The Renaissance sculpture is framed in the period between the early decades of the fifteenth and the middle of the fifteenth century or so. The sculpture was, also in the Renaissance period, a state-of-the- art art, which often acted as a trailblazer to painting and other artistic forms. Among the Florentine “pioneers” of the Renaissance two were sculptors (Filippo Brunelleschi and Donatello) and their achievements were a lasting source of inspiration for the following generations. With the journey of Donatello to Padua (1443-1453) the Renaissance conquests began to spread also in northern Italy. Towards the mid-fifteenth century Rome, a center of attraction for its classical remains and for the vast program of restoration and monumental reconstruction of the city promoted by the popes, became the main meeting point and exchange of artistic experiences, which culminated in the early decades of the sixteenth century in the Roman Renaissance.
The main features of Italian Renaissance sculpture were its definition as one of the ways of acquiring knowledge and as an instrument of ethical education of the public, and its concern to integrate the opposition between the interest in the direct observation of Nature and the idealistic aesthetic concepts developed by humanism. At a time when man was placed at the center of the universe , his representation also assumed a central role, with the consequence of flourishing the genres of the artistic nude and portrait , which since the end of the Roman Empire had fallen into oblivion. The mythological theme was also retaken, a body of theory was established to legitimize and guide the art of the period, and emphasis was placed on the close association between theoretical knowledge and a rigorous discipline of practical work as the indispensable tool for the creation of a skilled work of art. The sculpture of the Italian Renaissance in its first three phases was dominated by the influence of the Tuscan school , whose focus was Florence, then the largest Italian cultural center and a reference for the entire European continent. The final phase was led by Rome , at the time engaged in a project of asserting the universality of the authority of the papacy as the heir of both St. Peter and the Roman Empire .
Main representatives
Jacopo della Quercia
Jacopo della Quercia (Siena, 1374 – Bologna, 1438) was the greatest representative of the Sienese school of sculpture and one of the most original masters of the early fifteenth century, influencing Michelangelo and several others. It was from a family of artists. In c. 1406 produced the Tomb of Ilaria del Carretto in the Cathedral of Lucca, which survives only in part, and in 1408 a statue of the Madonna and Baby Jesus in Ferrara. A year later he received the order for a large public fountain in Siena, the well-known Gaia Fountain, and at the same time got involved in a large order for Lucca, a statue of an apostle, an altar and a tomb, as well as reliefs for a font in Siena. The amount of work has caused him to deliver several parts to assistants. His main work was the relief of the portal of the Basilica of St. Petronius in Bologna, whose vigor led him to be compared with the achievements of Masaccio in the painting of the human figure. In 1435 he was appointed chief architect of the Cathedral of Siena.
Lorenzo Ghiberti
Lorenzo Ghiberti (Florence, 1378-1455) was educated as a goldsmith and painter, and in 1400 left Florence to work in Pesaro. Knowing that Florence had opened in 1401 a public contest for the realization of the second pair of bronze doors of the Baptistery of St. John, he returned immediately there. The proof was the creation of a panel representing the Sacrifice of Isaac, competing with him six more artists. He won the competition, which brought him immediate fame, but the job would take more than twenty years to get ready. In this same period he worked on stained glass designs in the Cathedral, designed tombs and reliefs in Florence and Siena, acted as an architectural consultant and prepared a Saint John the Baptist(1416) that was the first bronze statue in size above the natural to be fused since Antiquity, and the first on this scale in Florence. The technical and stylistic success of the enterprise was worth two more similar orders, one Saint Matthew (1419) and one Saint Stephen for Orsanmichele (1425). Both the doors and these statues still reveal links with the Gothic style. At that time he was running a large workshop, getting married, getting rich, joining high society, being considered the main artist in Florence and could not handle so many orders. Through his workshop they passed as future master apprentices such as Donatello, Paolo Uccello, Michelozzo and Benozzo Gozzoli. Apparently he was a liberal teacher and interested in the progress of his students, and he did not hide his knowledge. He finally finished the doors of the Baptistery in 1424, which are the most important sculptural set of the International Gothic, and were highly appreciated in his time. The last panels of these doors already indicate a change of style, and show the influence of Alberti, of whom he had become a friend, and a deeper study of classical art, already working with the principle of perspective.
