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Rossellino [Gamberelli].
Italian family of artists. The brothers (1) Bernardo Rossellino and (2) Antonio Rossellino were responsible for some of the most important sculptural projects in Florence between 1440 and 1470. Although both artists are now referred to as Rossellino (‘little redhead’), this nickname was applied specifically to Antonio; the family name used by both brothers in documents is Gamberelli. By 1399 their father, Matteo Gamberelli, was living in Settignano, where his five sons were born. Matteo and his brothers were masons, and all his sons were trained as such. The eldest son, Domenico Gamberelli (b ?1402–5), was approximately five years older than Bernardo; Giovanni Gamberelli was born in 1412 or 1413 and Tomaso Gamberelli sometime between 1415 and 1422. Antonio was the youngest. In 1451 the elder brothers filed an estimo at the death of their father; at this point they were all living together near S Ambrogio, Florence. In the same year Antonio filed an estimo separately with two nephews, both sons of Bernardo, in the quarter of Santo Spirito. It is, however, generally presumed that all five brothers usually worked together under the management of Bernardo, although some evidence suggests they occasionally worked separately: in 1448–9 Tomaso and Antonio were paid for work on the seraphim frieze above the capitals of the nave in S Lorenzo, Florence (Hyman, 1977). In 1447 Giovanni and Pagno di Lapo Portigiani (1408–70) carved a baptismal font for Massa Maritima Cathedral. Nevertheless, most of the sculpture associated with the Rossellino family before Bernardo’s death in 1464 seems to have been produced by a single workshop, which presumably included the brothers as well as other sculptors. By the 1450s Bernardo increasingly accepted commissions that were finished by Antonio with the assistance of the workshop (Schulz, 1977). Some time after 1451 responsibility for the sculptural output from the Rossellino workshop passed to Antonio, largely because Bernardo became increasingly engaged on architectural commissions. The following members have entries:
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