SANSOVINO, Andrea Contucci del Monte (1460- 1529), an able Florentine sculptor, who lived during the rapid decline of plastic art which took place from about the beginning of the 16th century; he was the son of a shepherd called Niccolo di Domenico Contucci, and was born in 1640 at Monte Sansavino near Arezzo, whence he took his name, which is usually softened to Sansovino. He was a pupil of Antonio Pollaiuolo, and during the first part of his life worked in the purer style of 15th-century Florence. Hence his early works are by far the best, such as the terra-cotta altar-piece in Santa Chiara at Monte Sansavino, and the marble reliefs of the Annunciation, the Coronation of the Virgin, a Pietà, the Last Supper, and various statuettes of saints and angels in the Corbinelli chapel of S. Spirito at Florence, all executed between the years 1488 and 1492. From 1491 to 1500 Andrea worked in Portugal for the king, and some pieces of sculpture by him still exist in the monastic church of Coimbra. These early reliefs show strongly the influence of Donatello. The beginning of a later and more pagan style is shown in the statues of St John baptizing Christ which are over the east door of the Florentine baptistery. This group was, however, finished by the weaker hand of Vincenzo Danti. In 1502 he executed the marble font at Volterra, with good reliefs of the Four Virtues and the Baptism of Christ. In 1505 Sansovino was invited to Rome by Julius II. to make the monuments of Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza and Cardinal Girolamo della Rovere for the retro-choir of S. Maria del Popolo. The architectural parts of these monuments and their sculptured foliage are extremely graceful and executed with the most minute delicacy, but the recumbent effigies show the beginning of a serious decline ...in taste. Though skilfully modelled, they are uneasy in attitude, and have completely lost the calm dignity and simple lines of the earlier effigies, such as those of the school of Mino da Fiesole in the same church. These tombs had a very important influence on the monumental sculpture of the time, and became models which for many years were copied by most later sculptors with increasing exaggerations of their defects. In 1512, while still in Rome, Sansovino executed a very beautiful group which shows strongly the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, both in the pose and in the sweet expression of the faces; it is a group of the Madonna and Child with St Anne, now over one of the side altars in the church of S. Agostino. From 1513 to 1528 he was at Loreto, where he cased the outside of the Santa Casa in white marble, covered with reliefs and statuettes in niches between engaged columns; a small part of this gorgeous mass of sculpture was the work of Andrea himself, but the greater part was executed by Montelupo, Tribolo, and others of his numerous school of assistants and pupils. Though the general effect of the whole is very rich and magnificent, the individual pieces of sculpture are both dull and feeble, showing the unhappy results of an attempt to imitate Michelangelo’s grandeur of style. The earlier reliefs, those by Sansovino himself, are the best, still retaining some of the sculpturesque purity of the older Florentines. He died in 1529.
SANSOVINO, Jacopo (1477-1570), was called Sansovino after his master Andrea (see above), his family name being Tatti. Born in 1477, he became a pupil of Andrea in 1500, and in 1510 accompanied him to Rome, devoting himself there to the study of antique sculpture. Julius II. employed him to restore damaged statues, and while working in the Vatican he made a full-sized copy of the Laocoon group, which was afterwards cast in bronze, and is now in the Uffizi at Florence. In 1511 he returned to Florence, and began the statue of St James the Elder, which is now in a niche in one of the great piers of the Duomo. Under the influence of his studies in Rome he carved a nude figure of Bacchus and Pan, now in the Bargello, near the Bacchus of Michelangelo, from the contrast with which it suffers much. Soon after the completion of these works, Jacopo returned to Rome, and designed for his fellow-citizens the grand church of S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, which was afterwards carried out by Antonio Sangallo the younger. A marble group of the Madonna and Child, now at the west of S. Agostino, was his next important work. It is heavy in style, and quite without the great grace and beauty of the Madonna and St Anne in the same church by his master Andrea. In 1527 Jacopo fled from the sack of Rome to Venice, where he was welcomed by his friends Titian and Pietro Aretino; henceforth till his death in 1570 he was almost incessantly occupied in adorning Venice with a vast number of magnificent buildings and many second-rate pieces of sculpture. Among the latter Jacopo’s poorest works are the colossal statues of Neptune and Mars on the grand staircase of the ducal palace, from which it is usually known as the “Giants’ Staircase.” His best are the bronze doors of the sacristy of St Mark, cast in 1562; inferior to these are the series of six bronze reliefs round the choir of the same church, attempted imitations of Ghiberti’s style, but unquiet in design and unsculpturesque in treatment. In 1565 he completed a small bronze gate with a graceful relief of Christ surrounded by Angels; this gate shuts off the altar of the Reserved Host in the choir of St Mark’s.
Jacopo’s chief claim to real distinction rests upon the numerous fine Venetian buildings which he designed, such as the public library, the mint, the Scuola della Misericordia, the Palazzo de’ Cornari, and the Palazzo Delfino, with its magnificent staircase,—the last two both on the grand canal; a small loggia which he built at the foot of the great Campanile, richly decorated with sculpture, has recently been pulled down and much damaged, but is being rebuilt. Among his ecclesiastical works the chief are the church of S. Fantino, that of S. Martino, near the arsenal, the Scuola di S. Giovanni degli Schiavoni·, and, finest of all, the church of S. Geminiano, near St Mark’s, a very good specimen of the Tuscan and Composite orders used with the graceful freedom of the Renaissance.
The otherwise prosperous course of the artist’s life was interrupted by one serious misfortune. In 1545 the roof of the public library, which he was then constructing, gave way and fell in; on account of this he was imprisoned, fined, and dismissed from the office of chief architect of the cathedral, to which he had been appointed by a decree of the signoria on April 7, 1529. Owing, however, to the intervention of his friends, Titian, Pietro Aretino, and others, he was soon set at liberty, and in 1549 he was restored to his post. He did good service to the cathedral of St Mark’s by strengthening its failing domes, which he did by encircling them with bands of iron. Sansovino’s architectural works have much beauty of proportion and grace of ornament, a little marred in some cases by an excess of sculptured decoration, though the carving itself is always beautiful both in design and execution. He used the classic orders with great freedom and tasteful invention—very different from the dull scholasticism of most of his contemporaries. His numerous pupils were mostly men of but little talent.
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