ROSSELLI Cosrao (l439-c. 1507), a Florentine painter, was born in 1439. At the age of fourteen he became a pupil of Neri di Bicci, and in 1460 he worked as assistant to his cousin Bernardo di Stefano Rosselli. The first work of Cosimo mentioned by Vasari still exists in S. Ambrogio, in Florence, over the third altar on the left. It is an Assumption of the Virgin, a youthful and feeble work of but little merit. In the same church, on the wall of one of the chapels, is a fresco by Cosimo which Vasari praises highly, especially for a portrait of the young scholar Pico of Mirandola. The scene, a procession bearing a miracle-working chalice, is painted with much vigour and less mannerism than most of this artist’s work. A picture painted by Rosselli for the church of the Annunziata, with figures of SS. Barbara, Matthew, and the Baptist, is now in the Academy of Florence. Rosselli also spent some time in Lucca, where he painted several altar-pieces for various churches, none of any great importance. A picture attributed to him, taken from the church of S. Girolamo at Fiesole, is now in the National Gallery of London. It is a large retable, with, in the centre, St Jerome in the wilderness kneeling before a crucifix, and at the sides standing figures of St Damasus and St Eusebius, St Paolo and St Eustachia; below is a predella with small subjects. Though dry and hard in treatment, the figures are designed with much dignity. The Berlin Gallery possesses three pictures by Rosselli, the Virgin in Glory, the Entombment of Christ, and the Massacre of the Innocents. In 1480 Rosselli, together with the chief painters of Florence, was invited by Sixtus IV. to Rome to assist in the painting of the frescos in the Sistine Chapel. Three of these were executed by him—the Destruction of ...

ROSSELLINOAntonio (1427-c. 1479), one of the most skilful of Florentine sculptors, was the son of Matteo di Domenico Gamberelli, and had four brothers, who all practised some branch of the fine arts. Almost nothing is known about the life of Antonio, but many of his works still exist, and are of the highest beauty, full of strong religious sentiment, and executed with the utmost delicacy' of touch and technical skill. The style of Antonio and his brother (see below) is a development of that of Donatello and Ghiberti; it possesses all the refinement and soft sweetness of the earlier masters, but is not equal to them either in vigour or originality. Antonio’s chief work, still in perfect preservation, is the very lovely tomb of a young cardinal prince of Portugal, who died in 1459, aged only twenty-six. It occupies one side of a small chapel on the north of the nave of San Miniato. The recumbent effigy of the cardinal is very remarkable for the grace of its pose and the beauty of the portrait face. It rests on a handsome sarcophagus, and over it, under the arch which frames the whole, is a beautiful relief of the Madonna between two flying angels. The tomb was begun in 1461 and finished in 1466; Antonio received four hundred and twenty-five gold florins for it. A reproduction of this tomb with slight alterations, and of course a different effigy, was made by Antonio for the wife of Antonio Piccolomini, duke of Amalfi, in the church of S. Maria del Monte at Naples, where it still exists. For the same church he also executed some delicate reliefs, which perhaps err in being too pictorial in style, especially in the treatment of the backgrounds. A fine medallion relief by him is preserved in the Bargello at Florence (see fig.), and the original terra cotta model for this ...