Giovanni di Balduccio

Giovanni di Balduccio is first mentioned in the Opera del Duomo di Pisa’s accounts ledger for 1318–19, probably in his role as an apprentice to Lupo di Francesco. In 1326 he is given the title of “magister lapidum” which tells us that by then he had become a master in his own right. His earliest work includes several stone decorations for the Camposanto cemetery and a number of capitals for the now lost cloister in the monastery of Santa Caterina in Pisa. His first independent work, however, was the tomb of Guarnierio Castranaci in Sarzana, and this was followed by the pulpit for the Dominican church of Santa Maria al Prato in San Casciano Val di Pesa, his second signed work. In 1332–3 he received a prestigious commission involving working alongside Giotto in the Rocca di Galliera in Bologna. The two artists are known to have worked together also on other occasions, for example in the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce in Florence and at the court of the Visconti in Milan. Giovanni di Balduccio was already working on the tomb of St. Peter Martyr in Sant’Eustorgio in Milan by the 1330s and he was eventually to become one of the city’s court artists. He was commissioned to carve the tombs of Azzone and Uberto Visconti, to make sculpture groups for the Castello Sforzesco and to produce another marble triptych for the church of Sant’Eustorgio. By 1349 he is being described in documents as “habitante Mediolani”, thus by that date he had settled in the Lombard capital, where he was to carve two more tombs, for Martino Aliprandi and Lanfranco Settala. His last known work is the tomb of St. Augustine, which he carved for the Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro in Pavia c. 1362–5.