Giovanni di Agostino

Giovanni di Agostino was a Sienese sculptor and architect of the fourteenth century, from a family of stone carvers. From 1336 he was capomaestro, master of works, of Siena Cathedral, in the decade when the city attempted its enormous enlargement of the building.

Life and family

His parents, the sculptor and architect Agostino di Giovanni and Lagina di Nese, married in 1310, so he was born after that date; his younger brother Domenico was also a sculptor and architect. Documents about him are few. In the late 1320s he probably assisted his father on the great tomb of Bishop Guido Tarlati in Arezzo Cathedral; older sources sometimes credit that monument to Giovanni himself, but it belongs to his father's workshop.

In November 1336 he was engaged as capomaestro of the Opera del Duomo in Siena, and in 1337 the cathedral works at Orvieto paid for him to visit and advise on their building. His Siena contract was renewed for five years in 1340. He disappears from the records after 1347 and probably died in the Black Death of 1348, although some reference works give a later date of about 1370.

Works

Only a few sculptures are firmly his: the decoration of the Tarlati chapel in Arezzo Cathedral (completed 1334) and a relief of the Madonna enthroned with angels in the oratory of San Bernardino, Siena (about 1336). Attributed works include the lunette of the Vallepiatta portal of Siena Cathedral (1340–45), a half-length prophet in the cathedral's south transept, and figures on the south portal of Grosseto Cathedral, made with his father. His style is heavy and voluminous but softly modeled.

Siena Cathedral

His years as capomaestro coincided with the start of the Duomo Nuovo in 1339, a plan to make the existing church merely the transept of a vast new nave. Plague and structural problems halted it, and its unfinished walls still stand beside the cathedral.

See also Giovanni Pisano, who began the façade, and our guide to Gothic art.