GANO DI FAZIO
(active from 1302, d. before 1318, Siena)

Tomb of Ranieri del Porrina

1315
Marble
Collegiata, Casole d'Elsa

Gano di Fazio's only certain work is the signed monument to Tommaso d'Andrea, Bishop of Pistoia. The breadth of treatment and the portrait quality of the recumbent figure in this wall-tomb in the Collegiata at Casole d'Elsa had led to his being credited with a far more impressive monument. This is the near-by upright, fully Gothic wall-tomb in which the equally portly figure of Ranieri del Porrina stands hatted and cloaked and book in hand. The vivid characterization of the pensive, yet half-smiling, plump-faced Podesta, with its suggestion of sensitivity as well as sensuality, is a milestone in the art of portraiture. It has the immediacy of a life-mask and is a unique prefiguration of late-fourteenth-century northern and mid-fifteenth-century Italian portraiture.