Pietro Urbano was an Italian artist 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 was born in

Pistoia Pistoia (; ) is a city and ''comune'' in the Italian region of Tuscany, the capital of a province of the same name, located about north-west of Florence and is crossed by the Ombrone Pistoiese, a tributary of the River Arno. It is a typic ...

, and was a pupil of

Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 147518February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspir ...

as a sculptor. He was dismissed from Michelangelo's service for allegedly defacing the master's Risen Christ, rather than completing the finer details onsite at the church of

Santa Maria sopra Minerva Santa Maria sopra Minerva is one of the major Church (building), churches of the Order of Preachers (also known as the Dominicans) in Rome, Italy. The church's name derives from the fact that the first Christian church structure on the site was b ...

, as he had been charged. According to Michelangelo's confidant

Sebastiano del Piombo Sebastiano del Piombo (; – 21 June 1547) was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance and early Mannerism, Mannerist periods, famous as the only major artist of the period to combine the colouring of the Venetian School (art), Venetian scho ...

, "all he has worked on is completely disfigured." Urbano subsequently absconded with pilfered jewelry and clothing, fleeing to Rome with the stolen goods in order to gamble and engage prostitutes. In the Roman Basilica of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, he sculpted the funeral monument of Cecchino Bracci, another pupil of Michelangelo, dead at the age of sixteen.

References

* Artists from Pistoia 16th-century Italian painters Italian male painters Painters from Tuscany Italian Renaissance painters {{Italy-painter-stub