Its fame rests mainly in the third group of doors, the celebrated Doors of the Paradise, created between 1425 and 1452 and praised by Michelangelo. Unlike the first doors, whose panels leave the background smooth, the second group treats the space in low reliefs of pictorial character, with efficient definition of plans and perspective, and creating a landscaped space populated by various figures and buildings. Hartt said that the influence of Alberti’s ideas is so profound that the doors are a systematic and complete exposition of his theories. Each door has five large panels with scenes from the Old Testament, surrounded by a frieze of small statues, ornamental motifs and small medallions containing busts, including a self-portrait. The ensemble forms one of the most significant achievements of the Renaissance sculpture.
Nanni di Banco
Nanni di Banco (Florence, 1384/90 – 1421) was a first-class adept of classicist ideals, and in his final phase developed a less formalist style that had great influence on his successors. Trained by his father, also sculptor, employee of the Cathedral of Florence, his first order was for the Cathedral, a statue of Isaiah. Between 1411 and 1413 he created a sculptural group, the Four Crowned Saints, for the guild of Orsanmichele where he solved one of the most difficult technical problems with which the sculptors of his generation faced, the representation of several figures together in full shape inside a niche. Although Gothic traces still appear in this work, in the treatment of costumes, in the heads and in the general impression resembles the Roman statuary. He managed to keep the group formally cohesive through a wise delineation of internal plans and relationships in their attitudes, making the figures appear to all be engaged in conversation. His last work was a relief to one of the cathedral doors, begun in 1414, left incomplete, which was possibly completed by Luca della Robbia, then his disciple. He also created other statues of saints and prophets.
Donatello
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, known as Donatello (Florence, 1386/87 – 1466), was the son of a carder of wool; little is known about his life. He was a friend of humanists and period records as a connoisseur of classical art. He began as an apprentice mason and around 1404-1407 joined as a disciple of Ghiberti. In his formative years there was not yet a very expressive amount of old works available, and so his early creations still bring a strong Gothic brand, but the first great composition of his own, a St. George(c.1415) created for the guild of Orsanmichele, already reveals a solid knowledge of the human anatomy, and distinguishes itself from everything that had been produced before in the manifest tension in its posture, in the psychological characterization test of its face, in its handling of the structural planes, in the strength and autonomy of their “presence” and in the subtlety of their sculptural technique. In the relief under the niche where the statue was installed, Donatello introduced innovations that had a great repercussion in later Florentine art, creating a rather shallow relief where the delicate suggestion of plans and figures creates an efficient perspective of depth and subtle light and shadow effects, which bring it closer to the character of the painting respecting the integrity of the flat surface. The best examples in this genre are the reliefs of the Ascension of Christand The Feast of Herod, celebrated between c.1420 and 1437. The same qualities of St. George were expressed with even greater force in the series of five prophets who were installed in niches in the steeple of the Cathedral of Florence, of which Habacuc is considered a of his masterpieces. Its realistic and intensely expressive aspect brings them closer to the Roman portraiture. Around 1420 he worked also in bronze, creating a beautiful St. Louis of Toulouse (c. 1423), and in that time has established a limited partnership with Michelozzo, creating works for himNaples and Prato. Autonomously he made several pieces for Siena, apparently influenced by the Etruscan sculpture. Between 1430 and 1433 he was in Rome, where he studied the ancient relics, whose fruit on his return was a tabernacle and a choir counter to the Basilica of the Holy Cross, which exhibit a repertoire of classicist forms greatly enlarged. Until 1443 he worked for the Medici, producing the decoration of the old sacristy of the Basilica of St. Lawrence, including ten large stucco colored reliefs and two bronze doors with figures of apostles and saints of intense dynamism. In this period elaborated around 1440 his celebrated David, the first statue of a large nude and full figure since antiquity. The perfect proportions and the tranquility of his attitude make him the most classic of all the works of the author.
