Bernardo Rossellino

Bernardo di Matteo del Borra Gamberelli (1409 Settignano – 1464 Florence), better known as Bernardo Rossellino, was an Italian sculptor and architect, the elder brother of the sculptor Antonio 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.

Bernardo Rossellino was born into a family of farmers and quarry owners in the mountain village of Settignano, overlooking the Arno river valley and the city of Florence. 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, Donatello, Ghiberti, and Masaccio. 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 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, employed by the Fraternita di Santa Maria della Misericordia to complete the facade of the Misericordia'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 style. Thus the problem confronting Bernardo was similar to that which Alberti encountered 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 Madonna of Mercy, the protectress of Arezzo, 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 architecture, a genius for the sort of creative eclecticism that became a major feature of the "Rossellino manner."

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