SILVESTRO DELL'AQUILA - b. ~1450 L'Aquila, d. ~1504 ?

Italian sculptor and painter. He was probably the son of the goldsmith Giacomo di Paolo Sulmona, recorded as resident in L’Aquila by 1467. Silvestro is first documented in 1471, sharing a workshop with Giovanni Biascuccio, and again at the end of the decade in partnership with the Florentine Francesco Trugi. The earliest documented work by the sculptor is a tabernacle with St James (untraced) commissioned by the ecclesiastical authorities of Tornimparte on 12 February 1476. In 1476 he was also commissioned to execute, in L’Aquila Cathedral, a funerary monument (damaged 1703) to Amico Agnifili, Bishop of L’Aquila (reg. 1431-76). A contract for materials dated 15 September 1476 allows a partial reconstruction of the original form of the marble monument. The surviving sepulchre with an effigy of Agnifili was flanked by niche figures (untraced) of St George and St Maximian. The lunette sculpture specified in the document can perhaps be identified with a relief of the Virgin and Child (L’Aquila, S Marciana). Agnifili’s tomb was close in type to Florentine models such as Desiderio da Settignano’s tomb of Carlo Marsuppini (Florence, Santa Croce). The familiarity with contemporary Florentine sculpture suggests a period of residence in Tuscany, and Silvestro may have been in Florence in the late 1460s or early 1470s.

Monument of Maria Pereira and Beatrice Camponeschi (detail)

The Abruzzese sculptor Silvestro dell’Aquila was the most significant sculptor of Acquila at the time. His most important work is the Monument of Maria Pereira and Beatrice Camponeschi. This tomb exemplifies maternal despair. According to the inscription, Maria Pereira, a wealthy widowed noblewoman, commissioned the monument herself around 1490, after the death of her fifteen-month-old daughter, Beatrice. Beatrice is shown lying under what was to become the sarcophagus of her mother.

The carving style and certain details are indebted to Desiderio’s Marsuppini monument but the artistic origins of Silvestro are obscure. The double effigy with the poignant representation of the child placed like an after-thought beneath her mother bathtube sarcophagus, as though in a truckle bed, is unique. Its beautiful carving and lyrical forms render the the transitoriness of life even sadder.