LAMBERTI, Niccolò di Piero

Niccolò di Piero (Pietro) Lamberti (called il Pela), sculptor and architect, member of an Italian family of artists. Both Niccolò di Piero Lamberti and his son Piero di Niccolò Lamberti produced sculpture of average quality, but they were important for exporting the Tuscan style to Venice, where they were active in the late 1410s and 1420s.

Vasari confused Niccolò di Piero with Niccolò di Forzore Spinelli of Arezzo, a mistake that was not rectified until 1928. The first certain reference to Niccolò di Pietro Lamberti occurs in the records of Florence CathedralGLOSSARYThe principal church of a province or diocese, where the throne of the bishop is placed. For reasons lost to time and tradition, a cathedral always faces west - toward the setting sun. The altar is placed at the east end. The main body, or nave, of the cathedral is usually divided into one main and two side aisles. These lead up to the north and south transepts, or arms of the cross, the shape in which a cathedral is usually formed. in 1391, when he was called magister, implying that by that date he was an independent artist. Consequently he must have been born by 1370 and possibly earlier. It has been suggested that Niccolò was one of the carvers in the first campaign of work on the Porta della Mandorla of Florence Cathedral, but there is no explicit connection between Niccolò and this commission until 1406, when work was already under way on the decorative mouldings framing the tympanumGLOSSARYIn classical architecture, the triangular area enclosed by a pediment, often decorated with sculptures. In medieval architecture, the semi-circular area over a a door's lintel, enclosed by an arch, often decorated with sculptures or mosaics.. Niccolò was married in Florence in 1392.

He worked mostly in Florence on decorations for the cathedral and for the Church of Orsanmichele and in Venice on the façade of St Mark's.