Arnolfo di Cambio
Ritratto di Carlo I d'Angiò

A people of poets, artists, heroes

saints, thinkers, scientists

navigators, transmigrators

.... and sculptors

This is the inscription that should reign over the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome.

Overlooking the meaning of transmigrator (and the "V" instead of "U"), what is striking is indeed the absence of a discipline to which Italy has contributed so much to make great by giving birth to some of the greatest sculptors and stonemasons of all time: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Antonio Canova, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, etc.

But among all the great sculptors who worked in the courts and churches of half of Italy, leaving us a heritage of inestimable artistic value, one in particular has always attracted my attention for his extraordinary modernity and his cultured classicism: Arnolfo di Cambio, or more properly Arnolfo di Lapo.

In 1277, Arnolfo di Lapo creates a work destined to make history: the portrait of Charles I of Anjou, originally placed in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli and now preserved in the Capitoline Museums, represents the first realistic representation in the West of a living personality several centuries after the end of the classical era.

Arnolfo di Lapo creates a marble statue where the impassive majesty typical of Arnolfo's sculptural celebration merges seamlessly with a sober realism that recalls the late archaic sculpture of the peninsula.

Arnolfo represents Charles I of Anjou in all his tragic and mortal physicality (the deep wrinkles), blending together heraldic and symbolic elements (the throne with leonine protomes is a reference to Louis VIII of France, father of Charles, known as the Lion).

The squaring of the facial features and the surprising interplay of references to Romanesque majesty, the alternation between plastic masses and smooth surfaces make this work a bridge between classicism (given by the form) and modernity (of contents).

There is nothing more to say about a work and an artist for whom enough words will never be spent, so HAIL ARNOLFO DI LAPO.