infl uenced
the design of other civic palazzi in Tuscany as well as
the development of private palazzo architecture in the
fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries.
Arnolfo died sometime in the fi rst decade of the
fourteenth century.
See also Boniface VIII, Pope; Pisano, Giovanni;
Pisano, NicolaFurther Reading
Gardner, Julian. The Tomb and the Tiara: Curial Tomb Sculpture
in Rome and Avignon in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992.
White, John. Art and Architecture in Italy 1250– 1400 , 2nd ed.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987.
Roger CrumARNÓRR ÞÓRÐARSON JARLASKÁLD
(after 1010–after 1073)
The son of the skald Þórðr Kolbeinsson, Arnórr grew up
at Hítarnes, West Iceland. In early adulthood, he sailed
to Norway (and possibly Denmark) as a merchant and
skald, making an exuberant appearance before Magnús
Óláfsson góði (“good”) and Haraldr Sigurðarson (later
harðráði, “hard ruler”). His nickname, “earls’ skald,”
celebrates his service of the earls of Orkney, R gnvaldr
Brúsason (d. ca. 1045), to whom he was related by
marriage, and Þorfi nnr Sigurðarson (d. ca. 1065). His
(now vestigial) memorial poems for Icelanders who
died around 1055 and around 1073 might suggest that
he resettled in Iceland in later life.
Arnórr’s verse survives in 581 and one-half lines of
fragmentary quotations in vellum MSS of the late 13th to
15th centuries and in 17th- or 18th-century paper copies.
The chief sources are Flateyjarbók (108 half-strophes),
Hrokkinskinna (83), Hulda (68), Morkinskinna (33),
and MSS of Heimskringla (41), Orkneyinga saga (38),
Snorra Edda (18 and 3 couplets), Fagrskinna (16), and
Snorri Sturluson’s separate Óláfs saga helga (15).
Arnórr’s poetry richly exploits skaldic tradition with
motifs of weapons fl ying, carríon beasts scavenging, or
ships being launched; a great variety of heiti, includ-
ing nine for “sword”; and some 150 kennings, from
the obvious Áleifs sonr to the esoteric erfi ði Austra
(“burden of [the dwarf] Austri” = “sky”). He also em-
ploys more unusual items, including images of sparksARNOLFO DI CAMBIO