Storiadellarte.com: italian art history

Little is known about the life of Arnolfo di Cambio, except that he was a pupil of Nicola Pisano and followed his classicist style.
The Tomb of Hadrian V in Viterbo and the Annibbaldi Monument in Rome, in St John in the Lateran, are the first works he is known to be the author of. They date to some time between 1276 and 1277. Little has survived of either; there is a fragment with a Procession of clerics, where the human figures are isolated against a mosaic background, made using the technique of the Roman Cosmatesque marble workers.
The figures in the Nativity Scenes in the Oratory of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome are also isolated. In Rome the artist carved the statue of Carlo d'Angio on the throne, now in the Musei Capitolini of Rome. The statue’s style is monumental in a classical-like way.
In about 1282 he executed the Monument of cardinal de Braye in the church of St Domenico in Orvieto.
In 1285, with the help of Pietro di Oderisio, he executed the ciborium of St Paul fuori le mura. The architectural design of this work is gothic, with decorative elements in a classical-cosmatesque style.
He also made the ciborium of the Church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, where thick-set figures stand out against a polychromatic background.
In 1296 Arnolfo was called to Florence, where he carved many parts of the facade of the Duomo. Many of his carvings and statues perished but among the surviving ones there are: the Nativity scenes in the Opera Museum of the Duomo, the Dormitio Virgis (currently in a museum in Berlin) and the Madonna on the throne.
One of the last works of Arnolfo di Cambio was the Funeral Monument of Boniface VIII. Only fragments remain and they are kept in the Vatican: among them is the statue of the resting pope.