Between 1443 and 1453 he worked in Padua, creating an equestrian statue of the condottiero Erasmo da Narni, nicknamed the Gattamelata, also a reinterpretation of classical patterns, inspired by the famous monument to Marcus Aurelius he had met in Rome, eliminating superfluous details and concentrating on the principle of the ideal hero, establishing a paradigm for the equestrian representation that continued to be valid for the centuries ahead. His long presence in Padua stimulated the formation of a flourishing local bronze school, and the works he produced for the Basilica of St. Anthony of Padua, including a large crucifix and the most ambitious altarof the fifteenth-century European – now reconstructed in another form – which consisted of a set of 21 reliefs in bronze, a large relief in stone and seven life-size statues, influenced generations of painters and sculptors of northern Italy. On his return to Florence, he created a Saint John the Baptist for Venice and a Saint Mary Magdalene in polychrome wood for the local Baptistery, of pungent expressiveness, moving away from the balance and sobriety of the classicist tradition. The hard and dramatic style of these pieces was a shock to the Florentines, who were inclined to a softer aesthetic, and at that stage their main orders came from outside. Among them a Saint John the Baptist and a pair of bronze doors to the Cathedral of Siena, of which only two panels were executed. He was again employed by the Medici and his last years of life were spent creating two pulpits, one with the theme of the Resurrection and another of the Passion of Christ, for St. Lawrence, which left not completely finished but which are among his most heavily loaded compositions of spiritual content. Donatello also owes the elaboration of the putto type, a sort of genius shaped like a small child, winged or not, which has become a decorative motif of immediate success and widespread dissemination.
Luca della Robbia
Luca della Robbia (Florence, 1399 – 1482) was educated in marble sculpture, and in 1431 he began his most important work, a balcony for the choir of Florence Cathedral, with ten relief panels showing scenes of children singing, dancing and playing various musical instruments. His success was immediate, given the efficient naturalism and atmosphere of jubilation and innocence of the scenes. He then set up a tabernacle for a chapel in Florence, and in about 1440 he began research on the terracotta that led him to discover a technique of vitrification, enabling him to obtain lively colored surfaces that did not fade and were impermeable to water, allowing them to be installed at the open air. His first documented composition in this technique was a medallion with the theme of the Resurrectionto the old sacristy of the Cathedral, from c. 1442. Then he began to dedicate himself almost exclusively to this mode of sculpture, receiving orders for a large number of pieces in Florence and several other cities, such as Pescia and Urbino. Even so, in the 1450s he made another great marble work, the Tomb of Benozzo Federighi, bishop of Fiesole, at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Florence.
Bernardo Rossellino
Bernardo Rossellino (Settignano, 1409 – Florence, 1464), trained by Filippo Brunelleschi and influenced by Luca della Robbia and Ghiberti, was a member of a family of sculptors, a moderate classicist and one of the great masters of the funeral sculpture, besides being remarkable Architect and urbanist. His masterpiece is the Tomb of Leonardo Bruni (1444-50) in Santa Cruz, which inaugurated a new type of funerary monument and is among the greatest achievements of its Renaissance genre, becoming a largely imitated prototype by establishing a fine balance between sculpture and architecture, figuration and decorativism. Other important works were the Tomb of Orlando de Médici (1456-57) and theTomb of Blessed Villana delle Botte (1451-52), both in Florence.
