Antonio da Sangallo the Younger - Architect

Talented Florentine was commissioned by the Popes

The Church of Santa Maria de Loreto in
Rome was Sangallo's first major commission

Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who left his mark on Rome during the Renaissance, died on this day in 1546 in Terni in Umbria.

Sangallo was the chief architect on St Peter’s Basilica from 1520 onwards and built many other beautiful churches and palaces in the city and throughout the Papal States.

He was born Antonio Cordiani in Florence in 1484. His grandfather had been a woodworker and his uncles, Giuliano and Antonio da Sangallo, were architects.

The young man followed his uncles to Rome to pursue a career in architecture and ended up taking the name Sangallo himself.

He became an assistant to Donato Bramante and started by preparing sketches for his master.

Recognising his talent, Bramante gave Sangallo projects to complete with no more than an outline of the design and motifs.

Sangallo’s first major commission was for the Church of Santa Maria di Loreto in 1507.

He came to the attention of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who later became Pope Paul III, and was commissioned to design the Farnese Palace in Piazza Farnese and a palace and church in the Cardinal’s home town of Gradoli.

Sangallo designed the Palazzo Farnese
on behalf of the future Pope Paul III

Sangallo designed the Palazzo Baldassini for Melchiore Baldassini and was responsible for the final design of the Villa Madama for Cardinal Giulio de' Medici.

Having acquired a reputation in Rome as a master architect, he was appointed by Pope Leo X to oversee the construction of St Peter’s Basilica.

He was also responsible for some inspired engineering feats, such as building the foundations for the Church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini on the banks of the Tiber, following Jacopo Sansovino’s design, which called for the church to extend into the river.

He shored up the foundations for the Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto and did similar work on the Vatican loggias. His reinforcements are still standing today.

His last engineering project was the draining of the Rieti Valley. Because of the marshy environment he was working in, Sangallo contracted malaria and died before finishing the task.

When Cardinal Farnese became Pope Paul III in 1534 he asked for the Palazzo Farnese design to be expanded. In 1546 during the construction he became dissatisfied with Sangallo’s original design for the cornice and held a competition for a new design, which was won by Michelangelo.

At the time it was said that Sangallo had died from shame soon afterwards, but his biographer, Giorgio Vasari, later wrote that he was an excellent architect whose achievements deserved to be celebrated. Antonio Sangallo the Younger was buried in St Peter’s Basilica.

Sangallo's construction of St Patrick's Well in Orvieto is
considered one of his most accomplished engineering feats

Travel tip:

One of Sangallo’s amazing engineering feats was St Patrick’s Well in Orvieto, built for Pope Clement VII. Ramps around a central open shaft allowed oxen carrying water to do down one of the ramps and up the other without having to turn round. Despite the depth of the well, the ramps were well lit through windows cut into the centre section.

The Scala Regia was built by Sangallo and later restored
by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Travel tip:

Sangallo was capomaestro in charge of the day-to-day construction of St Peter’s Basilica from 1513 until about 1536. A wooden model of his design for the basilica is still in existence. He also worked on the Vatican apartments, building the Pauline Chapel and the Scala Regia, the main staircase to the Apostolic Chapel. Therefore it was fitting that the architect was allowed to be buried in St Peter’s.

More reading:

The Renaissance pope who turned Rome into the cultural heart of Europe

How Gian Lorenzo Bernini sculpted Rome

The story of La Pietà - Michelangelo's ultimate masterpiece

Also on this day:

1486: The birth of Imperia Cognati - courtesan

1778: Milan's Teatro alla Scala opens for business

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Andrea del Sarto – painter

The brief career of an artist ‘senza errori’

Andrea del Sarto, captured here in a self-
portrait. lived in Florence all his life

Renaissance artist Andrea del Sarto was born Andrea d’Agnolo di Francesco di Luca di Paolo del Migliore on this day in 1486 in Florence.

He had a brilliant career but died at the age of 43 during an outbreak of plague and afterwards his achievements were eclipsed by the talents of Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.

Andrea’s father, Agnolo, was a tailor and therefore the child became known as del Sarto, meaning son of the tailor.

As a young boy del Sarto was apprenticed to a goldsmith and then a woodcarver before being sent to learn to be an artist.

He decided to open a joint studio with an older friend, Franciabigio, and from 1509 onwards they were employed to paint a series of frescoes at Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Florence. Del Sarto also painted a Procession of the Magi, in which he included a self-portrait, and a Nativity of the Virgin for the entrance to the church.

