Bernardo Rossellino was born into a family of farmers and quarry owners in the mountain village of

Settignano, overlooking the Arno river valley and the city of Florence.[1] His uncle, Jacopo di Domenico
di Luca del Borra Gamberelli may have given him his first lessons in stonemasonry. By 1420, Bernardo
was certainly down in Florence and apprenticed to one of that city's better-known sculptors, perhaps
Nanni di Bartolo, called "il Rosso (the redhead)". Such a relationship might explain the nickname of
"Rossellino (the little redhead) given to Bernardo and applied to his brothers, Antonio, Domenico, and
Giovanni. Curiously, there is no record of Bernardo's entry into Florence's Guild of Stone and
Woodworkers, although matriculation information exists for his brothers.

More than from any single master, Bernardo learned from the experimental atmosphere that suffused
Florence in the 1420s. He seems to have been captivated by the "new wave" approaches being put into
practice by Brunelleschi, Donatello, Ghiberti, and Masaccio. Perhaps more faithfully than their other
followers, Bernardo Rossellino embraced and held true to the classical revival in both sculpture and
architecture. Celebrated for his sculpture (the Leonardo Bruni Tomb, Empoli Annunciation group), he
achieved particular distinction through his expanding role as an architect, achieving lasting fame for the
work done or planned in Rome for Pope Nicholas V and, especially for the rebuilding of the town of
Pienza for Pope Pius II. Part of his artistic importance also lay in his entrepreneurial skills which enabled
him to assemble a large and highly successful workshop that dominated the stoneworking field in
Florence during the 1450s and 1460s.

Monument to Giannozzo Pandolfini, Badia Fiorentina, Florence.

In 1433, Bernardo is recorded as being in Arezzo, employed by the Fraternita di Santa Maria della
Misericordia to complete the facade of the Misericordia's headquarters. His first job presented a
considerable challenge. The lower storey of this palace had been completed a half century earlier in the,
then, popular Gothic style. Thus the problem confronting Bernardo was similar to that which Alberti
encountered a quarter century later when asked to complete the facade of Santa Maria Novella.
Bernardo's solution for the unfinished second storey was a three bay design which used a typically
Gothic mixed-element frame in the central bay flanked by classical paired pilasters and aediculae, the
features of which were taken from the most progressive sources available. Set within the Gothic frame
of this second storey is a relief of the Madonna of Mercy, the protectress of Arezzo, spreading her
mantle out over the community's citizenry. She is flanked by the kneeling saints Laurentius and
Persentinus. Bernardo received his final payment for the project in June 1435, specifically for the two
free standing figures of Saints Gregory and Donatus which occupy the aediculae on either side of the
Misericordia relief. Rossellino's solution for the Arezzo palace facade fused Gothic and Renaissance
elements in a deft, if somewhat awkward, combination aimed at achieving the Renaissance goal of
unified harmony. He also clearly displayed, in this initial effort at both sculpture and architecture, a
genius for the sort of creative eclecticism that became a major feature of the "Rossellino manner."

Bernardo Rossellino was back in Florence in 1436 to establish his own workshop and to join a crew of
stonemasons already at work constructing the Aranci Cloister of the Badia. Payment records, supported
by stylistic evidence, indicate that his principal contributions (1436–38) to this project included a
handsome stone doorframe and an unusual cross window, both of which are identifiable today. It also is
possible that he proposed the addition of the pilaster strips which divide the surfaces of the loggias of
the two-storey courtyard into a systematic grid. Documents indicate that Bernardo assumed a more
decisive role at the suburban monastery of Santa Maria alle Campora whose cloister (1436) challenges
that of Michelozzo at San Marco as the first such structure to have been erected in accordance with a
Renaissance aesthetic. In 1444, he received a commission to sculpt two altar figures for the oratory of
the Annunciation in the church of St. Stephen in Empoli. In these two representations of the Virgin
Annunciate and of the Archangel Gabriel, we find a further development of the artist's decoratively
graceful and classical style as well as a recognition of the sculptural styles of Donatello, Ghiberti, and
Michelozzo.

Although the stock in trade of the Rossellino shop would have been the supply of building material and
simple tasks of stonemasonry, several projects, combining sculptural and architectural features, were of
particular significance during the 1440s. One, undertaken in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena called upon
him to design a grand entry way into the Sala del Conci