Antonio Rossellino
Antonio Rossellino (Settignano, 1427 – Florence, 1479) was a noted sculptor and architect, Bernardo’s younger brother, from whom he received instruction and influence, and whom he assisted as an apprentice in various works. He was a master in the portrait, leaving several pieces of great quality in this genre, such as those of Giovanni Chellini (1456) and Matteo Palmieri (1468), with a realistic realistic style. His best work is the great collection of the Tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal (c.1460), in St. Miniato al Monte, on the outskirts of Florence, with a complex combination of architecture, sculpture and painting. He had the help of several collaborators, but for Hartt Antonio’s stylistic identity remains dominant. It represented a significant evolution in the concept of a funeral monument, giving it much greater dynamism and unity, with a strong characterization in the portrait of the deceased, being one of the best examples of its kind throughout the fifteenth century. Also left several Madonnas and another important monument for Filippo Lazzari (1464).
Mino da Fiesole
Mino da Fiesole (Poppi, Florence, 1429 – Florence, 1484) was possibly trained by Antonio Rossellino in Florence, and spent much of his career in Rome, where he studied the ancient statuary, concentrating on the portraits. There he performed funeral monuments for several cardinals and for Pope Paul II. Although his technique is not brilliant, he acquired his fame with portraits, a genre in which he was one of the first to specialize, leaving notable compositions in the portraits of Pedro de Medici, Niccolò Strozzi, Astorgio Manfredi, Rinaldo della Luna and Diotisalvi Neroni, among others.
Desiderio da Settignano
Desiderio da Settignano (Settignano, c.1430 – 1464) was born into a family of masons. Little is known of his education, but must have been influenced by Donatello. She developed a style of great softness, refinement and sensuality sublimated, expressed in portraits of women, demonstrating a great capacity to express feelings ranging from melancholy to joy. His low-reliefs evidenced his mastery of the perspective and subtle effects of light and shadow, and his technical and aesthetic quality had no rivals in his generation. He also became skilled in the portraits of children and in devotional pieces of the Madonna and Child Jesus. He also left two great monuments in Florence, Carlo Marsuppini’s Tomb in the Basilica of the Holy Cross (c.1453-55) andTabernacle of the Sacrament in the Basilica of St. Lawrence (1461), both of special importance for the subsequent evolution of the sculpture in its genres, with perspective planes in the backs of the reliefs and a modeling of figures that emphasizes the contours and treats the dresses with elegance and fluency to suggest anatomy and movement. The treatment of surfaces is also different, with a polished satin that lends an aura of sweetness to the characters.
Francesco Laurana
Francesco de la Vrana, known as Francesco Laurana (Vrana, then part of the Republic of Venice, c.1430 – Avignon, c.1502), sculptor and medalist, was one of the initiators of the renaissance style in France. The first part of his life is obscure, and the earliest news that appears about him dates back to the 1450s, when he was hired by Alphonse II of Aragon to create a triumphal arch at Castel Nuovo in Naples. Between 1461 and 1466 he worked for Renato I of Naples, for whom he created medals, and in 1468 he was in Sicily, spending his last years traveling between Sicily, Naples and the south of France. Left several Madonnasand portraits of women, of which Battista Sforza is famous, whose delicacy and sophistication make them mirrors of the courtly culture of the time, characterized by the search for elegance and aristocratic detachment and for the reserve and formal economy, discarding details and creating forms that are approaching of the geometric abstraction, besides carrying out them with great technical expertise.
Andrea of the Verrocchio
Andrea di Francesco di Cione, better known as Andrea del Verrocchio (Florence, 1435 – Venice, 1488) was the son of a potter, and during his childhood the family suffered with poverty. Tradition says that he was trained by a goldsmith named Giuliano Verrocchi, of whom he would have adopted the surname. Around 1460 he began to study painting, perhaps as a pupil of Alesso Baldovinetti and Filippo Lippi, being a colleague of Botticelli. A few years later, with the death of Donatello, who was the favorite of the Medici, he took his place as a protege, producing for them paintings and sculptures, as well as designs for decorations, vestments, and armor. A conservative builder of the family’s antique collections, he restored many Roman busts and statues. Then his fame began to spread, opened a large workshop that attracted many disciples, among them Leonardo da Vinci and Perugino, and was an influence for Benedetto da Maianoand Botticelli. Despite his fame as a painter and his production, which is supposed to have been significant, today almost nothing can be attributed to him for sure. He dedicated himself more strongly to sculpture, but also in this field his authenticated works, though in greater numbers, are still few.
