Francesco Camilliani (1530

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

– 1586) was a Tuscan

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

period. He studied in Florence under Baccio Bandinelli. His son Camillo Camilliani (died 1603) was later a sculptor too, working in

Palermo Palermo ( ; ; , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The ...

, where he also worked as an architect and held the post as well of ''ingegniere del Regno'', "engineer to the Kingdom of Sicily". Camilliani was praised in one of Cosimo Bartoli's ''Ragionamenti Accademici''; in the course of a stroll through Florence the interlocutors in Bartoli's dialogue say of one of Camilliani's statues, that, had it been buried and rediscovered, it would have been praised heartily. Francesco Camilliani's most notable work by far is the Renaissance fountain in the Piazza Pretoria in Palermo, the ''Fontana Pretoria''. This piece was originally commissioned for the garden of the villa outside Florence of Luigi Alvarez de Toledo, son of the viceroy Don Pedro Álvarez de Toledo and brother-in-law of

Cosimo I de' Medici Cosimo I de' Medici (12 June 1519 – 21 April 1574) was the second and last duke of Florence from 1537 until 1569, when he became the first grand duke of Tuscany, a title he held until his death. Cosimo I succeeded his cousin to the duchy. ...

; it was completed in 1555. Camilliani was aided in the grand project by the ''garzoni'' of his studio, including the Florentine Michelangelo Naccherino (1550–1622), or Vagherino Fiorentino. In its original site,

Giorgio Vasari Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer who is best known for his work ''Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'', considered the ideol ...

called it a "most stupendous fountain that has not its peer in Florence or perhaps in Italy." Under pressure to make economies in his style of living, and perhaps with reservations about the completed fountain's crowd of ''ignudi'', in January 1573 Don Luigi permitted it to be bought by the Senate of Palermo, through the intervention of his brother Don Garçia, the former viceroy and Governor of Palermo. It was dismantled into six hundred and forty-four pieces and transported to Palermo, and set up there by Camillo Camilliani, who had to concentrate its elements in the more constricted urban space, and to oversee some additions to render it more suitable for Sicily, which included a ''Venus'' by Antonio Gagini. Re-erection at Palermo was complete in 1584."La Fontana Pretoria"
/ref> The sculpture of the fountain depicts

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s, monsters, and

nymph A nymph (; ; sometimes spelled nymphe) is a minor female nature deity in ancient Greek folklore. Distinct from other Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature; they are typically tied to a specific place, land ...

s all spraying jets of water, which also falls and cascades between them. Once locally known as the ''Fontana della Vergogna'', the "fountain of shame”, because of the nude statues that stand around the base of each tier, it is one of the few true pieces of High Renaissance art in Palermo.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Camilliani, Francesco 1530 births 1586 deaths 16th-century Italian sculptors Italian male sculptors Renaissance sculptors Architects from Palermo