Arnolfo di Cambio

Arnolfo di Cambio was an Italian architect and sculptor of the Duecento, living from about 1240 to somewhere between 1300 and 1310. Born in Colle Val d'Elsa in Tuscany, he began as a lead assistant to the sculptor Nicola Pisano and worked on the pulpit of Siena Cathedral in the 1260s before taking independent commissions in Rome and Florence. He is documented as capomaestro, or head of works, for Florence Cathedral in 1300, and he designed the sixth circuit of the city walls of Florence, built between 1284 and 1333. His funerary monuments, such as the tomb of Cardinal Guillaume de Braye at Orvieto, became models for Gothic funerary art. Attribution is difficult because he ran sizeable workshops, and the identity of the Florentine master with the Roman sculptor who signed as Arnolfus is a majority view rather than a certainty.