ORDOÑEZ, BARTOLOMÉ. — Castilian sculptor, born in Burgos around the final decades of the 15th century, died still young at Carrara on 10 December 1520. Biographical information is extremely scarce.
In 1517 he received commissions in Carrara, but as early as the previous year, together with his partner Diego de Silos, he was in Naples, where he worked for the Caracciolo di Vico chapel in S. Giovanni a Carbonara. In 1518 he was commissioned to create the tomb monument of Cardinal Ximenes in the church of S. Idelfonso in Toledo: that same year O. undertook to construct the tombs of King Ferdinando, Queen Isabella, and the bishop of Burgos. On 5 December 1520 he made his will in favor of his son Diego, who was under twenty-one. From this circumstance it may be inferred that it is impossible to attribute to the young Diego the extensive Neapolitan production hitherto assigned to him, which must instead be referred to the aforementioned Diego de Siloe.
O.’s brief stay in Naples was rich in developments of the greatest importance for local sculpture. The marble altarpiece of the Adorazione dei Magi on the altar of the Caracciolo chapel, which O. certainly sculpted after a journey to Tuscany, displays an evident influence of Leonardo’s unfinished Adorazione dei Magi as well as other general Florentine derivations. Among the works executed in Spain are recalled: the funerary monument of Cardinal Cisneros in the cathedral of Alcalà and that of Antonio Fonseca, both left unfinished, and that of King Filippo and Giovanna la Pazza in the cathedral of Granata. He is also credited with the choir stalls of the cathedral of Barcellona, executed in 1517.