He married Lucrezia del Fede, a widow, in 1512 and often used her as a model for his paintings of the Madonna.

Part of Del Sarto's fresco series at the Villa Medici at
Poggio a Caiano, near Florence

After spending a year as court painter to Francis I of France in 1518, del Sarto returned home to his wife and was offered a major commission by the Medici family, to decorate the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano near Florence. The work was offered to him by Pope Leo X but the project ended when the Pope died in 1521.

Del Sarto’s fresco at the villa, Tribute to Caesar, is a fragment now incorporated into a much later decorative scheme.

His most important work is considered to be a series of frescoes on the life of St John the Baptist in the Chiostro dello Scalzo in Florence. He started the series in 1511 and it was not completed until 1526, so the work spans a large part of his career and most of the paintings are by his own hand.

Del Sarto's Nativity of the Virgin at the Basilica
della Santissima Annunziata in Florence.

His artistic style reflected his interest in colour and atmosphere and showed natural expressions of emotion. Del Sarto had a reputation for integrity and professionalism and was regarded by his peers as an artist ‘senza errori’ - faultless.

Del Sarto had a house built for himself in Florence, which was modified by other painters who lived there later. He died at his home after plague swept the city in 1530. The exact date of his death is unknown but he was buried in the Basilica of Santissima Annunziata on September 29, 1530.

A play, Andrea del Sarto, by Alfred de Musset, was premiered in Paris in 1848. The 1968 opera Andrea del Sarto by the French composer Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur was based on de Musset’s play.

The Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Florence

Travel tip:

The Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, where Andrea del Sarto is buried, is in the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata in the San Marco district of Florence. The church was founded by the Servite order in 1250 and later rebuilt by Michelozzo between 1444 and 1481. Del Sarto’s frescoes can be seen in the atrium of the church. Newly wed couples traditionally visit the church to present a bouquet of flowers to a painting of the Virgin by a 13th century monk, where they pray for a long and fruitful marriage.

The Chiostro dello Scalzo in Via Cavour

Travel tip:

The Chiostro dello Scalzo, where del Sarto painted his fresco cycle featuring the life of St John the Baptist, is in Via Cavour in the San Marco area near the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata. The cloister used to be the entrance to the chapel of the Confraternity of St John the Baptist, which was founded in 1376 and lasted until 1786. Thankfully the frescoes were preserved and can be viewed free of charge in the cloister every Monday and Thursday and on some Saturdays and Sundays each month.

More reading:

The precocious genius of Raphael

Michelangelo 'the greatest of all time'

The multiple talents of Leonardo da Vinci

Also on this day:

1194: The birth of Saint Clare of Assisi

1852: The birth of Neapolitan sculptor Vincenzo Gemito

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Artemisia Gentileschi – painter

Brilliant artist who survived torture by thumbscrews 

Artemisia Gentileschi: a self-portrait as a lute player
painted in around 1615-17

Artemisia Gentileschi, who followed in the footsteps of the Baroque painter Caravaggio by painting biblical scenes with dramatic realism, was born on this day in 1593 in Rome.

As a young woman she was raped by an artist friend of her father who had been entrusted with teaching her, and when he was brought to trial by her father she was forced to give evidence under torture.

This event shaped her life and she poured out her horrific experiences into brutal paintings, such as her two versions of Judith Slaying Holofernes.

Gentileschi was notable for pictures of strong and suffering women from myths, allegories, and the Bible. Some of her best known themes are Susanna and the Elders, Judith Slaying Holofernes, the most famous of which, painted between 1614 and 1620, is in the Uffizi in Florence, and Judith and Her Maidservant. 

She had an ability to produce convincing depictions of the female figure, anywhere between nude and fully clothed, that few male painters could match.

Judith Slaying Holfernes (1614-20), which can
be found in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence

It was many years before Gentileschi’s genius was fully appreciated, but a newly discovered self portrait depicting herself as St Catherine of Siena has just been bought by the National Gallery in London for £3.6 million, a record amount for her work.

Her artist father, Orazio Gentileschi, was an admirer of the painter Caravaggio. He taught his daughter to paint in his interpretation of Caravaggio’s style.

After her father’s friend, the landscape painter Agostino Tassi, raped her, he was brought to trial in 1612 and she had to give evidence while being subjected to a thumbscrew-like torture ‘to make sure her evidence was honest’.

