Jacopo Sansovino

Italian architect

• Born: July 2, 1486
• Birthplace: Florence (now in Italy)
• Died: November 27, 1570
• Place of death: Venice, Republic of Venice (now in Italy)

Sansovino was the first architect to bring Renaissance classical ideas of architecture into a successful conjunction with the Venetian Byzantine-Gothic style, resulting in buildings in the Piazza San Marco that were to confirm its reputation as one of the greatest architectural developments in the world.

Early Life

Jacopo Sansovino (JAHK-oh-poh sahn-soh-VEE-noh) was born in Florence. His original name was Jacopo Tatti, but he later took the name Sansovino in honor of his master, the sculptor Andrea Sansovino, whose wall tombs were deeply admired and imitated throughout the sixteenth century. Jacopo Sansovino’s early training was, therefore, as a sculptor, and his early reputation was confined to that discipline. He worked in Florence and, particularly, in Rome and was a close associate of many of the great artists of the high Renaissance, many of whom were adept in more than one artistic discipline.

It was not, in fact, unusual at the time for an artist to work with considerable distinction at painting, sculpture, and architecture, and Sansovino’s contemporaries, who included Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donato Bramante, would provide the model for a young sculptor eager to try his hand at other forms of artistic expression.

Sansovino had done some architectural work in Florence at the Duomo in 1515, but it was only for a temporary, decorative façade to mark the visit of Pope Leo X to the city. In Rome, he began two churches, San Marcello al Corso and San Giovanni di Fiorentini, but he did not finish either of them. He completed one important private residence, the Palazzo Gaddi, and showed considerable skill in handling Renaissance architectural ideas. The site for the Palazzo was not an easy one with which to work, but Sansovino solved the problems with elegance and style, anticipating the way in which he would deal with architectural troubles in his Venetian career.

In 1527, at the time of the sack of Rome, Sansovino went to Venice, intending to return to the south when political turmoil had eased. He was forty-one years old, and his reputation was mainly as a sculptor. He gained a commission to restore the domes of St. Mark’s Basilica, and he did so with marked competence. His appointment as the proto, the supervising architect for the procurators of Saint Mark, a body of prominent Venetian citizens responsible for the maintenance of the buildings in Saint Mark’s Square, was the factor that kept him in Venice. He joined them on April 7, 1529, and held that office until his death in 1570.

Life’s Work

Architecture is, perhaps, the least independent kind of art form, and Sansovino’s work as the proto was not confined to keeping existing structures repaired; he was to provide a complete renewal of one side of the Piazza San Marco to extend around the corner of the piazza into the smaller piazzetta facing the doge’s palace, immediately to the south of the basilica. This was a task of major urban renewal, all the more important because the piazza, the piazzetta, the basilica, and the doge’s palace were, together, the center of Venetian religious and political life. Any changes or additions had to reflect that sense of importance. It was decided that the buildings on the south side of the square were to be razed and a library built to house the world-famous Venetian collection of Greek and Latin manuscripts; the building would also house the procurators.

This project continued throughout Sansovino’s life, and parts of it were not finished until after his death. It was the major test of his skill, not only as an architect but also as a negotiator, compromiser, and manager. The main difficulty was designing a building that would be both a visual exemplification of Venetian power and grandeur and a residence for important local politicians, while remaining commercially viable. Long-term leases with merchants in the existing buildings had to be renegotiated, and the new structure had to be able to accommodate shops that would provide income for the procuracy.

Sansovino managed to overcome all the complications to produce what Giorgio Vasari called a building without parallel; Andrea Palladio, the greatest architect of the period, proclaimed it the richest and most ornate building since antiquity. Venice had longed to make the piazza something that Rome would envy. Sansovino gave it to them in a building that makes ample use of Renaissance architectural ideas but lightens them and opens them up to the Venetian tradition of lavish encrustation and lively sculptural decoration. The use of the local Istrian stone, easy to carve, responding in its bright whiteness to the sparkling light flashing off the lagoon, makes the building typically Venetian, while the use of the classical orders, Doric below, Ionic on the second floor, topped by a balustrade on which sculptural figures seem to float in the air, gives it a sense of both majestic solidity and ethereal lightness. The library was to be Sansovino’s greatest work.

