Arnolfo di Cambio

When this commission was written in 1826, the architect who began Florence Cathedral in 1296 was still called Arnolfo di Lapo, the name given him by Giorgio Vasari, the 16th-century biographer of artists. Documents later showed that his father was a man named Cambio, and that is the name he carries today.

This plaster is Pampaloni's model for the marble on the Palazzo dei Canonici, where Arnolfo sits in a niche facing the flank of the cathedral he started. The sculptor shows him studying the foundations of the church, the moment when the building was only a plan in the ground. Critics of the time praised Pampaloni for catching the temperament of each of his two architects and giving each the look of his own century.