Born in 1232, he had studied under Niccolo Pisano, the sculptor of the famous pulpit at Pisa (now in the museum there), of that in the cathedral in Siena, and of the fountain at Perugia (in all of which Arnolfo probably helped), and the designer of many buildings all over Italy.

Arnolfo's own unaided sculpture may be seen at its best in the ciborium in S.Paolo Fuori le Mura in Rome; but it is chiefly as an architect that he is now known.

He had already given Florence her extended walls and some of her most beautiful buildings--the Or San Michele and the Badia--and simultaneously he designed S.Croce and the Palazzo Vecchio.

Vasari has it that Arnolfo was assisted on the Duomo by Cimabue; but that is doubtful.
The foundations were consecrated in 1296 and the first stone laid on September 8th, 1298, and no one was more interested in its early progress than a young, grave lawyer who used to sit on a stone seat on the south side and watch the builders, little thinking how soon he was to be driven from Florence for ever.

This seat--the Sasso di Dante--was still to be seen when Wordsworth visited Florence in 1837, for he wrote a sonnet in which he tells us that he in reverence sate there too, "and, for a moment, filled that empty Throne".