Bernardo Rossellino

Santa Croce, the church of the Franciscans in Florence, is one of the finest examples of Italian Gothic architecture.

Begun in 1294, possibly designed by Arnolfo di Cambio, it is finished in 1442 (with the exception of the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival facade and campanile).

On many of the interior walls are masterpieces of Tuscan Gothic or proto-Renaissance painting: the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels' frescoes are by Giotto; the Baroncelli Chapel has frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi and a polyptych by Agnolo Gaddi, who also did the frescoes in the Castellani Chapel.

There are examples of sculpture by such masters of early Renaissance art as Rossellino, Donatello, Mino da Fiesole, Andrea della Robbia, and Benedetto da Maiano.

Bernardo Rossellino, a noted Florentine architect who had worked on the Duomo from 1441-44, works with Leon Battista Alberti on the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence from 1446 to 1451.

Bernardo’s sculpture reveals a clarity of form visible in his major work, the tomb of Leonardo Bruni in Santa Croce, Florence, executed in 1444-47, for which he employs a triumphal arch to create a new type of sepulchral monument.

Alberti’s original architectural designs include the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence, constructed in 1446-51 and executed, at least in part, by Bernardo Rossellino.

Its facade is one of the first to proclaim the new ideas of Renaissance architecture based on the use of pilasters and entablatures in proportional relationship to each other.

Desiderio da Settignano adopts Donatello's technique of rilievo schiacciato ("flattened relief") and employs it with the greatest delicacy.

Born around 1430 in the stone cutting center of Settignano near Florence, and possibly a pupil of Donatello, Desiderio’s tomb of the humanist Carlo Marsuppini, completed after 1453 for the church of Santa Croce, is made to complement the tomb opposite it done by Bernardo Rosselino, but Desiderio's is lighter and more graceful. (Other works attributed to Desiderio, on the basis of their stylistic relation to these two major monuments, include a frieze of putti heads for Santa Croce’s Pazzi Chapel, a relief of “Saint John,” and a “Madonna and Child,” all believed to have been completed before the completion of the Marsuppini tomb.)

Italian sculptor-architect Mino da Fiesole, at about twenty-four, had created a bust of Piero de' Medici in 1453, inspired by antique Roman models.

This is the earliest-known dated Renaissance portrait bust.

Mino’s other important busts of the era, notable for their realism and vigor, include those of Niccolo Strozzi, executed in 1454, and Astorgio Manfredi, in 1455.

Antonio Rossellino, younger brother of noted Florentine architect Bernardo Rossellino, is said to have studied under Donatello and is remarkable for the sharpness and fineness of his bas-relief.

He creates outstanding portrait busts, including, in 1456, a remarkable characterization, based on a life mask, of the physician Giovanni Chellini (Giovanni di San Miniato).

Antonio and Bernardo both have the surname Gamberelli, but are nicknamed Rossellino because of their red hair.

Bernardo Rossellino, the elder brother of the painter Antonio Rossellino, gains the most fame for his idealized replanning of Pienza, the ancient district of Corsignano, where Pope Pius II desires to make a monument of his place of birth, designed according to the principles of the Renaissance urbanistics and architecture.

He has made the center with the square and main constructions, the Duomo, Palazzo Pubblico, the Bishop's Palace (Palazzo Vescovile) and the Palazzo Piccolomini, which are to be surrounded by the rest of the little city.

In the beautiful Palazzo Piccolomini Rossellino, on which Rossellino works from 1461 to 1463, he takes up again the façade organization of Palazzo Rucellai; …

…Rossellino also designs the Sienese palazzi of the Nerucci.

Antonio Rosselino combines characteristic elegance, sensitivity, and freedom of handling in his innovative tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal in San Miniato al Monte above Florence, executed in 1461-66.

Baldovinetti paints  a solemn Annunciation for the elaborate tomb in 1466.