After the trial Gentileschi moved to Florence, married a Florentine and became the first woman to join Florence’s Academy of Design.

Unlike other women artists of the time she specialised in history painting. She painted an Allegory of Inclination for the series of frescoes honouring the life of Michelangelo in Casa Buonarroti.

Gentileschi's painting San Gennaro
nell'Anfiteatro

She moved to Naples, where she painted many important religious paintings for churches, such as San Gennaro nell’Anfiteatro di Pozzuoli (Saint Januarius in the Amphitheatre of Pozzuoli).

Later, she went to London where she worked alongside her father for King Charles I on ceiling paintings for the Queen’s House in Greenwich. She also painted many portraits and eventually became more famous than her father.

It is believed that Artemisia Gentileschi died in Naples during a devastating epidemic of plague that swept the city in 1656.

The bust of Michelangelo
at Casa Buonarroti

Travel tip:

Casa Buonarroti, which Artemisia Gentileschi helped decorate, is now a museum in Via Ghibellina in Florence in a building Michelangelo left to his nephew, Leonardo Buonarroti. The house was converted into a museum dedicated to the artist by his great nephew, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger. It houses Michelangelo’s early sculptures and a library with some of Michelangelo’s letters and drawings.

The interior of the Anfiteatro di Pozzuoli

Travel tip:

Pozzuoli’s Flavian Amphitheatre (Anfiteatro di Pozzuoli) was the third largest Roman amphitheatre in Italy, holding up to 50,000 spectators. Only the Colosseum in Rome and the Capuan Amphitheatre are larger. It was built during the reign of Vespasian by the same architects who previously constructed the Colosseum. Although most of the superstructure has been destroyed in an area subject to frequent seismic activity, the underground interior is still largely intact and well worth a visit. The amphitheatre is in the centre of the town, about 20km (12 miles) west of Naples, close to the Pozzuoli’s Metro station.

More reading:

The mysterious death of Caravaggio

The brilliance of Michelangelo

The rival who broke Michelangelo's nose in a fight

Also on this day:

1822: The death of the poet Shelley in a storm at sea

1918: Ernest Hemingway wounded working for Red Cross in Italy 

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Leon Battista Alberti - Renaissance polymath

Architect with multiple artistic talents

Leon Battista Alberti contributed to many aspects
of Renaissance cultural development

The polymath Leon Battista Alberti, who was one of the 15th century’s most significant architects but possessed an intellect that was much more wide ranging, died on this day in 1472 in Rome.

In his 68 years, Alberti became well known for his work on palaces and churches in Florence, Rimini and Mantua in particular, but he also made major contributions to the study of mathematics, astronomy, language and cryptography, wrote poetry in Latin and works of philosophy and was ordained as a priest.

He was one of those multi-talented figures of his era, along with Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and, a little later, Galileo Galilei, for whom the description Renaissance Man was coined.

Alberti was born in Genoa in 1404, although his family were wealthy Florentine bankers. It just happened that at the time of his birth his father, Lorenzo, was in exile, having been expelled by the powerful Albizzi family.  Leon and his brother, Carlo, were born out of wedlock, the product of their father’s relationship with a Bolognese widow, but as Lorenzo’s only offspring they were given a privileged upbringing.

Lorenzo would be allowed to return to Florence in 1428, by which time Leon - at the time known simply as Battista - had been educated in Padua, Venice and Bologna before taking holy orders in Rome.

The facade of the church of Santa Maria Novella in
Florence was designed by Alberti

His great intellect soon became apparent. As a young man at school, he had written a comedy in Latin that for a while was taken to be the lost work of a Roman playwright. In 1435 he began his famous work Della pittura (On pictures), a groundbreaking study in which he analysed the nature of painting and explored the elements of perspective, composition and colour.

His first major architectural commission was for the facade of the Rucellai Palace in Florence in 1446, followed in 1450 by a commission to transform the Gothic church of San Francesco in Rimini into a memorial chapel, which became known as the Tempio Malatestiano.

In Florence, he famously designed the upper parts of the white marble facade for the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella.

He is also credited with the Piazza Pio II, and its surrounding buildings, in the Tuscan village of Pienza, and both the church of San Sebastiano and the Basilica of Sant’Andrea in Mantua.

A page from Alberti's Della pittura shows his grasp
of perspective and his ideas for how to use it in paintings

In 1452, Alberti completed De re aedificatoria, a treatise on architecture, using as its basis the work of Vitruvius and influenced by the archaeological remains of Rome that had fascinated him while he was studying for the priesthood.

