Chap. III. PIETRO CAVALLINI. 107 individuality had succeeded to the defects of earlier times. Giotto had evidently shed his influence on the artist; and if it be true that the upper scenes of the life of the Virgin were commissioned by Bertoldo Stefaneschi in 1290, he must have ordered the votive mosaic at the very close of the century. Vasari affirms that Pietro Cavallini is the author of the mosaics in the tribune of S. Maria in Trastevere. His assertion may be accepted. It places the master high in the ranks of the painters of his time as one preserving the style of the Cosmati and of the Roman school. So far it has been necessary to proceed, to trace the passage of the manner of the Cosmati into that of Ca vallini. 1 The birth of Pietro Cavallini has not been recorded, but Vasari pretends, that it occurred when Giotto “had given life to Italian painting,” 2 a very general and un satisfactory assertion. That he was an artist of talent and perhaps extensively employed at Rome when Giotto visited the capital; that his training was under the Cos mati and that he did not disdain to acknowledge the su periority of the great Florentine, may be assumed from the character of the works that can be assigned to him. 1 Before taking leave of the former it may be proper to assign to them in their architectural ca pacity a fine Roman porch, with a square front of white marble, erected by one of the Gaetani family as entrance to an hospi tal, but now serving as ingress to the church of S. Antonio Abate at Rome. In style, like the porch of Civita Castellana cathedral and the gate of the Villa Mattei, this example of the architecture of the 13'" century is worthy of the talent of Jacobo Cosme. In scribed : Dns getrus ea...oc card, man- davit costrui hospitale loco issto (sic) et dni o Tuscul. eps et J.Gaetan, card, executores et fieri fecerunt pa.,.ce dni pet. cap cc. The Cosmati family is said to have had a descendant — Deo- dato or Adeodato, to whom a marble tabernacle in S. Maria in Cosmedin is assigned, and of whom it is likewise said that he laboured in Santa Maria Maggiore, but no record exists that connects this Deodato, with the name of Cosme. See note in comment, to Proemio of Vasari’s lives. Vol. I, p. 213. The only trace of a Cos- mato at S. M. Maggiore is the name of Johannes on the tomb of Cardinal Gonsalvo. — The words “Magister Deodatus fecit hoc opus” are noted by Ciampini Vett. Mon. Tom. I, p. 181 on a j tabernacle of 1290 in S. M. in Campitello at Rome, t J Vas. Vol. II. p. 81.
