DE BARDI, GIOVANNI di ANTONIO MINELLI. - Sculptor and architect, b. in Padua around the middle of the 15th century, d. in 1527. He is recorded as having been assigned to the restoration of the chapel of the Madonna Mora and as the builder of the Leoni chapel in the church of S. Bernardino in Padua. From 1500 to 1519 he directed the works of the Antonian chapel, in the basilica of the same name.
Among his principal sculptural works, besides the statues of Christ and three Apostles (now in the Museo Civico) and the decorations of the Antonian chapel, mention should be made of the Pietà of the Church of S. Sarmego in Vicenza and the Deposition of Jesus Christ now in Boston. Following the example of Bellano, De B. constricts and deforms his figures, often treated with a rude agitation, with hurried and rhetorical postures. On account of these stylistic characteristics, there is a tendency to deny to Giovanni the attribution of the terracotta Madonna preserved in the sacristy of S. Giustina in Padua, a work that reflects an altogether different sensibility. More eminent is the figure of De B. as a decorator, as shown by the marbles that frame the reliefs of Bellano and by the already mentioned decorations (both the one and the other in the Antonian Basilica). Of ANTONIO, son of Giovanni, a weak repeater of his father's forms, mention should be made, besides the most unfortunate relief of the vesting of St. Anthony, of the monument of Giovanni Calfurmio (cloister of S. Antonio).
Bibliography2 works
489; P. Planisic, Andrea Riccio, Vienna 1927, pp. 126-30; C. Re, I chiostro del convento del Santo, in Il Santo, 2 (1930, II, III); G. Fasolo, Note d'arte, Vicenza 1939.
Pietro Gazzola