In the field of philosophy, Alberti’s treatise Della famiglia established his reputation as an ethical thinker. He wrote the text in accessible language, rather than Latin. Based largely on the classical works of Cicero and Seneca, and addressed the day-to-day concerns of a bourgeois society, tackling such topics as the fickleness of fortune, meeting adversity and prosperity, husbandry, friendship and family, education and obligation to the common good.

Alberti’s important contribution to cryptography came with his invention of the first polyalphabetic cipher, which became known as the Alberti cipher, and his Cipher Disk, which consisted of two concentric disks, the outer one carrying capital letters and numbers, the inner one lower case letters, attached by a common pin.

Although clearly he made a scholarly contribution to the understanding of art, he produced very few paintings or sculptures in his own right. Giorgio Vasari, the artist whose Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects is considered the first history of art, described Alberti as an artist who “concentrated on writing rather than applied work”.

The Basilica of Sant'Andrea in Mantua

Travel tip:

The Basilica of Sant'Andrea, which looms over the Piazza Mantegna in Mantua, is considered one of the major works of 15th-century Renaissance architecture in Northern Italy. Commissioned by Ludovico III Gonzaga, the church was begun in 1472 according to designs by Alberti on the site of a Benedictine monastery. Although it was 328 years before it was finished, with changes that altered Alberti's design, the church is still considered to be one of Alberti's most complete works.

The hill town of Pienza is a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Travel tip:

Pienza, a town in the province of Siena between Montepulciano and Montalcino, is described as the "touchstone of Renaissance urbanism." The whole of the centre was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. The trapezoidal Piazza Pio II is defined by four buildings, the Palazzo Piccolomini, the Duomo, the Palazzo Vescovile and the Palazzo Comunale.

More reading:

The unparalleled genius of Leonardo da Vinci

La Pietà - Michelangelo's masterpiece

Brunelleschi and the incredible dome of Florence's Duomo

Also on this day:

The Festa della Liberazione

1973: The death of World War One flying ace Ferruccio Ranza

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Lorenzo the Magnificent - Renaissance ruler

Patron of the arts who sponsored Michelangelo and Botticelli

A portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent by the
Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino

Lorenzo de’ Medici, the ruler of Florence usually known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, died on this day in 1492 in the Medici villa at Careggi, just to the north of the city.

He was only 43 and is thought to have developed gangrene as a result of an inherited genetic condition.  He had survived an assassination attempt 14 years earlier in what became known as the Pazzi Conspiracy, in which his brother, Giuliano, was killed.

The grandson of Cosimo de’ Medici, Lorenzo was a strict ruler but history has judged him as a benevolent despot, whose reign coincided with a period of stability and peace in relations between the Italian states.

He helped maintain the Peace of Lodi, a treaty agreed in 1454 between Milan, Naples and Florence which was signed by his grandfather.

However, he is most remembered as an enthusiastic patron of Renaissance culture, providing support for poets, scholars and artists, notably Michelangelo and Botticelli.

He contributed more than anyone to the flowering of Florentine genius during the second half of the 15th century. Respected himself for his poetry, he held lavish parties for his artistic friends at the Careggi villa and was the protector of artists such as Giuliano da Sangallo, Botticelli, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Verrocchio’s pupil Leonardo da Vinci.

A young Lorenzo as he appeared in
Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi

Lorenzo opened a school of sculpture, at which he noticed the great talent of a 15-year-old pupil called Michelangelo Buonarroti, whom he took under his wing and brought up like a son.

Sandro Botticelli repaid his patronage by using Medici family members as models in some of his most famous religious paintings. In his Madonna of the Magnificat, for example, one of the figures is Lorenzo, while the Madonna is his mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni. Lorenzo also appears in Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi, while Mars in his Mars and Venus is Lorenzo’s brother, Giuliano.

In addition to his patronage of artists, Lorenzo also expanded the collection of books begun by Cosimo, which became the Medici Library. He retrieved large numbers of classical works from the East, which he had copied and shared with other countries across Europe. He also supported philosophers such as Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

Although the assets of the Medici bank were diminished during Lorenzo’s rule, partly through the family focussing more on power than the actual source of their power, i.e. money, they were still not short of jealous rivals and the Pazzi family fell into this category.