His first major order was a tomb for Peter and John de Medici in the old sacristy of St. Lawrence completed in 1472 which impresses by the originality of its design and its inspired use of colored marbles and porphyry combined with rich bronze ornamentation. He then made a figurine, Boy with a Dolphin, to a fountain in Villa Medicea di Careggi, which reveals his interest in the movement, being important in the evolution of the spiral form known as serpentine figure, the preferred form in Mannerism. His reputation as one of the great bas-relief sculptors of the fifteenth century settled with theCenotaph of Cardinal Niccolò Forteguerri for the Cathedral of Pistoia, begun in 1476 but never completed, being concluded only after his death. Although its original conception has been modified by other craftsmen, it remains as a reliable testimony of its great ability both in the composition of a set of theatrical effect, that anticipated the solutions of the Baroque, as in the unified and dynamic drawing of the scenes in the reliefs and in its impeccable technical finishing. In the bas-relief technique he also left a panel depicting the Defeat of St. John the Baptist, the Cathedral of Florence (1480) and a Madonna for a hospital (c.1477). At that time he produced two busts, thePortrait of Julian de Médici, of great realism, and the Lady with a bouquet of flowers, where he created a new type of bust, which included the arms of the figure. The most important sculpture he created for Florence was possibly the group of Christ and St. Thomas, set in Orsanmichele (1467-83), notable for its technical perfection and the original solution of composition in the narrow space of the niche. In 1483, at the request of Venice, he traveled there to create a great equestrian monument to celebrate the condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni, of great scenic presence, clearly inspired by the work of Donatello, but surpassing it in dynamism and the impression of strength and decision. It is alongside the work of Donatello the most important monument in its genre of the Renaissance, and was very influential on the Baroque sculptors, and even the neoclassical and romantic. However, having finished the model, he died before casting the work. The finishing was entrusted to Alessandro Leopardi, whose participation in the final result of the composition is reason for debate.
Andrea della Robbia
The long career of Andrea della Robbia (Florence, 1435 – 1525) extends through the third and fourth phases. Like his uncle Luca, he was apparently trained as a marble sculptor, and devoted most of his efforts to the creation of polychrome vitrified terracotta, with which he became famous. His first works in this technique were carried out for the Hospital of the Innocents in Florence, around 1463. His most important work is the series of large reliefs for Sanctuary of Monte Alverne, near Assisi, in the 1480s. In the early years of the sixteenth century his workshop already employed many apprentices and began to receive prestigious orders from various cathedrals and nobility. He was a very prolific sculptor, and his compositions are found in many Italian cities, such as Prato, Volterra, Chiusi, Naples, Viterbo, Pistoia, Bibbiena, Montalcino and Montevarchi, and several more. His style unites a rich sense of decorativism with a sober, delicate and elegant figure design, with an inclination to colloquial narrative of immediate popular appeal, and penetrating characterization in the portraits. Its numerous images of theMadonna and Child Jesus are of great tenderness, and was able to approach the most dramatic emotions in their Pietàs and Crucifixions, but without excesses.
