Artist

(b. ca. 1511, Padova, d. 1552, Padova)

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Details

Tiziano Aspetti, known by his nickname Tiziano Minio, Italian stuccoist and sculptor. He probably trained as a founder under his father, Guido Minio (active 1511-16), called Lizzaro, and later alternated this trade with his work as a sculptor. After learning bronze casting, he acquired training as a stuccoist under Giovanni Maria Mosca (1493-ca.1573). His first documented activity is as a stuccoist in 1533, employed on the vault of the chapel of St Anthony in Il Santo, Padua, under the architect Giovanni Maria Falconetto and alongside two members of Jacopo Sansovino's circle, Silvio Cosini (c. 1495-after 1547) and Danese Cattaneo. In 1535-36 Minio executed his first independent work, the stucco altar (now Museo Civico, Padua) for the confraternity of San Rocco in Padua. Large and ungainly, this altar has the crude vigour often associated with provincial workmanship; its female saints show, nonetheless, the influence of Sansovino's style, while the deployment of the sculptures in general is indebted to arrangements at Sansovino's Loggetta, Venice. From August 1536 he was in Venice, where he received compensation for stucco work in the lunette behind the main portal of San Marco. His coming and going between Padua and Venice reminds us how close artistic ties were between the two cities. Sansovino valued Minio as a decorative artist and for his knowledge of bronze casting. He assigned him some of the smaller relief panels of the Loggetta. Few works survive that testify to Minio's skills, but one can be seen in the Baptistery of San Marco. This was a project very much in Sansovino's gift as he had persuaded the procurators to use a large block of marble in their stores for its base and drew up the contract for the execution of its bronze cover. Minio occasionally collaborated with another Sansovino protégé, Danese Cattaneo. //

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Category	Artists
Artists by letter	M
Artist nationality	Italian