Matteo Palmieri

The bust of the historian Matteo Palmieri is an autheticated work by Rossellino. Until the nineteenth century it was displayed over the exterior portal of his house (unusual in Florence) so that it is damaged and most detail effaced. The drill holes for the leonine hair are more prominent and resemble those from late antiquity. The features were once less coarse than now but the vigorous conception of the humanist - who wrote about free will and was accused of heresy - is preserved.