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| Antonio di Salvi |
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| Goldsmith |
| Florence, 1450 - 1527 |
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His artistic education started out in the workshop of Antonio del
Pollaiolo, in Via Vacchereccia in Florence, as Antonio di Salvi himself
declared when he registered with the Guild in Por Santa Maria in 1475.
For many years he collaborated with his cousin Francesco di Giovanni in
a workshop nearby, at least until their partnership broke up in around
1490. In 1478 the two goldsmiths won their first important commission -
the panels of the Banquet of Herod for the right-hand altar front in
the Baptistery of San Giovanni (Museum of the Opera del Duomo,
Florence) - thus also affirming their careers in Florentine artistic
spheres, and completed the work in 1480. Di Salvi worked on his own for
the last twenty years of his life, a famous master goldsmith in the
city and the last representative of the traditions of Pollaiolo.
He was one of the few who, right up until the first quarter of the 16th
century, still used the technique of translucent enamelling, typical of
Gothic art and the early Renaissance. Throughout his life his work was
always to contain the same formal and stylistic characteristics taught
by his master. We can see this clearly in his Reliquary of St. Jerome,
carried out for Santa Maria del Fiore in 1487 (Museum of the Opera del
Duomo, Florence) and, many years later, traces of Pollaiolo's style can
again be found in his execution of the reliquary of St. Anthony Abbot,
once more for the Cathedral (1514, Museum of the Opera del Duomo,
Florence). He is attributed with an enormous quantity of work and his
activity is documented in almost all the Florentine churches as well as
in a great many religious buildings in the surrounding countryside.
After Antonio del Pollaiolo's departure for Rome, Antonio di Salvi was
really the only local goldsmith capable of satisfying high level
commissions and therefore carried out a huge variety of objects for the
Badia Fiorentina, the Basilica of the SS. Annunziata, the Basilica of
San Lorenzo and the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. He was also in
great demand outside the city, where examples of his work can be found
in some equally important churches, like the Cathedral of Santo Stefano
in Prato and the Basilica of Santa Maria in Impruneta. For the latter
he carried out two paxes in silver plate, dated 1515, which can today
be seen in the Museum beside the church.
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