Torrigiani, Pietro

▪ Florentine artist

in full  Pedro Florentin y Torrigiano  

born Nov. 24, 1472, Florence

died 1528, Sevilla, Spain

      Florentine sculptor and painter who became the first exponent of the Italian Renaissance idiom in England.

      Torrigiani was a student, along with Michelangelo, of Bertoldo di Giovanni at the Academy of Lorenzo de' Medici. He left Florence and worked in Rome, Bologna, Siena, and Antwerp before making his reputation in England. His best-known works, the tombs in Westminster Abbey for King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (1512–18), are full-length reclining figures cast in gilt bronze.

      In 1521 Torrigiani went to Sevilla (Seville), where his style changed, as observed in Virgin and Child (c. 1521), which shows High Renaissance characteristics, and St. Jerome (c. 1525), a Mannerist-influenced work. Suggestions of Torrigiani's influence appear in the work of the Spanish artists Diego Velázquez (Velázquez, Diego), Francisco de Zurbarán (Zurbarán, Francisco de), and Juan de Martínez Montañés (Montañés, Juan Martínez). He died in the Spanish inquisitor's prison.

* * *