born 0441; 1250, Rome
died 0441; 1330
Italian painter and mosaicist active mainly in Rome.
His major surviving works are mosaics depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin for the Roman church of Santa Maria in Trastevere (1290s) and fragments of a fresco cycle, including a Last Judgment, for the church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere ( 0441; 1293). He was the first to break with the stylizations of Byzantine art; his figures have a sense of weight and three-dimensionality. Cavallini had many students, and his work was an important influence on his great contemporary Giotto .