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(6) Francesco da Sangallo
(b 1 March 1494; d 17 Feb 1576). Sculptor and architect, son of (1) Giuliano da Sangallo. In 1504 he accompanied his father to Rome, where he was present with his father and Michelangelo in 1506 at the discovery of the Laokoon (now Rome, Vatican, Mus. Pio-Clementino; see ROME, ANCIENT, fig. 59). 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, S 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 (1522–6; see fig.) 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; Florence, Mus. Bardini), the marble funerary monument to Angelo Marzi, Bishop of Assisi (1546; Florence, SS Annunziata) and the marble monument of Paolo Giovio (1560) in the cloister of S Lorenzo (now Florence, Bib. Medicea-Laurenziana). There is also a self-portrait relief (1542) in S 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 (see LORETO, fig. 3), and with Matteo da Quaranta on the decoration (1546) of the Sanseverini Chapel in SS Severno 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 (destr. 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; Fiesole, S Maria Primerana).
Part of the Sangallo, da family
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