SILVESTRO DELL'AQUILA
(active 1471-1504 in Central Italy)

Biography

Italian sculptor and painter. He was probably the son of the goldsmith Giacomo di Paolo Sulmona, recorded as resident in L'Aquila by 1467. Silvestro is first documented in 1471, sharing a workshop with Giovanni Biascuccio, and again at the end of the decade in partnership with the Florentine Francesco Trugi. The earliest documented work by the sculptor is a tabernacle with St James (untraced) commissioned by the ecclesiastical authorities of Tornimparte on 12 February 1476. In 1476 he was also commissioned to execute, in L'Aquila Cathedral, a funerary monument (damaged 1703) to Amico Agnifili, Bishop of L'Aquila (reg. 1431-76). A contract for materials dated 15 September 1476 allows a partial reconstruction of the original form of the marble monument. The surviving sepulchre with an effigy of Agnifili was flanked by niche figures (untraced) of St George and St Maximian. The lunette sculpture specified in the document can perhaps be identified with a relief of the Virgin and Child (L'Aquila, S Marciana). Agnifili's tomb was close in type to Florentine models such as Desiderio da Settignano's tomb of Carlo Marsuppini (Florence, Santa Croce). The familiarity with contemporary Florentine sculpture suggests a period of residence in Tuscany, and Silvestro may have been in Florence in the late 1460s or early 1470s.