MARTINI, FRANCESCO DI GIORGIO. — Painter, sculptor, architect, military engineer, b. in Siena in 1439, d. in Nov. 1501 (most documents simply call him Francesco di Giorgio).
He began his activity as an artist before the age of twenty-five, in painting, and his earliest works, e.g. the Stories of Joseph and Susanna in the Pinacoteca of Siena, reveal his descent from Vecchietta. In 1464 he is found engaged in a work of sculpture. In 1469 he was already active in hydraulic works for the city of Siena, without neglecting painting and illumination, also deriving elements from Girolamo da Cremona (Madonna dei terremoti, Annunciazione in the Pinacoteca of Siena). He then entered into partnership with Neroccio (Stories of St. Benedict in the Uffizi, various small altarpieces of Madonnas), but the partnership was dissolved in 1475. In the works completed during this interval, connections with the Florentine world (Lippi, Baldovinetti, Pollaiolo, Botticelli) may also be observed, though assimilated only in part, as can be seen in the Coronation of the Virgin (1472) in the Pinacoteca of Siena, in the Siege of Bethulia, executed in 1473 from his design on the pavement of Siena Cathedral, and in the two Nativities, now in the Pinacoteca (1475) and in the church of S. Domenico (ca. 1489), both in Siena. In 1477 M. was already in Urbino, and it is probable that, shortly after 1472, he worked on the part of the Ducal Palace erected by Luciano Laurana. The sculptural decoration (friezes, corbels) and the intarsia doors were then being completed (the one with the Liberal Arts and the Triumphs, prior to 1474, was certainly executed from designs by the Sienese).
Thus he, probably charged with providing models for the decorators, came into contact with a highly complex world, in which Venetian-Lombard and Florentine experiences (active in Urbino with Ambrogio Barocci, Francesco di Simone Ferrucci, Domenico Rosselli, and others) were not separate from the teachings of Piero della Francesca and Laurana. However, F. di G.’s interest in architecture must have been kindled before his arrival in Urbino, perhaps on the occasion of the journey to Rome undertaken with Vecchietta in 1464.
Certainly, in the drawings of his youthful codices, the artist already reveals himself as a student of Roman buildings, and from that time he must have formed, in Vecchietta’s footsteps, his personality as an architect. Nevertheless, no building can be assigned to him with certainty before his stay in Urbino. Here, by contrast, his earliest works may be recognized in the convent of the Zoccolanti (adjoining the later church of S. Bernardino) and in the works on the Ducal Palace, in which he followed Luciano Laurana’s surviving designs with considerable freedom (the square tower superimposed on the western façade of the Palace, the loggia on the piano nobile overlooking the Pasquino courtyard, the roofing of the rooms on the piano nobile of the Castellare, and the arrangement of the hanging garden). After these works, F. di G. M. continued to work also as a painter (miniatures in codex Urbinate latino 508 in the Vatican Library) and as a sculptor (relief with the Deposition in the church of the Carmine in Venice). The Flagellation in the Galleria nazionale of Perugia and the Discord in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (terracotta) and in the Chigi-Saracini collection of Siena (stucco) should be associated with the same creative period. Works dating approximately from the same period, in the field of military architecture, were the fortresses of Sassonevaro, S. Leo, Serra S. Abbondio, Tavoleto, Cagli, and Mondolfo, all in the Marches. After the death of Federico da Montefeltro (1482), F. di G. divided his residence among Urbino, Siena, Milan, and Naples. In Siena he was appointed engineer of the Republic in 1485 and master builder of the Cathedral from 1498 until his death; he designed the new choir of the Cathedral and placed there the angels and cherubs bearing candlesticks: the former sculpted by himself, the latter executed, perhaps from his designs, by Cozzarelli. He was summoned to Milan in 1490 to advise on the structural stability of the Cathedral in connection with the construction of the tiburium. In Naples he worked as a military architect in the service of Alfonso of Calabria, and in 1495 successfully set off the first mine. In Urbino, from 1482 and on various subsequent occasions, he supervised the construction of two churches commissioned by Duke Federico in accordance with his testamentary dispositions: the Cathedral and S. Bernardino. The former was destroyed in the eighteenth century, but the surviving surveys show that its forms recalled the design developed by the architect for the church of S. Maria del Calcinaio near Cortona (1484). S. Bernardino, on the other hand, is a relatively late construction (although it has been suggested that an initial design may perhaps have been provided by the artist when, as a young man, he erected the adjoining convent). Nevertheless, the definitive elaboration of this design could not have taken place without a meeting with Bramante, on whom certain features present in S. Bernardino depend. Also in Urbino, in the time of Guidobaldo, the Sienese built the stables of the Ducal Palace, which constituted a grandiose building now partly destroyed, the convent of S. Chiara, and the rear part of the Palazzetto Luminati. Finally, the Palazzo della Signoria of Jesi, part of the Palazzo degli Anziani of Ancona, and part of the Ducal Palace of Gubbio should be mentioned.
His architectural experience forms the basis of his Trattato d'architettura (the finest manuscript of which is in the National Library of Florence, with shorter versions in Turin, Siena, and the Vatican) and profoundly differentiates its content from the precepts of Vitruvius, whose principles
F. di G. follows in systematizing the subject.—Veditav. XVI.