ALESSANDRO VITTORIA. - Sculptor and architect, born in Trento in 1524, died in Venice on 27 May 1608.
Sent to Venice at the age of nineteen by Bishop Madruzzo (1543), he lodged in the workshop of Sansovino, collaborating with him on the decoration of the Libreria. The first certain work by Vittoria, the *Battista* in S. Zaccaria, is of distinctly Sansovinesque stamp and may date from before 1547.
Having come into conflict with his Florentine master, he parted company with him and between 1547 and 1553 worked in Vicenza, where he decorated the Palazzi Arnaldi and Thiene with stuccowork and the Palazzo Porto with other sculptures. After reconciling with Sansovino, he thereafter spent almost all his time in Venice. The *femminelli* of the door of the Libreria di S. Marco date from 1553–55 (partly executed by his assistants Lorenzo Rubini and Giovannantonio Vicentino); the angels for the bell tower of Verona cathedral (one now in the episcopal palace) date from 1555. These are followed by the figures of Slaves and the statue of Fame in the Contarini monument at the Santo in Padua (1555–58); the statue of Mercury on the exterior of the Palazzo Ducale; the lunette and statue of the deceased in the Sansovinesque tomb of Francesco Venier in S. Salvatore (1557–58); the altarpiece with SS. Anthony, Sebastian and Roch in S. Francesco della Vigna (1561–63); in the same church, bronze figures of a *Battista* and a *S. Francesco*; the stucco decorations in the Villa Barbaro at Maser (c. 1565); the altarpiece of S. Jerome in the Frari (before 1568), with the statue of the saint, the best-known work by Vittoria; the emphatic statues of the Evangelists in S. Giorgio Maggiore (1574); the monument to Bishop Bollani in Brescia (1577–78, now in the episcopal palace and the Civic Museum); the decorations of the choir stalls in the Palazzo Ducale (1577–79); the bronze altarpiece Fugger, now in America (1580–83); the *Christ* in the Frari (1581); the *Battista* in Treviso cathedral (1583); the decorations and statues of the Scuola di S. Fantin (Ateneo Veneto), the altarpiece of the Mercers in S. Giuliano (1583–84) and the Cappella del Rosario in SS. Giovanni e Paolo (1587); here are an *Addolorata*, a *S. Giovanni* and a *S. Girolamo*. Among his late works are an altarpiece in S. Salvatore and the tomb prepared for himself in S. Zaccaria (1602–1605).
In Vittoria’s art, the decisive value of the pictorial Sansovinesque style and the Mannerist influence of Parmigianino are joined by a personal dramatic energy and a plastic search inspired by Michelangelo. Intensity of life and pictorial plasticity are also the hallmarks of the numerous portraits in which Vittoria excelled: from the sober, almost spare early busts of Priamo da Lezze for the Jesuits and the Parish Priest Manzini at the Ca’ d’Oro (before 1561; here also the powerful *Procuratore Veneziano* and the two Diedo busts) to that of Tommaso Rangone (Ateneo Veneto), to the splendid series in the Berlin Museum and the Seminary of Venice, including some late portraits in which an ever more pronounced luminism is evident. The pictorial and Mannerist qualities lend a distinctive character to Vittoria’s plastic decorations, which in the stuccoes of the Scala d’Oro in the Palazzo Ducale, in the vault of a chapel in S. Giuliano and elsewhere left celebrated examples that in a sense anticipate the Baroque.
Vittoria also left numerous small bronzes (in the museums of Berlin, Vienna, the Victoria and Albert in London, etc.) and some medals from his early years. As an architect, besides the many altarpieces and the decorations of the Sala del Collegio in the Palazzo Ducale, the Palazzo Balbi on the Grand Canal is reasonably attributed to him, though without precise documentation.