With the support of Pope Sixtus IV, Francesco Pazzi conspired with Girolamo Riario, the Lord of Imola, and Francesco Salviati, the archbishop of Pisa, to attack Lorenzo and Giuliano, who were joint rulers of Florence at the time, during High Mass at the Duomo.

The goal was to kill both and seize power, but while Giuliano was being stabbed to death Lorenzo escaped into the sacristy, where he hid from the assassins. The coup d’état therefore failed and it is estimated that around 80 people, either conspirators or their associates, were captured and executed in the months that followed.

Controversially, it was Lorenzo de’ Medici, taking advice from his friend, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who was responsible for the return to Florence of the firebrand priest Girolamo Savonarola, who had left his position at the Convent of San Marco some years earlier after proposing sweeping reforms to the Catholic Church.  Savonarola’s preaching, in which he railed against despotic rulers and the exploitation of the poor, and persuaded people that works of art and literature were sinful and should be destroyed, would eventually provoke the overthrowing of the Medici family.

The Palazzo Pitti was acquired by the Medici family
from the Florentine banker Luca Pitti

Travel tip:

Florence has a wealth of preserved antiquity, but one of the finest examples of true Renaissance architecture is the Palazzo Pitti - the Pitti Palace - which was originally commissioned in 1458 as a house for the Florentine banker Luca Pitti, a friend and supporter of Cosimo de’ Medici. Designed by Luca Fancelli, a pupil of Filippo Brunelleschi, it is characterised by a strong, symmetrical structure, wide arches and rusticated stone pillars and walls. It was later sold to Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de Medici (not to be confused with Cosimo de’ Medici, who came from a different branch of the family) , and remained in the Medici family for centuries. Today it houses the biggest museum in Florence and a number of art galleries, and looks out across the Boboli Gardens, created on land Eleonora bought from the wealthy Boboli family.

The Villa Careggi, where Lorenzo died in 1492

Travel tip:

In common with his grandfather, Cosimo, Lorenzo died at the Villa Careggi, originally a working farm acquired in 1417 by Cosimo’s father to make his family self-sufficient. Cosimo employed the architect Michelozzo to remodel it around a central courtyard overlooked by loggias. Lorenzo extended the terraced garden and the shaded woodland area. Careggi, which is not far from Florence’s airport, is nowadays a suburb of the city, about 8km (5 miles) northwest of the centre.

More reading:

Cosimo de' Medici - founder of the Medici banking dynasty

Girolamo Riario - the papal military leader murdered after failed Pazzi plot

The rival in the court of Lorenzo who broke Michelangelo's nose

Also on this day:

1848: The death of the composer Gaetano Donizetti

1868: The birth of equestrian pioneer Federico Caprilli, who revolutionised jumping technique


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Benvenuto Cellini – sculptor and goldsmith

Creator of the famous Perseus bronze had a dark history

Cellini's bronze of Perseus with the Head of
Medusa in Piazza della Signoria in Florence

The colourful life of the Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini ended on this day in 1571 with his death in Florence at the age of 70.

A contemporary of Michelangelo, the Mannerist Cellini was most famous for his bronze sculpture of Perseus with the Head of Medusa, which still stands where it was erected in 1554 in the Loggia dei Lanzi of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, and for the table sculpture in gold he created as a salieri - salt cellar - for Francis I of France.

The Cellini Salt Cellar, as it is generally known, measuring 26cm (10ins) by 33.5cm (13.2ins), is now kept at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, with an insurance value of $60 million.

His works apart, Cellini was also known for an eventful personal life, in which his violent behaviour frequently landed him in trouble. He killed at least two people while working in Rome as a young man and claimed also to have shot dead Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, during the 1527 Siege of Rome by mutinous soldiers of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.

Cellini was also imprisoned for alleged embezzlement of the gems from the tiara of Pope Clement VII, famously escaping from jail at the Castel Sant’Angelo by climbing down a rope of knotted bedsheets, and for immorality.

He was a self-confessed bisexual, being found guilty of sodomy on a number of occasions.  One such charge, brought following accusations made by a male apprentice in his Florence workshop, led to a prison sentence of four years, commuted to house arrest following the intervention of the Medici family.

Cellini's extraordinary salt cellar in gold is insured
for a value of $60 million

Much of this is known because Cellini documented his life in an autobiography, the first by a significant Renaissance figure, in which he shared the details of his racy exploits. 