Pietro Lombardo
Pietro Lombardo (Carona, duchy of Milan, 1435 – Venice, 1515) was the leader of the Venetian Renaissance school and father of Tullio Lombardo and Antonio Lombardo, also sculptors. His early works reveal Florentine influence, but his mature style was indebted to Germanic and Flemish art. His first known work is the Tomb of Antonio Roselli (1464-67) in the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua. Around 1467 he moved to Venice, producing numerous monuments and also working as an architect. In Venice his most noteworthy production is the Tomb of the Malipiero family (c.1463) and that of Doge Pietro Mocenigo (c.1476-81) inBasilica of St. John and St. Paul. With a crowded workshop, he later left most of the drafting of his works to his assistants, including his children, and only projected and supervised the work. He was the architect and chief sculptor of the Church of Santa Maria dos Milagres between 1481 and 1489, considered one of the best renaissance buildings of the city and that exerted deep local influence. In 1482 he created the Tomb of Dante Alighieri in Ravenna and in 1485 he designed his masterpiece, the Zanetti Tomb, whose practical work was handed over to his sons. His final years were passed as master builder of the Ducal Palace.
Matteo Civitali
Matteo Civitali (Lucca, 1436 – 1502), sculptor and architect, was the main figure of the school of Lucca. He only began to dedicate himself to sculpture after the age of 40, having previously been a barber-surgeon. He studied in Florence with Antonio Rossellino and Mino da Fiesole. His main works are in the Cathedral of Lucca, including the Altar of St. Roman, the Tomb of Pietro Noceto and a Saint Sebastian. He also made sculptures of Adam and Eve, Abraham and several saints for the Cathedral of Genoa.
Tullio Lombardo
Tullio Lombardo (Venice, 1455-1532) was Pietro’s son and disciple, and how he worked in sculpture and architecture, but abandoned the pricelessness of his father’s style and adopted the conventions of classicism, also influenced by the work of the Hellenists, such as the newly discovered Laocoon Group. One of his important works is the Doge’s Tomb Andrea Vendramin, the most sumptuous Renaissance tomb in Venice, which originally contained a statue of Adam (c. 1490-95), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a life-size superlative, clearly inspired by the classic iconography of Bacchus and Antinous. Remarkable for the purity of the marble employed and the fine workmanship, this Adam was the first full-size nude carved from antiquity. He also performed the Tomb of Guidarello Guidarelli, portraits, allegorical reliefs and left a series of nine panels in relief for the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua, with scenes of the saint’s life, where he presents a narrative style of great nobility and dramatic eloquence, very similar to the examples of ancient Rome.
Antico
Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, nicknamed Antico (Mantua or Gazzuolo, 1460-1528), began his career as a medalist, became interested in painting, worked as a restorer of ancient statuary and was a protege of Isabella d’Este, but his fame is due to his skill in the field of small sculpture, creating a series of decorative pieces for private patrons, but which have aesthetic refinement and a first-rate technical quality. He was one of the first sculptors to realize the commercial possibilities of creating copies of his works in bronze through the indirect technique of lost wax, when until then the use was the making of unique pieces. His style is all inclined towards classicism, which he exercised in the creation of images of Greco-Roman mythology. For his love of antiquity he received his nickname, which means “ancient.”
Andrea Sansovino
Andrea Coducci, named Andrea Sansovino (Florence, c. 1467-1529) was an architect and sculptor whose style shows the transition from the third phase of the Renaissance to the High Renaissance. His first important composition was the Altar of the Sacrament (1485-90) in the Basilica of the Holy Spirit in Florence, with a high quality artisan and a great emphasis on the emotions. He spent several years in Portugal, and in 1502 was again in Florence, when the group of the Baptism of Christ, installed on the façade of the Baptistery of St. John. Only the Baptist is entirely his, and the angel is all of another artist, but the elegant, sober and dignified conception of the whole, besides the great beauty of the bodies, makes it one of the first important works of the High Renaissance. He also composed a series of polychrome friezes for Villa Medicea di Poggio a Caiano. In 1505 he went to Rome contracted by Pope Julius II to execute two tombs almost identical to the cardinals Ascanio Sforza and Girolamo della Rovere in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, completed in 1509 and considered his most original works. His last major order was to supervise the construction of several buildings in the city of Loreto and the decoration of the local Santa Casa, where he carved a relief of theAnnunciation of great plastic wealth.
