Artist

(b. 1494, Firenze, d. 1576, Firenze)

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Details

Sculptor and architect, part of a family of artists, son of Giuliano da Sangallo. He is known also as Il Margotta. In 1504 he accompanied his father to Rome, where he was present with his father and Michelangelo in 1506 at the discovery of the Laocoön (now Museo Pio Clementino, Vatican). This experience had a significant impact on the formation of his style, which was uncharacteristic among Italian 16th-century sculptors because of its physiognomic and textural realism and emotional expressionism. In the 1520s Francesco worked as an assistant to Michelangelo in the New Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence, for which he carved the marble friezes of decorative masks on the walls behind the sarcophagi (in situ). His earliest independent and dated work is the marble group of the Virgin and Child with St Anne in Orsanmichele, Florence. His subsequent Florentine works include an undated marble bust of Giovanni de' Medici (Florence, Bargello), the marble tomb of the Abbess Colomba Ghezzi (commissioned 1540; Museo Bardini, Florence), the marble funerary monument to Angelo Marzi, Bishop of Assisi (1546; Santissima Annunziata, Florence) and the marble monument of Paolo Giovio (1560) in the cloister of San Lorenzo (now Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence). There is also a self-portrait relief (1542) in Santa Maria Primerana at Fiesole. Francesco also worked in Loreto and Naples, collaborating with Niccolò Tribolo and Domenico Aimo from 1531 to 1533 on a relief of the Death of the Virgin for the Santa Casa, Loreto Cathedral, and with Matteo da Quaranta on the decoration (1546) of the Sanseverini Chapel in Santi Severino e Sosio, Naples. As an architect, he worked on the fortifications of Prato and Pistoia in 1528 and at Fucecchio in 1530; after 1529 he served as the Capomaestro Generale of the fortifications of Florence. Around 1542 he was working in St Peter's, Rome, either as a sculptor or an architect, and in 1543 he succeeded Baccio d'Agnolo as the Capomaestro of Florence Cathedral. He designed a campanile for Santa Croce, Florence, in 1549, but only the first storey was constructed (destroyed 1854), and in the 1560s he provided the designs for the monumental altar tabernacles that formed part of Vasari's renovation of the same church. Around this time he was also one of the founder-members of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence. His last known work is the marble portrait relief of Francesco del Fede (1575; Santa Maria Primerana, Fiesole). He died in Florence a few days after having the second testament drawn up and following his instructions he was buried on February 17, 1576 in the basilica of Santa Maria Novella. //

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Category	Artists
Artists by letter	S
Artist nationality	Italian