Maso Finiguerra - Legacy

Legacy

These documented facts are supplemented by several writers of the next generation. Baccio Bandinelli said Finiguerra was among the young artists under Lorenzo Ghiberti working on the famous gates of the Baptistery, Florence; Benvenuto Cellini said he was the finest master of his day in niello engraving, and that his masterpiece was a pax of the Crucifixion in the baptistery of St. John; that being no great draftsman, he in most cases, including that of the above-mentioned pax, worked from drawings by Antonio Pollaluiolo. Vasari, on the other hand, claims that Finiguerra an inferior draughtsman to Pollaiuolo, mentions a number of original drawings by him as existing in Vasari's own collection, with figures both draped and nude, and histories drawn in watercolor. Vasari's account was confirmed and amplified in the next century by Baldinucci, who says that he has seen many drawings by Finiguerra in the manner of Masaccio; adding that Maso was beaten by Pollaiuolo in competition for the reliefs of the great silver altar-table commission by the merchants guild for the baptistery of St. John (this famous work is now preserved in the Opera del Duomo).