Torrigiano, Pietro (1472–1528)

Florentine sculptor, employed by Henry VIII of England. He learnt his craft in the Medici gardens from Bertoldo di Giovanni. For a while, he changed career becoming a soldier in Cesare Borgia's army. However, hoping for better reward (it is said) he returned to sculpting and travelled to England, some time between 1506 and 1511. He made several tombs and terracotta busts and worked on Henry VII's grandiose tomb. This, though, was not completed; Torrigiano left in about 1522 and travelled to Seville, Spain.

Torrigiano, like Mazzoni, is an example of the Italian artisan who found lucrative foreign employment and consequently exported a particular Renaissance fashion to cities outside the peninsula. His most substantial work was the bronze and marble tomb of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (1512–18) in Westminster Abbey, London. In later sculptures, like St Jerome (now in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville), he worked in polychrome.

Torrigiano has the distinction of being the man who broke the artist Michelangelo's nose. This was not the only time (as Giorgio Vasari describes it) that his hot temper got the better of him: a violent disagreement with a Spanish patron led to his being accused of heresy and dying in custody.