PIETRASANTA, Jacopo da. — Architect active in Rome from 1452 to 1490. Initially, it seems, he was merely a stonecutter and contractor, i.e., an executor of designs by other artists.
In this capacity he worked on the Capitoline buildings (1452); in the Vatican for the loggia of the blessing under Pius II (1463–64), and later with Meo del Caprina and Giovanino de' Dolci on the major works carried out under Sixtus V; and in the sacred convent of Assisi (1473). In 1483 he is listed as "magister architectorum" for the church of S. Agostino, to which critics tend to attribute not only its construction but even its design, precisely because of the blend of his approach—where Gothic and Renaissance elements are uncertainly fused—which is best explained by regarding it as the work of a builder rather than an architect.