Sansovino completed two other projects in the San Marco complex. The campanile had, until Sansovino’s time, been tucked into a corner of the buildings, losing much of its visual power in a jumble of shops and commercial structures. Sansovino adjusted the line of the library to allow space around the tower, giving it the sight line from all sides that makes it one of the major points of interest in the piazza. He also rebuilt the loggia, a small meeting house at the base of the campanile. Prior to his work, the building had no particular aesthetic appeal; when Sansovino was done, it had become a tiny gem of rich red-and-white marble, appropriate for its place at the base of the tower. It is, as Deborah Howard has suggested, not so much a building as a piece of sculpture.

On the lagoon side of the library, Sansovino had another problem, the rebuilding of the Venetian Mint, or Zecca, and again he displayed a capacity for compromise that allowed him to make art out of impossible situations. Something had to be provided for the cheese merchants who had always had shops immediately in front of the proposed site. The multiple bays of the ground floor, heavily rusticated in the Renaissance tradition of acknowledging the classical heritage of Italian architecture, provide an appropriate fortresslike base for a building in which the coin of the realm was cast and stored. The Zecca has become part of the library; in its time, the bays led into the separate shops of the cheese sellers without compromising visually the importance or aesthetic unity of the structure. The upper stories, Doric on the second floor, Ionic on the third, are formidable in their use of column, lintel, and window surround. The Zecca reflects the practice of mirroring a building’s function in its façade the lower floor suggesting its impregnability, the upper levels, particularly the second floor, with its massive protruding lintels, exaggerating the same idea of sudden closure.

Sansovino’s career was not confined to the piazza. He was allowed to take private commissions, and he provided an interesting building for the Rialto market area, still extant and still used today. The Fabbriche Nuove again incorporates the Renaissance use of the orders into the long, three-storied building. Sansovino also undertook the more modest problem of a residence for destitute women; the success of the inexpensive stucco building lies in its tasteful proportions and some very witty chimney pots.

Sansovino also designed several churches, probably six in all, but only three of them survive, one of them with a façade by Palladio. The façades of the other two, San Martino and San Giuliano, have interesting mannerist inclinations. San Giuliano in particular manifests the mannerist tendency to eccentric manipulation of architectural motifs. Sansovino usually eschewed variations that were too idiosyncratic in his use of the Renaissance architectural vocabulary, but the narrow site of San Giuliano, and the determination of his patron to be publicly recognized, led to the mounting of a statue of the patron, seated on a sarcophagus, on the front of the church. The statue reminds one of Sansovino’s beginnings as a pupil of Andrea Sansovino, the master of tomb sculpture (sculptures usually only mounted on the interior of a church). It is a stunning façade, clearly original in conception and execution.

Sansovino also designed two palazzos of considerable distinction. The Venetian palazzo was used not only as a residence but also as a place of business, since so many of the great Venetian families were traders. Their palazzos were proof of business success, but they were also used as warehouses and offices and often sheltered several generations of the family at once. The first floor was, therefore, designed not only to store goods but also to take in and distribute the goods from the door facing immediately onto the canals. Other floors housed the extended family, and the façades of the buildings, often right on the canal, were required to be as handsome as money could make them. Palazzos were usually in an established style that was partly Byzantine, partly Gothic.

Sansovino’s Palazzo Dolfin was built to serve in the old way as a home and place of business, but there was no need for a large central entrance on the canal, since there was a small stream down one side of the building that could be used to enter the residential areas of the palace. That allowed Sansovino to use on the ground level six Doric arches in a regularized Renaissance pattern leading to six separate warehouses. The second and third floors made use of Ionic and Corinthian decoration, but Sansovino kept the common Venetian arrangement of windows to achieve another successful mix of the old and the new.

