Jacopo Sansovino

Jacopo d'Antonio Sansovino was born in Florence on 2 July 1486, originally named Jacopo Tatti. He trained under Andrea Sansovino and later took that master's surname.

Career

Over his career, he worked as both a sculptor and architect across Florence, Rome, and the Republic of Venice, with his most significant output concentrated around Piazza San Marco. Andrea Palladio, in the preface to his Quattro Libri, judged Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana the finest building erected since ancient times. Giorgio Vasari published Sansovino's biography as a separate pamphlet, a unique treatment among his Lives.

Biography

While residing in Rome at the palace of the late Cardinal Domenico della Rovere, Sansovino created a wax model of the Deposition of Christ for the painter Pietro Perugino. Around 1510, Bramante invited him and three other sculptors to produce wax copies of the Laocoön; Raphael considered Sansovino's version the best. Returning to Florence in 1511, he secured commissions for a marble statue of St. James for the Duomo and the Bacchus now in the Bargello. Michelangelo, however, rejected Sansovino's proposals for sculpture on the façade of San Lorenzo, prompting a bitter letter of protest in 1518.

From 1510 to 1517, Sansovino shared a studio with the painter Andrea del Sarto, and they exchanged models. Like many sixteenth-century Italian architects, he designed elaborate temporary structures for court ceremonies, notably the triumphal entry of Pope Leo X into Florence in 1515. He then spent nine more years in Rome before departing for Venice in 1527, the year of the Sack of Rome.

In 1529, Sansovino was appointed chief architect and superintendent of properties—titled Protomaestro or Proto—for the Procurators of San Marco, a role that made him one of Venice's most influential artists. The position came with an annual salary of 80 ducats and an apartment on the south side of Piazza San Marco; within a year, his salary rose to 180 ducats. His principal achievements cluster near the piazza: the rusticated Zecca (public mint), the richly decorated Loggetta with its sculptures beside the Campanile, and various statues and reliefs for the Basilica of San Marco. He also helped rebuild churches such as San Zulian, San Francesco della Vigna, San Martino, San Geminiano (now destroyed), Santo Spirito in Isola, and the church of the Ospedale degli Incurabili.