Sangallo, Family of

SANGALLO, FAMILY OF. - Florentine architects who took their name from the Porta S. Gallo in Florence, near which the founders of the family lived.

GIULIANO (called G. Giamberti). - Born in Florence ca. 1445, died there in 1516. In 1465 he came to Rome. His activity during this period is not clearly established. The attribution of the Loggia della Benedizione in St. Peter's is doubtful, and the part he played in the construction of the Palazzo and the basilica of S. Marco is uncertain; far better founded, on the other hand, are the attributions of the Palazzo for Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere (the future Julius II), and of the design for the villa of Innocent VIII at the Magliana, works that reveal a strong Albertian influence.

Having returned to his homeland in 1479, Lorenzo the Magnificent entrusted him with numerous civil and military constructions. His first important work of this period is the church of S. Maria delle Carceri at Prato (1485-92), which in its central Greek-cross plan seems to realize that ideal of divine proportion toward which the humanist architects strove. The theme of the central building is taken up again with greater classical sensitivity in the sacristy of S. Spirito (1489), inspired by the Brunelleschian model of the Rotonda degli Angeli, to which the Chapel erected ca. the same period in the convent of Cestello, demolished in 1866, perhaps came even closer. The same conception again leads G. to the design for S. Maria dell'Umiltà at Pistoia (1492), in which he adopts the octagonal plan preceded by a rectangular atrium. After the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent, G. resumed contact with Cardinal della Rovere, followed him to France and returned with him to Rome. Alexander VI immediately entrusted him with the roofing of the central nave of S. Maria Maggiore (1494), for which he executed the beautiful ceiling. The same Pontiff then sent him to Loreto (1500) to vault the dome of the Basilica, which, following once again the examples of Brunelleschi in S. Maria del Fiore, he succeeded in harmonizing with the Gothic structure. After the accession of Julius II to the pontificate, G. left Rome, according to Vasari because of his disappointment at not having been appointed architect of the Vatican Basilica. In 1503 he was in Florence, where he executed the Gondi chapel in S. Maria Novella and was later appointed master builder of S. Maria del Fiore. Only after the death of Bramante was he able to realize his old aspiration of directing the works of the Vatican temple, a charge entrusted to him in 1514, which he held however only for a short time, because, now old and ill, he returned to Florence the following year.

As a sculptor he left two wooden Crucifixes in the church of the S.ma Annunziata in Florence. Although remaining bound to the Brunelleschian tradition, and therefore to the spirit of the Quattrocento, G. for the purity of his proportions and his spatial sensitivity may be considered one of the great masters of the Renaissance.

ANTONIO IL VECCHIO (called A. Giamberti). - Brother of the preceding, likewise born and died in Florence (1463-1534). He followed his brother to Rome, at first as a simple assistant, then receiving commissions directly from Pope Alexander VI. In 1493 and 1494 he was working in the Vatican Palace and in Castel S. Angelo; the following year he began the works of S. Maria di Monserrato according to a scheme with a single apsidal nave and simple architectural lines, later altered by the sumptuous decoration superimposed upon them.

He left Rome with his brother after the election of Julius II, and returned to Tuscany, where he remained until his death, carrying on a vast and multiform activity. To the first period belongs the church of the S.ma Annunziata in Arezzo, where he resumed the construction begun by Bartolomeo della Gatta, according to a scheme with three naves and a great dome. The church remained unfinished, as did the reconstruction of the ancient thirteenth-century church of S. Agostino at Colle Val d'Elsa. These works are of little significance; but in his late maturity he realized in S. Biagio at Montepulciano (begun in 1518) one of the masterpieces of sixteenth-century architecture. In the Greek-cross plan, at whose center the dome rises above the high drum, there is a full adherence to Bramante's conceptions, through direct inspiration from classical models. In this work, admirable for its full equilibrium and the complete correspondence between spatial harmony and plastic sense, the personality of A. il Vecchio finally frees itself from every tie with his brother, marking the transition to the full Cinquecento.

Of his works, the various palaces erected in Montepulciano and the fortress of Civitacastellana are also remembered.

ANTONIO IL GIOVANE (A. called Cordini). - Nephew of the two preceding (son of a sister), born in Florence in 1484, died in Rome in 1546. His artistic formation and the beginnings of his activity remain to this day unknown; contacts with Bramante appear plausible, into whose circle A. undoubtedly entered while still very young. Direct Bramantine inspiration is in fact recognizable in his first work, S. Maria di Loreto in Rome (1507), in which elements drawn from classical thermal constructions are ingeniously fused with others typically Lombard. The same scheme is adopted in S. Maria Porta Paradisi (1520), in which the architectural organism is simplified. To the same centralized plan is also traced the tomb of Pietro de' Medici in the abbey of Montecassino (1531-32).

