FANSAGA (Fansago, Fanzago, Fonsaga), Cosimo. - Architect, sculptor and decorator, b. at Clusone (Bergamo) in 1592, d. at Naples on 13 Feb. 1678. He probably received his first instruction in art from his family circle: his forebears were bronze founders and one of them, Pietro, was renowned in architecture. In 1608 he moved to Naples, where he was thereafter to carry on his entire activity. It has been asserted that there he studied with the Spanish Jesuit Pietro da Provedo, author at Naples of the church of Sts. Philip and James (1564) later called Gesù Vecchio, but nothing proves this assertion. False is the report of De Dominici, according to which F. was in Rome at the school of Pietro Bernini and rebuilt in that same city the facade of S. Spirito dei Napolitani.
The artistic activity of F. began as a draughtsman and sculptor at Naples with the work of the coats of arms for the facade of the Palazzo degli Studi (1615) and with the marble decoration of the choir of the cathedral (1618), and continued at Barletta, where he clad in marble the Gentili chapel in S. Maria Maggiore. Having then turned to architecture, he left very numerous works, of which the most important are remembered. At Naples in 1628 he supplied the designs of the church of S. Francesco Saverio, later S. Ferdinando: in 1631 he finished the cloister of the charterhouse of S. Martino; he made in the same church the pavement of the choir (1630), six marble arches (1631), the marble cladding of the chapels of St. Bruno and of St. John the Baptist (1631-43); he erected the spire of St. Januarius (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 facade of S. Maria della Sapienza (1638-1641), simple and elegant; the chapel of the Royal Palace (1640-46); he enlarged the church of S. Teresa at Chiaia (1650-62) with a very animated facade 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 Fr. G. Valeriani in the Gesù Nuovo; he built that of S. Maria Egiziaca at Pizzofalcone (ca. 1661). Outside Naples he rebuilt from 1641 the church of Montecassino, later continued by G. B. Contini and by A. Guglielmelli. To him are ascribed among other things the church of S. Salvatore (1654) at Piedimonte d'Alife, and, at Andria, that of S. Maria dei Miracoli. Around 1668 he modelled the sumptuous bronze gate of the chapel of St. Januarius in the cathedral of Naples.
As a civil architect he left, besides minor works, the Palazzo di Donn' Anna (1642-44) at Posillipo, which remained unfinished and was recently restored.
F. as an architect is distinguished by his characteristic style, in which the clarity of the Tuscan Renaissance succeeds in fusing with the love of the sumptuous and the spectacular proper to the people among whom he lived and worked. His art dominated at Naples and in Campania throughout the seventeenth century.
Bibliography4 works
Vincenzo Golzio