The Story of Siena and San GimignanoGardner, Edmund G.
History
The Story of Siena and San Gimignano
Gardner, Edmund G.
Art -- Italy -- Siena; San Gimignano (Italy) -- History; Siena (Italy) -- History
No other Sienese sculptor of the Quattrocento approaches Giacomo's
solitary greatness. Pietro del Minella (1391-1458) was his favourite
pupil and assistant, but caught little of his spirit. The two
Turini--Turino di Sano and his son Giovanni (1384-1455)--were associated
with him on the work for the Baptistery, and acquitted themselves
creditably, even by the side of Donatello and Ghiberti. Then come two
men of greater mark: Antonio Federighi (died about 1480), and Lorenzo di
Pietro (1412-1480), called Il Vecchietta. The former, who is said to
have been connected with the Tolomei, was also an architect, as the
"grandiose simplicity" of the Loggia that he built for Pius II. shows;
as a sculptor, he is perhaps the most classical of the Sienese masters
of the Quattrocento, following not unworthily in the steps of both
Giacomo della Quercia and Donatello. Vecchietta appears to have been
actually Giacomo's pupil; his principal works are in bronze, somewhat
hard and dry in style, with excessive attention to anatomical details.
Giovanni di Stefano (died after 1498) and Urbano da Cortona (died 1504),
by the latter of whom are some tolerable works in the Duomo and
elsewhere, are conscientious _scarpellini_, with no original genius. To
Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1502), the pupil of Vecchietta, are
ascribed--frequently on no adequate grounds--a number of the chief
buildings in Siena in the style of the earlier Renaissance; as a
military architect, he stands high among the craftsmen of his century,
and was much employed by the Dukes of Urbino. Like his master
Vecchietta, he was also a worker in bronze and a painter. Of his
fellow-pupil Neroccio di Bartolommeo Landi (1447-1500), it will be best
to speak among the painters; his few extant works in sculpture have a
peculiar combination of dignity and sweetness, which is at once
impressive and winning. Giacomo Cozzarelli (1453-1515) was a pupil of
Francesco di Giorgio; he designed the famous palace of Pandolfo Petrucci
and made those wonderful torch-holders and other metal work for its
exterior, which are only surpassed by Caparra's masterpieces in this
kind on the palace of Filippo Strozzi at Florence. Lorenzo di Mariano,
called Il Marrina (died in 1534), is the last great sculptor of the
Sienese Renaissance; as a decorator in marble he has few if any equals,
and his masterpiece in the oratory of Fontegiusta need not fear the
comparison with the best Florentine work of the epoch.
Nor should we pass from the sculptors without a word on the
wood-carvers, who are among the minor artistic glories of Siena.
Domenico di Niccolò (who died about 1450), called Del Coro from his work
in the chapel of the Palazzo del Comune, Antonio Barili (died 1516), and
Giovanni Barili (died 1529), produced work in this kind which is hardly
surpassed in any Italian city of the Renaissance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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