Cellini was apprenticed as a metalworker in the studio of the Florentine goldsmith Andrea di Sandro Marcone. He might have stayed in Florence had he not twice had to leave to escape the consequences of his violent behaviour.

After fleeing to Rome, he worked for the bishop of Salamanca, Sigismondo Chigi, and Pope Clement VII, which is how he came to participate on the side of the pontiff in defending Rome against the imperial forces in 1527, where he claimed not only to have killed Charles III of Bourbon but also to have shot, possibly fatally, the Prince of Orange, Philibert of Chalon.

Having survived the sack of Rome, he returned to Florence and in 1528 worked in Mantua, making a seal for Cardinal Gonzaga, which is now the property of the city’s Episcopal Archives.  Back in Rome, he then executed several works in gold for Clement VII, although apart from two medals made in 1534, which can be seen at the Uffizi in Florence, none survive.

His violent ways continued. After his brother, Cecchino, had killed a corporal of the Roman Watch and in turn received fatal wounds from the gun of another soldier, Cellini meted out his own justice by murdering his brother’s killer. He later murdered another man, this time a rival goldsmith.

A portrait bust of Cellini by Raffaello Romanelli
 can be found on Florence's Ponte Vecchio

Amazingly, he was absolved by Clement VII’s successor, Pope Paul III, but the following year, having wounded a notary, he fled from Rome and settled back in Florence.

He made his first visit to France as a guest of Francis I in 1538. It was two years later that he arrived at Fontainebleau, carrying with him an unfinished salieri, which he had originally offered to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este of Ferrara, and which he now completed in gold for the French king. The piece, which has the figures of a man and a women symbolising the sea and the Earth, and in which tiny models of a ship and a temple were intended to be receptacles for the condiments, is the only surviving fully authenticated Cellini work in precious metal. Modelled by hand rather than cast, it has been dubbed the Mona Lisa of small sculptures.

While in France, Cellini modelled and cast his first large-scale work, a large bronze lunette of the Nymph of Fontainebleau for the entrance to the Louvre.

He left Paris to return to Florence in 1545, at which point he was welcomed by Cosimo de’ Medici and entrusted with the commissions for the bronze Perseus in the Loggia dei Lanzi, and for a colossal bust of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, now at the Bargello museum, a short distance away.

Cellini’s other late works include his marble figures of Apollo and Hyacinth (1546) and of Narcissus (1546–47), which are also in the Bargello, as is a small relief of a greyhound made as a trial cast for the Perseus (1545).

There is a statue of Cellini in the
Piazzale degli Uffizi

After the unveiling of the Perseus, he began work on a marble crucifix originally intended for his own tomb in the Florence church of Santissima Annunziata, but now in the church of the royal monastery of the Escorial in Spain.

He began to write his autobiography in 1558 and completed it in 1562, dictating the text to an assistant in his workshop.

First printed in Italy in 1728, the book was translated into English in 1771. Composed in colloquial language, it is enormously valuable in providing a first-hand account of life in Clement VII’s Rome, the Paris of Francis I, and the Florence of Cosimo de’ Medici.

Michelangelo's David (left) and Bartolommeo Bandinelli's
Hercules and Cacus in Florence's Piazza della Signoria

Travel tip:

Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, situated right in the heart of the city, close to the Duomo and the Uffizi Gallery, is home to a series of important sculptures, including Giambologna’s The Rape of the Sabine Women and his Equestrian Monument of Cosimo I, Baccio Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus, the Medici Lions by Fancelli and Vacca, The Fountain of Neptune by Bartolemeo Ammannati, copies of Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes and Il Marzocco (the Lion), and the copy of Michelangelo’s David, at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio.

Hotels in Florence by Booking.com

The Palazzo del Bargello in Via del Proconsolo
is home to many masterpieces

Travel tip:

As well as works by Cellini, other great Renaissance sculptures can be appreciated in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello - the Bargello National Museum - situated just a short distance from Piazza della Signoria in Via del Proconsolo. The museum houses masterpieces by Michelangelo, Donatello, Giambologna, Vincenzo Gemito, Jacopo Sansovino, Gianlorenzo Bernini and many works by the Della Robbia family.

