This completely unknown sculptor in actual fact takes his name - Gino
Micheli da Castello - from the inscription dated 1341 on the base of
the marble sculpture of the Madonna and Child contained in the Museum
of Religious Art of San Casciano Val di Pesa. As no other artist of
this name is mentioned in documents, it could in fact belong to the
person who commissioned the work. The name is therefore a conventional
choice that helps to determine an artist whose corpus was reconstructed
for the first time by Kreytemberg, basing it on the sculpture mentioned
above. Probably from the school of Tino di Camaino (active between 1318
and 1323), Micheli worked in Florence and carried out commissions of a
certain prestige.
On the basis of a stylistic affinity with the only work that is
directly connected to him, he has also been attributed with some of the
reliefs on the base of the Giotto bell-tower: Arithmetic, Logic, Music
and Grammar, in the cycle of the Seven Liberal Arts; Faith, in the
cycle of the Virtues, and Matrimony, in the cycle of the Sacraments.
They were commissioned by the Opera del Duomo between 1337 and 1341,
when Andrea Pisano was directing the construction works.
The Madonna
and Child at San Casciano was carried out after this commission and
followed by the relief and caryatids of the Cardinal Virtues on the
tomb of Simone and Francesco de' Pazzi, which can be found in the
loggia on the north side of Santa Croce in Florence and thought to date
from his maturity.
As far as we know this was his last work. Gino
Micheli has also been attributed with a relief with the busts of the
Madonna and Child in stone, now in the Museum of the Bargello in
Florence. According to experts, a series of small heads in relief
adorning some of the capitals on the facade of Santa Maria Novella and
showing his characteristically wide and flattened faces, a pilaster in
the Church of San Remigio and some corbels in the loggia of the second
cloister in Santissima Annunziata, also match his style, thus further
documenting his activity in the city and his influence in
Florentineartistic circles.
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