With the establishment of the Duchy of Castro a vast field of activity opened up for A. in northern Lazio, as architect to the Farnese, but with the destruction of the capital of the Duchy the architectural complex he had realized there disappeared, one of the greatest of the Renaissance. Among his other works there remain to us the so-called "Rocchina" on the island of Bisentina and the strange church of S. Maria di Montemoro near Montefiascone; while the church of S. Tolomeo at Nepi, which by its intermediate arrangement between the centralized and the longitudinal plan would have marked the prelude to the project for the Vatican Basilica, was brought to completion in a far more modest form by others. The artist displayed his activity also in lesser works, but no less significant: at Viterbo in the church of S. Maria della Quercia, for which he provided the design of the admirable ceiling; at Rome in the Cesi chapel in S. Maria della Pace (1524-29) and in the chapel of Card. Alborense in S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli (today S. Cuore di Maria); at Foligno in the chapel of the Santissimo (1516) of the Cathedral, with its complex polygonal plan. His fame as an expert builder caused him to be designated as the technician most suited for problems of consolidation of particular difficulty, as in the basilica of Loreto (1526) and in S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where he was summoned by Clement VII; for this last church A. also provided several designs. Much discussed and the object of lively criticism, beginning with Vasari, has been A.'s work in the Vatican Basilica, carried out in two distinct periods: the first, very brief, in 1520, succeeding Raphael; the second from 1537 until his death. To this latter belongs the famous project, later translated by Labacco into the wooden model still preserved. A.'s activity was also very extensive in the field of civil and military architecture; it suffices to recall: the courtyard and the main facade (except the cornice) of the Palazzo Farnese, the Palazzo della Zecca in Via Banco di S. Spirito and the Palazzetto della Farnesina ai Baullari, the porta S. Spirito, all in Rome; the vanished Rocca Paolina at Perugia and the fortress of Nepi. Modern criticism has instead denied or called into doubt other attributions hitherto traditional, such as the Palazzo Sacchetti, the church of S. Spirito in Sassia in Rome (perhaps only the interior is by S.) and the cloisters of Montecassino.

As has been rightly observed, A. in his vast output appears uneven because at times excessive structural preoccupations resolve themselves to the detriment of artistic expression; the purity of forms of S. Maria di Loreto was never again attained by him. Nonetheless, also for the influence exercised on his contemporaries.

he left a deep imprint on sixteenth-century architecture.

BATTISTA (called G. B. Cordini, and also IL GOBBO). - Brother of the preceding, b. in Florence in 1496, d. in Rome in 1552. Very little information exists about his life and his artistic activity, which took place in the shadow of his elder brother as superintendent and measurer of the buildings that the latter designed and directed. With his cousin Aristotle (v. below) he collaborated on the construction of the dome of S. Eligio degli Orefici (1536). A manuscript translation of Vitruvius's treatise, previously wrongly attributed to his brother, also survives from him.

ARISTOTLE (called BASTIANO). - Son of another sister of Giuliano and of Antonio the Elder, and of a certain Lorenzo d'Antonio, b. and d. in Florence (1481-1551). He was at first a painter and, according to Vasari, a pupil of Perugino; he soon abandoned this art to devote himself to stage design, decorations and perspective scenes, genres in which he was greatly appreciated by his contemporaries. His architectural activity is still little known, since it is only known that - as with the other minor members of the family - it took place in the orbit of his cousin Antonio the Younger. The execution of the Palazzo Pandolfini in Florence is attributed to him, where he is said to have realized a design by Raphael; his participation in the completion of the church of S. Eligio degli Orefici in Rome is also certain. But A.'s fame is due, more than to his artistic activity, to the very numerous drawings of ancient or contemporary buildings that he left us and that are preserved in the Uffizi and in the Musée Wicar in Lille, which constitute a source of exceptional importance for the history of architecture.

FRANCESCO (F. GIAMBERTI, also called IL MARGOTTA). - Son of Giuliano, b. and d. in Florence (1494-1576). He worked above all as a sculptor and medallist, showing a studious rather than fanciful and ingenious temperament in the group of the Madonna with Child and St. Anne in Orsanmichele (1522), and in the relief of the Dormition of the Virgin in the S. Casa of Loreto (1526), where he collaborated with Tribolo. In the monument to Bishop Marzi in the S.ma Annunziata in Florence, of slightly later date, he felt the influence of Sansovino. At Montecassino he executed the sculptural part of the monument to Pietro de' Medici, for which his cousin Antonio the Younger had provided the design. His best work is considered to be the bust of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, in which he succeeds in conveying, with simplicity of means, a sense of constructive firmness. As a medallist F., although with little elegance, stands out for the breadth of his conception. As for his architectural activity, it is known that he succeeded Baccio d'Agnolo as architect of S. Maria del Fiore (1546) and that he provided the design of the bell tower of S. Croce (1589), replaced in the last century by the present one. - See plates CXII-CXIII.

Mario Zocca