Antonio, an eminent goldsmith and painter, was born at Florence in 1426. Apprenticed in his youth to the famous goldsmith Lorenzo Ghiberti, he soon rose to the place that was suitable for the exercise of his genius. The exquisite touch of his chisel immediately marked him out among his fellow-pupils. In the fabrication of the celebrated bronze gates of San Giovanni he became his master's chief assistant, and surpassed all the other coadjutors in correct design and patient execution. His increasing excellence soon enabled him to open a shop for himself, and to take the first place in his profession. He established his reputation and immortalized his name by working in silver, for the altar of San Giovanni, a series of stories representing the "Feast of Herod" and the "Dance of Herodias' Daughter." Pollajuolo next became a competitor for the fame of a painter. Placing himself under the tuition of his younger brother Pietro, he acquired the art in a few months. Then applying himself to anatomy, a subject which no artist had ever studied before him, he became especially excellent in representing the action of the muscles. A work representing the martyrdom of St Sebastian, and called by Lanzi "one of the best pictures of the fifteenth century," still remains in the church of San Sebastiano de' Servi, to be a specimen of his artistic skill. Pollajuolo spent his last years in Rome, working in bronze the tomb of Sextus IV. He died in that city in 1498. Intimately associated with the name of Antonio Pollajuolo is that of his brother Pietro. Only two years his junior, Pietro instructed him in painting, assisted him in executing many of his pictures, died in the same year, and was buried in the same tomb in San Pietro in Vincoli. (See Lanzi's History of Painting, and Vasari's Painters, &c.)