DE BARDI, GIOVANNI di ANTONIO MINELLI. — Sculptor and architect, born in Padua around the middle of the 15th century, died in 1527. He is known to have been involved in the restoration of the chapel of the Madonna Mora and to have built the Leoni chapel in the church of S. Bernardino in Padua. From 1500 to 1519 he directed the work on 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, should be mentioned the Pietà in the Church of S. Sarmego in Vicenza and the Deposizione di Gesù Cristo, now in Boston. Following Bellano’s example, De B. compresses and deforms his figures, which are often treated with a crude agitation and with hurried, rhetorical postures. On account of these stylistic features, there is a tendency to deny Giovanni the attribution of the terracotta Madonna preserved in the sacristy of S. Giustina in Padua, a work that reflects an entirely different sensibility. De B.’s figure as a decorator is more eminent, as shown by the marble work framing Bellano’s reliefs and by the aforementioned decorations (both in the Basilica Antoniana). Of ANTONIO, Giovanni’s son, a weak imitator of his father’s forms, there should be mentioned, besides the extremely unsuccessful relief of the vesting of S. Antonio, the monument to Giovanni Calfurmio (cloister of S. Antonio).