LAURANA, FRANCESCO. — Sculptor, born in Dalmatia, perhaps in Zara, during the first decades of the fifteenth century, and active in Naples, the Marches, Sicily, and France; he probably died in 1502. His early training remains problematic, but perhaps he was among the sculptors working at Rimini under the direction of Agostino di Duccio and Matteo di Pasti in the Malatesta Temple: some even wished to discern L.’s hand in the sculptures adorning the Jole apartment in the Palazzo Ducale of Urbino, which are instead—according to the now virtually unanimous critical judgment—the work of the Florentine Michele di Giovanni.
In any case, in his youth he was certainly in Naples, where he devoted himself to sculptural works for the Aragonese arch and, generally, for Castelnuovo; then, upon Alfonso’s death, he went to France, where he struck medals for the most distinguished personages of the period, portraying them with exceptional mastery. But in ’68 he was once again in Italy, specifically in Sicily. One of his masterpieces, the portrait of Eleonora d’Aragona, depicted in half-bust, probably dates from that year. At Sciacca he directed work on a side portal of the church of S. Maria, where his hand can be recognized in the lunette. Also in 1468 he executed the Mastrantonio chapel in the church of S. Francesco in Palermo, though with the assistance of other artists. The numerous commissions must have obliged him to entrust the execution of certain works to others, such as, for example, the Madonna now in the cathedral chapel of Palermo, the very one commissioned from the sculptor for Monte S. Giuliano and subsequently retained in the city; and likewise the other one, executed later in its place, which is located in the chapel of the Assumption in the cathedral of Montesangiuliano. Entirely the artist’s own work, and signed by him, is yet another Madonna, located in the church of the Crocifissione in Noto, as is finally the one in S. Agostino in Messina. In 1472 the sculptor was again in Naples, where, among other works, he executed the bust of Beatrice d’Aragona, daughter of Ferdinando I; this bust later entered the Berlin Museum. Subsequently he went to Urbino, perhaps between ’74 and ’77, the year in which he returned to France permanently. During his time in Urbino he executed the portrait of Duchess Battista Sforza, in the Museo nazionale of Florence, and her marble profile, now in the Museo civico of Pesaro. At Marseille the sculptor worked from ’77 to ’83 in the ancient Cathedral, where he executed, not without collaborators, the altar of S. Lazzaro; he then went to Avignon and other places in France, devoting himself chiefly to the execution of funerary monuments.
Examining his most certain and deservedly famous works, one must acknowledge that he was one of the foremost artists of the Renaissance, inclined toward a lyrical exaltation of the subject represented. He aspired to simplify forms through a geometrical synthesis of volumes, and thus recalls the art of Piero della Francesca, with whom L. evidently must have been in contact, as well as an ideal kinship with the greatest Sicilian painter, Antonello da Messina. Yet an art so coherent and personal is not always compatible with the many works attributed to the sculptor, a sign that his personality has not yet been fully separated from that of his numerous collaborators.