PIETRASANTA, JACOPO da. – Architect active in Rome from 1452 to 1490. At first, it seems, he was simply a stonecutter and building contractor, that is, an executor of designs by other artists.
In this capacity he worked on the buildings of the Capitoline (1452); in the Vatican, on the Benediction Loggia under Pio II (1463–64), and subsequently with Meo del Caprina and Giovannino de' Dolci on the major works carried out under Sisto IV; and at the sacred convent of Assisi (1473). In 1483 he is designated as « magister architectorum » for the church of S. Agostino, which critics tend to attribute to him not only as its builder but also as its designer, precisely because of the inconsistency of its conception, in which Gothic and Renaissance elements are uncertainly fused, and which is best explained by regarding it as the work more of a builder than of an architect.