GIOVANNI and PACIO DA FIRENZE

Italian sculptor brothers, mentioned in documents of 1343-45. Following Tino di Camaino to Naples after 1323, they adopted his courtly manner and became the main representatives of his style after his death in 1337. Their only documented work is the large tomb of Robert the Wise of Anjou, king of Naples (r. 1309-1343), erected in the church of Santa Chiara, Naples, between 1343 and 1345.

Apart from a fragment of the tomb of Louis of Durazzo (d. 1344) in Santa Chiara, the only other important attribution to the brothers is the now largely destroyed series of eleven scenes from the Story of St Catherine of Alexandria which was once built into the choir of Santa Chiara. Delicately carved in white marble against a dark green marble ground, these simple-seeming scenes possess a cameo-like quality, a clarity and sophistication to which Giovanni and Pacio could rise.

Some other works, attributed to the brothers with low probability, are two curtain-bearing angels in the Museum of Art, Cleveland, the ancient altar of Santa Chiara, as well as sculptures in the monastery itself and in the museum of San Martino, also in Naples.

In or shortly before 1351 and soon after the death of Pacio, Giovanni returned to his native Florence.