FANSAGA (FANSAGO, FANZAGO, FONSAGA), COSIMO. — Architect, sculptor, and decorator, born at Clusone (Bergamo) in 1592, died at Naples on 13 February 1678. He probably received his first instruction in art from his family environment: his ancestors were bronze founders, and one of them, Pietro, was renowned in architecture. In 1608 he moved to Naples, where he would subsequently carry out all his activity. It has been asserted
that there he studied under the Spanish Jesuit Pietro da Provedo, author in Naples of the church of SS. Filippo e Giacomo (1564), later called Gesù Vecchio, but nothing proves this assertion. The information given by De Dominici is false, according to which F. was in Rome at the school of Pietro Bernini and rebuilt in that city the façade of S. Spirito dei Napolitani.
F.’s artistic activity began as a draughtsman and sculptor in Naples with the execution of the coats of arms for the façade of the Palazzo degli Studi (1615) and with the marble decoration of the choir of the cathedral (1618), and continued in Barletta, where he covered the Gentili chapel in S. Maria Maggiore with marble. He then devoted himself to architecture and left a very large number of works, of which the most important are recalled here. In Naples, in 1628, he supplied the designs for the church of S. Francesco Saverio, later S. Ferdinando; in 1631 he completed the cloister of the charterhouse of S. Martino; in the same church he made the choir pavement (1630), six marble arches (1631), and the marble facing of the chapels of S. Bruno and S. Giovanni Battista (1631–43); he erected the spire of S. Gennaro (1631), in the form of a swelling column with corbels, one of the most interesting examples of these characteristic monuments that adorn the Neapolitan squares; he built the church of the Accensione at Chiaia; the façade of S. Maria della Sapienza (1638–1641), simple and elegant; the chapel of the Palazzo Reale (1640–46); he enlarged the church of S. Teresa at Chiaia (1650–62), with a highly animated façade and a double circular plan; he transformed that of S. Maria Maggiore (1653–1667), following the manner of Dosio in the church of the charterhouse of S. Martino and of p. G. Valeriani in Gesù Nuovo; he built that of S. Maria Egiziaca at Pizzofalcone (ca. 1661). Outside Naples, beginning in 1641, he rebuilt the church of Montecassino, later continued by G. B. Contini and A. Guglielmelli. Among other works, he is credited with the church of S. Salvatore (1654) at Piedimonte d’Alife and, in Andria, that of S. Maria dei Miracoli. Around 1668 he modelled the sumptuous bronze gate of the chapel of S. Gennaro in the cathedral of Naples.
As a civil architect, in addition to minor works, he left the Palazzo di Donn’ Anna (1642–44) at Posillipo, which remained unfinished and was recently restored.
The architect F. is distinguished by his characteristic style, in which the clarity of the Tuscan Renaissance succeeds in merging with the love of the sumptuous and spectacular characteristic of the people among whom he lived and worked. His art dominated in Naples and Campania throughout the seventeenth century.
BILL: Willich, s. V. in Thieme Becker, XI, pp. 250–53; R. Pane, Architettura del Rinascimento a Napoli, Napoli 1932, (v. indice); G. De Lugu, L'architettura italiana nel Seicento e nel Settecento, II, Firenze 1935, pp. 14–15; id., La scultura italiana del Seicento e del Settecento, II, ivi 1935, pp. 17–19. Vincenzo Golzio