TINO DI CAMAINO
(b. ca. 1285, Siena, d. ca. 1337, Napoli)

Biography

Sienese sculptor, chiefly of tombs, active in Pisa, Florence, and Naples, as well as his native city. He probably trained with Giovanni Pisano, but his style was more calm and reserved, with an imposing block-like massiveness. His early career was spent in Pisa and Siena, but his chief works are in Florence (where he worked 1321-24) and Naples (where he worked from 1324 until his death).

In Pisa he erected the tomb of the Emperor Henry VII (d 1313) in 1315 in the choir of Pisa Cathedral. The tomb was dismantled in 1494 and a smaller monument in the south transept was pieced together from fragments. In Siena he received the important commission for the tomb of Cardinal Riccardo Petroni in 1318, who died in Genoa in 1314 and was buried in Siena Cathedral in 1317.

Tino di Camaino was active in Florence from the autumn of 1318 to the end of 1319. In Santa Croce he erected the tomb of Gastone della Torre, Patriarch of Aquileia, who had died in Florence in 1318; this was dismantled in 1566 (fragments are in various museums). Tino probably returned to Florence in October 1320 in order to erect the tomb of Bishop Antonio d'Orso on the interior west wall of the new cathedral (the Bishop was buried in the tomb on 18 July 1321). Much of the tomb, which is signed, is preserved in situ. It is possibly the earliest example of the seated effigy.

Tino di Camaino probably went to Naples towards the end of 1323 or early in 1324, although he is not documented there until May 1325. In Naples, he is known to have been in touch with Giotto, who was court painter there at the time, and with the Sienese painter Pietro Lorenzetti. His earliest works in Naples are the tombs of Catherine of Austria in San Lorenzo Maggiore and Mary of Hungary in Santa Maria Donnaregina, both of whom had died in the spring of 1323. Simpler versions of the tomb of Mary of Hungary are to be seen in the monuments for Charles, Duke of Calabria (d 1328) and his second wife Mary of Valois (d 1331) in Santa Chiara

Tino somewhat modified his own rigorous style in the direction of the more decorative grace of the Gothic style, but none the less his influence was significant as one of the Tuscan artists who carried the new northern developments to the southern parts of Italy.



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