Biography

Italian sculptor, military engineer, and architect, son of Francesco Camilliani, a pupil of Baccio Bandinelli. He moved to Palermo from Florence in 1574, to assemble and enlarge (with the collaboration of Michelangelo Naccherino) the fountain executed in the 1550s by his father for the Florentine villa of Pietro di Toledo. This had been sold to the city of Palermo by Pietro's son Luigi di Toledo, to be erected in the newly built Piazza Pretoria in front of the Palazzo Senatorio. It was much praised by Vasari and represented the introduction of Mannerist sculpture to Palermo.

Many documents relate to Camilliani, although only a few works survive. In 1586 he was appointed viceregal architect and custodian of coastal fortifications, in which role he played an important part in the defence of Sicily. In 1585 he was responsible for the construction of the military quarter at Milazzo. His busy studio supplied fountains, statues, funerary monuments and silver objects to churches and noble patrons. His statue of Glaucus (mid-1580s; Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, Palermo) was executed for the Palazzo Reale. In 1590 he designed the tribune of San Giovanni di Malta in Messina, which was completed by Giacomo del Duca, and in 1592 he agreed to make an elaborate fountain (destroyed 19th century) for the city of Caltagirone. The remains of a rich silver tabernacle, which was originally decorated with twelve apostles and the four evangelists, are preserved in the church of Santa Maria in Caltagirone.

In 1593 he planned the triumphal arch for the Florentines in honour of S Ninfa. In 1599 he was commissioned by Baroness Laura Valdina to produce a monument to her son Mauro Valdina, for the Chiesa Madre in Rocca. Enriched with marble inlay, it forms an important precedent for the style of decoration that prevailed in Sicilian churches during the 17th and 18th centuries. The plans for the Chiesa Madre in Milazzo and the courtyard of the Rocca Valdina Castle in Rocca have also been attributed to Camilliani.