MEDIEVAL SCULPTOR, Italian
(active c. 1180 in Sicily)

Capital

c. 1180
Marble
Cathedral, Monreale

The Monreale basilica in the hills outside Palermo was built from 1174 to 1182 under the auspices of the king of Sicily, William II, who had artists brought from all over the world. The result is an extraordinary combination of styles. The architecture is composite, half-Norman, half-Byzantine; a triple Byzantine choir crowns a nave designed on a basilical plan. The mosaic decoration is Byzantine, while the ornamental sculpture derives from antiquity. The composite capitals in the nave are directly inspired by Hellenistic models, and are the work of a classicising Campanian workshop employing Roman, Apulian and Byzantine sculptors.