MARTINI, FRANCESCO DI GIORGIO. - Painter, sculptor, architect, military engineer, b. in Siena in 1439, d. in Nov. 1501 (most documents call him simply Francesco di Giorgio).
He began his activity as an artist before he was twenty-five, in painting, and his first 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 is already active in hydraulic works for the city of Siena, without neglecting painting and miniature work, deriving elements also from Girolamo da Cremona (Madonna of the Earthquakes, Annunciation of the Pinacoteca of Siena). He then entered into partnership with Neroccio (Stories of St. Benedict at the Uffizi, various small altarpieces of Madonnas), but dissolved it in 1475. In the works completed during this period there are also noticeable relations with the Florentine world (Lippi, Baldovinetti, Pollaiolo, Botticelli), but assimilated only in part, as can be seen in the Coronation of the Virgin (1472) of the Pinacoteca of Siena, in the Siege of Bethulia executed in 1473 after his design in the pavement of the cathedral of Siena, and in the two Nativities now in the Pinacoteca (1475) and in the church of St. Dominic (ca. 1489), both in Siena. In 1477 M. is already in Urbino, and it is likely that, shortly after 1472, he was working in the part of the Ducal Palace erected by Luciano Laurana. There the works of sculptural decoration were being carried out (friezes, corbels) and the inlaid doors (the one with the Liberal Arts and the Triumphs, earlier than 1474, was certainly executed after designs by the Sienese).
This man, therefore, presumably with the task of supplying models to the decorators, found himself in contact with a very complex world, in which the Venetian-Lombard and Florentine experiences (active in Urbino with Ambrogio Barocci, Francesco di Simone Ferrucci, Domenico Rosselli and others) were not divorced from the teachings of Piero della Francesca and of 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 made in 1464 with Vecchietta.
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 the footsteps of Vecchietta, his personality as an architect. Nevertheless there is no building that can be assigned to him with certainty before his stay in Urbino. Here, on the other hand, his first works can be recognized in the convent of the Zoccolanti (adjacent to the later church of St. Bernardino), and in the works of the Ducal Palace, following with great freedom the designs left by Luciano Laurana (quadrangular tower superimposed on the western front of the Palace, loggia on the piano nobile over the courtyard of the Pasquino, roofing of the halls on the piano nobile of the Castellare, arrangement of the hanging garden). After these trials, F. di G. M. continued to work also as a painter (miniatures of the Urbinate Latin codex 508 in the Vatican Library) and as a sculptor (relief with the Deposition of the church of the Carmine in Venice). To the same creative moment should be brought close the Flagellation of the National Gallery of Perugia and the Discord of the Victoria and Albert Museum of London (terracotta) and of the Chigi-Saracini collection of Siena (stucco). Works of almost the same period, in the field of military architecture, were the fortresses of Sassonevaro, of S. Leo, of Serra S. Abbondio, of Tavoleto, of Cagli and of Mondolfo, all in the Marches. After the death of Federico da Montefeltro (1482), F. di G. alternated his residence between 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, and he designed the new choir of the Cathedral and placed there the angels and the cherub candle-bearers: the former carved by himself, the latter executed, perhaps after his designs, by Cozzarelli. In Milan he was called in 1490 for advice on the stability of the Cathedral in relation to the construction of the tiburio. In Naples he carried out work as a military architect in the service of Alfonso of Calabria, and in 1495 he successfully exploded the first mine. In Urbino he attended, from 1482 at various times, to the construction of two churches, willed by testamentary disposition of Duke Federico: the Cathedral and St. Bernardino. The former was destroyed in the 18th century, but from the surveys that survive of it, it shows that in its forms it recalls the project elaborated by the architect for the church of St. Maria del Calcinaio near Cortona (1484). St. Bernardino, on the other hand, is a rather late construction (but it has been opined that a first project for it was perhaps given by the artist when as a young man he erected the adjacent convent). However, the definitive elaboration of that project could not have taken place without an encounter with Bramante, on whom depend certain aspects that are present in St. Bernardino. Still in Urbino, in the time of Guidobaldo, the Sienese built the stables of the Ducal Palace, which occupied a grandiose edifice now half-destroyed, the convent of St. Clare and the rear part of the Palazzetto Luminati. Finally, mention should be made of the Palazzo della Signoria of Jesi, part of the Palazzo degli Anziani of Ancona and part of the Ducal Palace of Gubbio.
His architectural experiences form the basis of his Treatise on Architecture (of which the best codex is in the National Library of Florence and lesser redactions at Turin, Siena and in the Vatican) and profoundly differentiate its content from the dictates of Vitruvius, by whom F. di G. is inspired in ordering the material.-Veditav. XVI.
Bibliography9 works
Pasquale Rotondi
tondi, Il Palazzo ducale di Urbino, ibid., 1950.
Pasquale Rotondi