More reading:

Michelangelo's masterpiece - La Pietà

Bartolommeo Bandinelli - the rival Cellini mocked

The sculptor who broke Michelangelo's nose in a fight

Also on this day:

1539: The death of influential marchioness Isabella d’Este

1816: Fire damages Teatro di San Carlo

1912: The birth of poet Antonia Pozzi

1960: The birth of football referee Pierluigi Collina

(Picture credits: Perseus statue by Denise Zavala; Cellini Salt Cellar by Jerzy Strzelecki; Romanelli bust by Grzegorz Gołębiowski; Uffizi statue by Jebulon; Piazza della Signoria statues by Richard White; Palazzo Bargello by Kandi; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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Pietro Torrigiano – sculptor

Achievements overshadowed by assault on Michelangelo

Pietro Torrigiano was born in Florence in 1472

Pietro Torrigiano, the sculptor credited with introducing Renaissance art to England in the early years of the 16^th century but who is best remembered for breaking the nose of Michelangelo in a fight, was born on this day in 1472 in Florence.

The incident with the man who would become the greatest artist of their generation came when both were teenagers, studying in Florence under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Torrigiano was older than Michelangelo by two and a half years and confessed some years later that he found his young rival to be somewhat irritating, especially since it was his habit to peer over the shoulders of his fellow students and make disparaging comments about the quality of their work.

On the occasion they clashed, when Michelangelo was said to be about 15, he was with Torrigiano and some others in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, studying frescoes by Masaccio.  Looking at a sketch Torrigiano was making, the younger boy made some slighting remark and Torrigiano lashed out.

He caught him such a blow that Michelangelo, who was knocked out cold at the time, suffered a broken nose and a disfigurement he would carry for life.

Torrigiano's tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey

Torrigiano knew he would be in trouble and when word reached him that Lorenzo de’ Medici was incensed by the incident he fled Florence for Rome.

He would not return to the Tuscan city until more than a quarter of a century had passed, by which time Michelangelo was famous, the creator of masterpieces of sculpture such as his Pietà and David, and the wonderful frescoes that adorned the Sistine Chapel.

In conversation with Benvenuto Cellini, a young sculptor he was trying to recruit as an assistant, Torrigiano confessed to having been the man responsible for Michelangelo’s crooked nose, explaining that he was regularly annoyed by Michelangelo’s sniping comments but on this occasion had let his temper get the better of him.

He is said to have told Cellini: “I got more angry than usual, and clenching my fist, gave him such a blow on the nose that I felt bone and cartilage go down like biscuit beneath my knuckles; and this mark of mine he will carry with him to the grave.”

At the time it happened, though, Torrigiano made no such confession.  To escape the Medici wrath, he went to Rome, where he worked briefly with Pinturicchio, but soon put his artistic ambitions to one side and essentially went on the run.

Torrigiano's extraordinarily lifelike sculpture
of Henry VII in terracotta

A bullish man and something of a braggart, he made a living for a while as a professional soldier, moving from one state to another. 

He is thought to have been invited to England by Henry VIII, who was looking for a court artist shortly after the death of his father, Henry VII.

Torrigiano created sculptures in terracotta of Henry VII, Henry VIII and John Fisher, the Roman Catholic bishop that Henry VIII would ultimately have killed.  He is also thought to have made an extremely lifelike funeral effigy of Henry VII.

Henry VIII ultimately commissioned Torrigiano to created the magnificent tomb of his father and his queen that can still be admired in the Henry VII Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey.  When he met Cellini in Florence in about 1518, he was trying to recruit young artists to work with him in England on other commissions in the Abbey.

Cellini, horrified at his confession, refused to take up his offer and Torrigiano left Italy again, never to return.

He spent the last few years of his life in Sevilla in Spain, where the Museum of Fine Arts houses his sculpture of Saint Jerome (Hieronymus), which he finished in 1525.

Still inclined to outbursts of violent temper, he became well known to the authorities and was often in trouble.  In fact, he died in prison in 1528 at the age of 55.

Inside the church of Santa Maria del Carmine 

Travel tip:

The church of Santa Maria del Carmine, of the Carmelite Order, is in the Oltrarno area of Florence. The Renaissance frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino di Panicale can be found in the Brancacci Chapel. The church was built in 1268, enlarged in 1328 and 1464 and renovated in Baroque style in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Part of Pinturicchio's fresco cycle at the Borgia Apartments

Travel tip:

During his brief time in Rome, Torrigiano worked with Pinturicchio – real name Bernardino di Betto – on decorating the Borgia Apartments, a suite of rooms in the Apostolic Palace adapted for personal use by Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo de Borgia), with paintings and frescoes.  After Rodrigo’s death in 1503 the rooms remained little used for centuries but are now considered part of the Vatican Library.

