CAVALLINI, PIETRO

(Pietro de' Cerroni; 1240/1250-c. 1330)

   Italian Proto-Renaissance painter and mosaicist from the Roman School. Lorenzo Ghiberti, who greatly admired Cavallini, left information on the extensive works rendered by the master that paint a picture of a highly successful career. Among these were cycles in Old St. Peter's, St. Paul outside the Walls, San Francesco, San Crisogno, and Santi Maria and Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome. Of these, only the last two have survived. Cardinal Bertoldo Stefaneschi commissioned Cavallini to add a band of mosaics depicting the Virgin's life (c. 1290) below those already in the apse of Santa Maria in Trastevere, executed in the previous century. Cavallini's other extant commission came from the French Cardinal Jean Cholet, whose titular church was Santa Cecilia. These frescoes, now in ruinous state, depict scenes from the Old and New Testaments, including the Last Judgment (c. 1290). Scholars have noted that Cavallini's figures bear a striking resemblance to Byzantine works from the Palaeologan dynasty. At this time, artistic exchange was common between Byzantium and western Europe, so it is quite possible that Cavallini traveled to Serbia, then part of the Byzantine Empire, to view the Palaeologan frescoes in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Sopocani, built by Italian architects.