Monument to Bartolomeo Aragazzi: Faith

Throughout the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance a major field for sculpture in Italy was the funerary monument, from simple floor slabs to splendid constructions displaying the effigy of the deceased in a magnificent niche-like setting. Donatello and Michelozzo together made such a tomb for Cardinal Baldassare Cossa in the Baptistery in Florence, and Michelozzo made one, now dismembered, for the Aragazzi family in the Tuscan hill town of Montepulciano.

The surviving fragments of the dismembered Aragazzi monument at Montepulciano are almost exclusively the work of Michelozzo. The picture shows the figure of Faith from the Aragazzi tomb. The vigour of Michelozzo’s style and its strong classicism, place him in the second Renaissance style, but closer to Luca della Robbia than to Donatello.