Benedetto da Maiano (1442–1497)

Italian sculptor and architect. Training as a sculptor in Florence under Rossellino, he developed an elegant realism typical of 15th-century Florentine sculpture. Among his many works – which include portraits, tombs, monuments and pulpits – the best-known is a series of marble reliefs on the pulpit in the Church of Santa Croce in Florence 1472–75. His architectural projects included the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, begun about 1490.

A member of a notable artistic family of Florence, Benedetto trained as a stone carver, his early works strongly influenced by his master, Antonio Rossellino. His earliest surviving work is the shrine of San Savino (1472, Faenza Cathedral), on which he worked with his brother, the architect Giuliano da Maiano.

His pulpit reliefs in Santa Croce show a wider range of Florentine influences – Desiderio da Settignano, Donatello, Lorenzo Ghiberti – and also antique pieces. At about the same time he also worked on an altar for Santa Fina in the Collegiata in San Gimignano where he became familiar with the naturalistic style of Ghirlandaio.

His other works include a number of portrait busts, notably of Filippo Strozzi (Louvre, Paris), and of Pietro Mellini (1474, Bargello, Florence), who commissioned the marble reliefs in Santa Croce; and the altar of San Bartolo in the Church of San Agostino in San Gimignano (1494).