Sansovino’s second, grander commission was for a family of political consequence, and again, on a much larger scale, Sansovino put the classical orders into play, especially in a generous inner courtyard. Vasari called it the finest palace in Italy in its time, and it displayed the sense of amplitude and richness of design that Sansovino seemed peculiarly able to manipulate without vulgarity.

Sansovino remained active until his death. Vasari writes that he was a handsome and charming young man, well-built and red-bearded. In his old age, he retained his charm, but the beard was white. Tintoretto painted him, bright-eyed and wary, and Vasari notes that in old age, he dressed elegantly and kept himself well-groomed.

Significance

Sansovino was not a great architect, but he was a very good one, and he produced a handful of major projects that are as good as anything produced in Venice. He was able to break the hold that the Byzantine-Gothic tradition had on Venetian architecture and develop a new kind of style that was thoroughly modern and committed to the dignity and calm weight of Renaissance classicism, yet also retained the lively, decorative lightness of the island mode. He showed other architects how to bring Venice forward into the Renaissance without repudiating the peculiar history or virtues of the old style.

Sansovino was also able to make architectural compromise work without debasement of standards; he worked with the complicated Venetian committees, demanding a certain amount of tradition within a mercurial political and economic climate. He was, in a sense, the ideal architect learned, modestly imaginative, sensitive to local prejudices, capable of playing the game, able to nurse major projects along despite constant threats of setbacks and changes of mind. His contributions to the Piazza San Marco alone entitle him to be considered one of the finest architects of urban renewal.

Bibliography

Boucher, Bruce. The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino. 2 vols. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992. The best single source on Sansovino in English. Volume 1 is a biography and analysis of his artistic, political, and philosophical influences. Volume 2 is a photographic catalog of his sculptures. Includes bibliographies and index.

Fletcher, Sir Banister. Sir Banister Fletcher’s “A History of Architecture.” 19th ed. Edited by John Musgrove. Boston: Butterworths, 1987. The architecture student’s basic reference text. Provides good illustrations and puts Venetian architecture, Renaissance Italian architecture, and Sansovino’s version of both in context.

Hopkins, Andrew. Santa Maria della Salute: Architecture and Ceremony in Baroque Venice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. This study of Baldassare Longhena’s great Venetian church discusses the impact of Sansovino on Longhena and his influence on the design of the baroque masterpiece.

Howard, Deborah. Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975. A very sensible and easily understood study of how Sansovino went about making art in the context of a social and political structure that foiled many men. Howard is good on the history of Venice and its architecture and shows how Sansovino adjusted its “rules.”

Lotz, Wolfgang. Architecture in Italy, 1500-1600. Translated by Marty Hottinger. Introduction by Deborah Howard. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995. Detailed study of both major and minor architects, working in the well-known artistic centers and in less-discussed areas such as Piedmont. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, index.

Lowry, Bates. Renaissance Architecture. New York: George Braziller, 1962. A substantial essay on the subject of Renaissance architecture. Includes a generous selection of photographs.

McCarthy, Mary. Venice Observed. New York: Reynal, 1956. A famous essay by one of America’s finest writers. Venice is a work of art and should be understood as such. McCarthy and other literary figures, such as Hugh Honour, Jan Morris, and Henry James, are able to make that phenomenon sensible.

Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Meaning in Western Architecture. Rev. ed. New York: Rizzoli, 1980. This text does not speak directly of Sansovino but examines how architects make buildings illustrate the ideals of a society, a skill at which Sansovino was particularly good.

Rowe, Colin, and Leon Satkowski. Italian Architecture of the Sixteenth Century. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. Survey of the major figures and works of the sixteenth century in Italy, with a chapter on Sansovino and Sanmicheli. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, index.