SANSOVINO, Andrea Contucci detto il. - Architect and sculptor, b. at Monte S. Savino (from which the name derives) in 1460, d. probably there in 1529.
Having gone to Florence quite young, he was perhaps a pupil of Cronaca (v.) and certainly his collaborator in the atrium of the sacristy of S. Spirito, where some capitals are attributed to him; in the same church the altar of the Sacrament erected for the Corbinelli family is his, still tied to the tradition of Benedetto da Maiano (1490-91). His stay in Portugal, recalled by Vasari but today denied by most scholars, should be placed in the period immediately following. What is certain is that in Portugal none of the works attributed to him can be considered truly his. Still later, after a brief stay in Florence, S. went to Rome, where he carried on great activity under the pontificates of Julius II and Leo X. To this period belong the monuments to Card. Manzi in S. Maria in Aracceli (1504) and to Card. Sforza (1505) and Card. Basso (1507) in S. Maria del Popolo. In the first, despite the powerful plastic sense, S. is still tied to the models of Bregno in the simplicity of the architectural conception and in the minuteness of the ornaments; but the tombs of S. Maria del Popolo, for the monumentality of the architecture, conceived as a triumphal arch, and for the classicism of the sculptures, reveal an inspiration from antiquity, at first elaborated with cold intellectualism, then penetrated and relived. Classical culture is ever more manifest in the subsequent works, both as sculptor (statues of the Virgin with the Child above the doors of S. Giacomo in Augusta and of S. Maria dell'Anima, of 1509; group of the Virgin with the Child and St. Anne in S. Agostino, of 1512), and as architect (among which is particularly to be remembered the portico of S. Maria in Domnica, erected between 1513 and 1514, previously attributed to Raphael or to Peruzzi). After the death of Bramante he was sent by Leo X to Loreto, where he had the principal part in the marble facing of the S. Casa, and continued the construction of the Apostolic Palace and of the Basilica, departing, it seems, from the designs of Bramante; so much so that in 1520, following the unfavorable judgment given by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder on his work, he was replaced in the office of architect by Cristoforo di Simone Ressa da Imola. The sculptural part, however, remained entrusted to him, and to it he attended until his death. Other certain works of S. are the courtyard of the Palazzo comunale of Jesi, the staircase in front of the cathedral of Arezzo and the house that he built for himself in his native town; the attribution of the Palazzo erected in Rome at Piazza dei Caprettari for Giuliano de' Medici and later passed to Lante is also plausible. - See pl. CXVII.
Bibliography4 works
Mario Zecca