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Bronzino – master of Mannerism

Florentine became Medici court painter

Bronzino's portrait of Eleonora of Toledo, wife
of Cosimo I de' Medici, with her son, Giovanni

The Mannerist painter Agnolo di Cosimo – better known as Il Bronzino or simply Bronzino – was born on this day in 1503, just outside Florence.

Bronzino is now recognised as the outstanding artist of what has become known as the second wave of Mannerism in the mid-16^th century.  His style bears strong influences of Jacopo Pontormo, who was an important figure in the first wave and of  whom Bronzino was a pupil as a young man in Florence.

The Mannerist movement began in around 1520, probably in Florence but possibly in Rome. In the evolution of art it followed the High Renaissance period.

Typical of Mannerist painters is their use of elongated forms and a style influenced by the attention to detail allied to restrained realism that was characteristic of the Renaissance masters Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

Bronzino became best known for his portraits, which were detailed and stylishly sophisticated, in which the subjects were superbly realistic but also tended to wear stoical, rather haughty expressions.

He also paid particular attention to fabric and clothing, his works often notable for his recreation of textures. He often used strong colours - sometimes cold blues, at other times warm reds – and created effects that were almost like theatrical lighting.

Cosimo I de' Medici in armour, as portrayed by
Bronzino in 1545

He painted many religious works, in which the influence of Michelangelo could be seen in his use of dramatic body shapes, but his greatest contribution to the Mannerist period was his portraiture, particularly during his time in the Medici court, where his ability to give his subjects an air of elegant nobility made him very popular.

Born in Monticelli, then a small town just outside Florence but now essentially a neighbourhood of the Tuscan city, Bronzino became apprenticed to Pontorno in 1515, their relationship developing almost as that of father and son. Indeed, when plague swept the city in 1522, Pontorno took his pupil with him to stay in the relative seclusion of the Certosa di Galuzzo, a monastery.

When they returned, Pontorno’s trust in Bronzino – who is thought to have acquired his nickname mainly on account of a dark complexion, possibly due to a pigment disorder – was such that he enlisted his help in creating what is seen as his own masterpiece, the Deposition from the Cross, an altarpiece in the church of Santa Felicità in Florence, not far from the Ponte Vecchio, where they also worked together on a sidewall fresco, Annunciation.

Indeed, Bronzino became so adept as following his master’s methods that there has at times been fierce debate between experts over whether certain paintings were the work of Pontorno or his pupil.

Bronzino's Portrait of a Young Man, painted in
around 1540, is seen as one of his finest works

Bronzino left the city for a second time in 1530 when it came under siege from the armies of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, who were seeking to overthrow the Florentine republic established in 1527 and restore the Medici family to power.

When he rejoined Pontorno in Florence some years later, he had revealed his talent for portraiture while in the employ of the Duke of Urbino and it was not long before he was appointed by the Medici court as official portraitist, a role he would keep until he died in 1572, at the age of 69.

Bronzino’s figures influenced portraiture in Europe for almost a century. His best-known works include portraits of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I de' Medici, and his wife, Eleonora, and other members of their court such as Bartolomeo Panciatichi and his wife Lucrezia.  He also painted idealized portraits of the poets Dante and Petrarch.

By the time of his death he had developed a relationship similar to that he had enjoyed with Pontorno with his own pupil, the late Mannerist painter Alessandro Allori.

The church of Santa Felicità in Florence

Travel tip:

The church of Santa Felicità is described as the oldest religious building in Florence, apart from the Basilica of San Lorenzo.  Although the current structure was built in 1739, it is thought that the first church on the site was probably built in the late fourth century.  As well as Pontorno’s painting, assisted by Bronzino, the church is famous for the fact that the Vasari Corridor, the enclosed passage built by the Medici to link the Palazzo Vecchio in Piazza della Signoria with the Medici’s family residence, the Palazzo Pitti, passes through the façade.

Piero della Francesco's Flagellation

Travel tip:

The town of Urbino in Le Marche has long been associated with art, most famously as the birthplace of Raffaello Sanzio – better known by the anglicised name, Raphael.  Its Galleria Nazionale delle Marche houses many fine works, including Raphael’s La Muta, several paintings by Titian and Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesco’s Flagellation, measuring 59cm by 82cm and once described as ‘the greatest small painting in the world’.

Also on this day: 

1494 - the death of philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

1878 - Attempted Assassination of Umberto I

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