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Rainaldo [Rainaldus]
( fl first half 12th century). Italian sculptor and architect. Below the first string course of Pisa Cathedral is a faithful 19th-century copy of a medieval inlaid slab with an inscription: Hoc opus eximium, tam mirum, tam pretiosum Rainaldus prudens operator et ipse magister constituit mire, sollerter et ingeniose (‘Rainaldo, the skilful workman and master builder, executed this wonderful, costly work, and did so with amazing skill and ingenuity’). This is the only surviving record to refer to Rainaldo; it is very unlikely that he can be identified with the ‘Rainaldus magister’ mentioned as a resident of Lucca in a document from that city dated 1166. The prevailing view is that the work to which the inscription alludes is the decoration of the whole first order of the façade, the adjacent sections of the sides and the entire interior west wall. This section, possibly also constructed by Rainaldo, was added to extend the nave of the first cathedral building (consecrated 1118) and may have been executed immediately after its completion, although some panels from the choir-screen (Pisa, Mus. Opera Duomo) of similar style already existed at the time of the consecration. Rainaldus’s team included other masters as well as the chief stonecutter. The lion (Pisa, Mus. Opera Duomo) that stood on the half column to the right of the central door bore the inscription Bonfilius et Guido fecerunt hunc leonem (‘Bonfiglio and Guido made this lion’); however, the lion is not significantly different from the rest of the work.
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