The imposing seated statue of Pope Boniface VIII was sculpted between 1296 and 1300 by Arnolfo di Cambio and his collaborators for a niche on the third level of the medieval façade of the Cathedral, to the left of the main portal.

When the original architectural frontage was dismantled in 1587, the sculpture was moved to adorn the garden of the Florentine Palazzo di Valfonda and later the Orti Oricellari. In the nineteenth century, it entered the collections of the antiquarian Stefano Bardini, from whom Duke Caetani, a distant descendant of the pontiff, acquired it. In 1893, he donated the statue to the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore. Initially placed inside the Cathedral on the counter-façade, it was finally transferred to the Museum in 1937.

This statue, standing 2.80 meters tall excluding its base, exudes a pharaonic sense of hieratic grandeur. It was sculpted using three large marble blocks, along with additional smaller slabs. Arnolfo himself created only the head, while the modeling of the lower portion was entrusted to his collaborators.

At the pope’s sides stood two acolytes in high relief—one with arms crossed and the other raising a fringed cloth—both of which are still preserved in a private Florentine residence today.

The pontiff depicted, made famous—albeit unfavorably—by Dante’s invective in the Divine Comedy, was closely connected to the Florentine Church through Francesco Monaldeschi, bishop of Florence at the time of the new cathedral’s construction, to which Boniface had donated 3,000 gold florins. This explains the presence of his effigy alongside those of saints and prophets.