SANSOVINO, Jacopo Tatti detto il. - Architect and sculptor, b. in Florence on 2 July 1486, d. in Venice on 27 Sept. 1570. A pupil of Andrea Sansovino, from whom he took his nickname, he worked initially in Florence and in Rome, where he stayed from about 1503 to 1510, and from 1518 to '27.
From his earliest works he shows that he had assimilated the Tuscan grace of his master and felt the influence of Raphael, subordinating every search for formal energy, inspired by Michelangelo and by the study of the ancients, to that of pictorial effects and linear elegances. The masterpiece of this period is the Bacchus (1514, Bargello Museum), vibrant with joyous vitality. Other works: the statues of St. James in S. Maria del Fiore and in S. Maria di Monserrato in Rome, and the Madonna del Parto in S. Agostino, there, of classical majesty.
In Rome the S. also completed his first architectural works: the project for S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, never carried out, the remodelling of the interior of S. Marcello (there the monument of the cardinal of S. Angelo and of Bishop Urso is his) and the Palazzo Gaddi-Amici, which in the decoration of its courtyard gives a first example of those pictorial qualities that the artist would develop fully in Venice, where he took refuge in 1527 and became in 1529 the official architect, with the office of Proto of S. Marco.
There he made his debut with the restoration of the domes of the church of St. Mark and with the completion of the Procuratie vecchie, then turning his hand to the churches of S. Giminiano and S. Francesco della Vigna and to the Scuola della Misericordia, works carried forward, like so many others of the S., over a long time and with difficulty, amid modifications and interventions by assistants, and not all of them finished. In 1534 he dates the Madonna of the Arsenal, in 1535 he completes a relief in the basilica of the Santo in Padua, left unfinished by Minelli, and the following year he begins another, with the Miracle of Carilla. 1537 marks the beginning of an exceptional number of works: the Zecca, the Libreria, the Loggetta of the campanile, the Palazzo Corner, and a group of reliefs for the presbytery of S. Marco, completed in 1544. From 1546 is the door of the sacristy of S. Marco, from 1550 the statue of Hercules commissioned by the Duke of Ferrara and now at Brescello, from 1554 the beginning of the statues of Mars and Neptune for the Doge's Palace and the casting of the statue of T. Rangone for the facade of S. Giuliano, built by the S. himself in collaboration with Vittoria. From these years too are the Fabbriche Nuove of Rialto.
the facade of S. Giminiano, the project of the Scala d'oro in the Doge's Palace. Almost eighty years old, he completed the monument to Doge Venier in S. Salvatore.
In the Venetian artistic climate, especially in contact with painters such as Titian, the S. was able fully to express his temperament: the reliefs of the door of the sacristy of S. Marco, of Ghibertian conception, are full of dramatic ardour, executed in an impressionistic manner and vibrant with light; admirable, in the same church, are the statues of the Evangelists, carried out "with strokes of the modelling tool like Titianesque brushstrokes" (Venturi), and the reliefs with the stories of St. Mark. The dramatic intensity, which also animates the statue of the Baptist at the Frari, full of nervous impetus, becomes composed and solemn sweetness in the numerous images of the Madonna with the Child, in relief and in the round (Arsenal, Loggetta, Correr Museum and Ca' d'oro in Venice; Vittorio Veneto; Bargello; Berlin; Louvre). Academic effort, on the other hand, chills the colossal Giants of the ducal staircase, while a mannerist grace marks the four pagan images on the front of the Loggetta. Particularly happy are numerous sculptures of a decorative character, or inserted into architectural complexes: the statue of T. Rangone at S. Giuliano, the fireplace formerly at Ponte Casale, the Pocodataro tombs at S. Sebastiano and Venier at S. Salvatore.
Even in the massive and severe building of the Zecca the S. draws pictorial effects from the variation of the rustication, which he then employs in the ground floor of Palazzo Correr, whose upper storeys, with the motif of paired columns and the rich ornamentation of the window pendentives, show that search for chiaroscural movement and solemn splendour that would have another admirable realization in the double loggia of the Libreria. This latter motif would also give life to the grandiose mass of the Villa Garzoni at Ponte Casale and to the Palazzo Dolfin. Architecture and sculpture vie with each other in making the loggia of the campanile picturesque and sumptuous.
Less fortunate was the S. in his religious buildings: with the churches of S. Giminiano and of S. Spirito in Isola demolished, the interior of S. Francesco della Vigna altered during execution, and the facade of S. Giuliano not very successful, there has nevertheless remained to us a typical example of his pictorial style in the completion of S. Fantino. Among his numerous other works are cited: the Quignone tomb in S. Croce in Rome, the reliefs with the Ascension in S. Marco and at the Bargello, the relief with a sacred conversation in Berlin, the two bronzes of Mars and Neptune in Detroit. - See pl. CXVIII.
Bibliography21 works
Nolfo di Carpegna