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known as Michelangelo (Caprese, Republic of Florence, 1475 – Rome, 1564), was the dominant figure in 16th century Italian sculpture, as well as a painter and architect of the same type. One of the most celebrated and influential artists in all Western art, he began his apprenticeship with Ghirlandaio relatively late at the age of 13 after overcoming the paternal opposition. His talent was soon recognized and he became a Medici protégé, gained access to his collection of ancient sculptures, and received some sculpture instruction from Bertoldo di Giovanni. One of his earliest works was Madonna of the Ladder(c. 1491), in the style of Desiderio da Settignano’s low-reliefs, and then created a variation of a motif found in a Roman sarcophagus, the Battle of the Centaurs (c.1492), whose dynamism was praised. In 1494 the Medici were expelled from the city and Michelangelo sought employment in Bologna, working on secondary figures of the Tomb of St. Dominic (1494-95), but who are original and expressive, making references to classical iconography. Traveling to Rome, then the most culturally important city, he produced his first large-scale composition, a Drunken Bacchus(1496-97) in size just above the natural, of great virtuosity in conception and execution, which was apparently sold to a collector as if it were a piece of antiquity. The success of the work earned him another order, a Pietà (1498-99), which received immediate acclaim and sent him to the pre-eminence among all Italian sculptors for his originality of composition and his extraordinarily fine finish, his piece being perfect in this last aspect.
Immediately he was called to Florence to create a monumental David (1501-1504), whose design is especially close to the solutions of classicism. The work was even more successful than the others and by decision of the community was installed in a public square, in front of the Municipal Palace as a symbol of the Florentine Republic. The Pietà and David have become icons of the Italian Renaissance, and are among the most famous works of western sculpture history. In the meantime he was also involved in the elaboration of various Madonnas for private patrons, and must have been influenced by Leonardo da Vinci, who had returned to Florence after twenty years of absence and had excited everyone’s enthusiasm. AfterDavid’s work began to move towards Mannerism, but the final bloom of the high-Renaissance classicism is the Moses (1513-15), of great majesty, performed as part of an ambitious tomb for Pope Julius II in the Basilica of St Peter in Chained, never completed according to the original plan, two Slaves (1513-1516), also unfinished and part of the same project, and an elegant Christ Redeemer (1519-1520) entirely naked for the Church of Santa Maria on Minerva, who impressed his contemporaries to the point of Sebastiano del Piomboto say that only his knees were worth more than all of Rome. Years later her nakedness, considered indecent, was covered, as it remains to this day.
Jacopo Sansovino
Jacopo Tatti, known as Jacopo Sansovino (Florence, 1486 – Venice, 1570) studied from 1502 with Andrea Sansovino, who, to honor him, took the surname. In 1505 he accompanied the architect Giuliano da Sangallo to Rome, where he studied Roman architecture and sculpture, and was employed by Pope Julius II as restorer of ancient statuary. Returning to Florence, he sculpted a St. James (1511-18) for the Cathedral, and a Bacchus (c.1514). In 1518 he was again in Rome, working in a Nossa Senhora do Parto (c.1519) for the Church of St. Augustine, which reveals the influence of the other Sansovino, and in another St. James (1520) for theChurch of Santa Maria in Monserrato of the Spaniards. After the Sack of Rome in 1527 he moved to Venice, introducing the classicist aesthetic of the High Renaissance, which lasted much longer than in Rome. Its initial production in this city is graceful and elegant, and its final works reverts to a sober and rigorous classicism. Among them are statues of Evangelists and a Saint John the Baptist (1540s) for the Basilica of Saint Mark and the Tomb of Doge Francesco Venier (1556-61) in the Church of the Redeemer. He also acted as chief architect and town planner of the city, later acquiring fame as one of the greatest architects of Mannerism.
Source from Wikipedia