Daniele da VOLTERRA
Volterra 1509 - Rome 1566
Biography
Daniele da Volterra was trained in Siena and arrived in Rome in the mid-1530’s, working as an assistant to Perino del Vaga. He was to have a career of nearly thirty years in Rome, and soon began receiving significant independent commissions from such noble patrons as the Massimi and Orsini families. Around 1543 he painted a Deposition for the Orsini chapel in the church of Santa Trinità dei Monti, which is today his best-known work; other frescoes by the artist for the same chapel are now lost. In the 1540’s Daniele became a friend and protégé of Michelangelo, and towards the end of the decade had begun to work in collaboration with the master, using the latter’s drawings for his own compositions. Later commissions included a fresco for the Palazzo Farnese, completed by 1548, and an Assumption of the Virgin for the Della Rovere chapel, also in Santa Trinità dei Monti, which was completed in the early 1550’s. In the later part of his career Daniele was more active as a sculptor and stuccatore than as a painter, although in 1564 he was tasked with the commission to overpaint the genitalia of the figures in Michelangelo’s fresco of The Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel.
