User:Vnicolet/Alessandro Leopardi

Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni by Verrocchio, cast by Leopardi

The sections in bold are the sections I added.

Alessandro Leopardi (sometimes known as Leopardo) was a Venetian sculptor, bronze founder and architect. Over the course of his lifetime, Leopardi worked on many projects including an equestrian monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni, the Zeno Chapel at St. Mark's Basilica, and the bronze bases for three flagpoles in the Piazza San Marco. He submitted models for other projects and commissions, but was not chosen as the final artist.

Engraving of the base of the central flagpole in Piazza San Marco

Biography

The exact dates of his birth and death are unknown, but he was sure to have been born in Venice and died in Venice. He is first heard of in 1482 and is said to have worked at a mint. He was once reputed to have designed the sepulchral monument of doge Andrea Vendramin, now in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo, but this is generally now thought to have been the work of Tullio Lombardo, though Leopardi may have contributed some figures.

In 1479 he submitted a model for the competition initiated by the Signoria in Venice to find a sculptor for an equestrian monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni. Three sculptors submitted models including Andrea Verrocchio to whom the contract was awarded.

Leopardi was exiled for 5 years on a charge of fraud in 1487, and recalled in 1490 by the senate to finish Verrocchio's statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, which the Venetians had commissioned him to make in accordance with the provisions of Colleoni's will. Verrocchio made the full-sized clay models of the horse and its rider in Venice, but died in October of 1488 before it had been cast in bronze. He asked in his will that his pupil, Lorenzo di Credi, finish the monument, but after a year of debating the Venetians selected Leopardi to cast it and the pedestal on which it stands as they thought it would be too risky to leave the completion of such an important monument up to Lorenzo. In January of 1490, Alessandro Leopardi accepted this offer after he was promised a safe return to his hometown. By summertime in 1492, Leopardi had successfully cast the horse and its rider separately and, on November 19th 1495, they were placed on the pedestal on which they still stand today. Nobody truly knows how far Verrocchio got in the specifics of his sketches for the monument nor how closely Alessandro Leopardi followed these ideas. His name (in Latin) is inscribed on the horse's girth: "ALEXANDER . LEOPARDUS . V . P . OPUS". This signature slowly caused the people of Venice to forget that Verrocchio was the one who won the competition and begin the statue. Many Venetians even began to forget his name all together. In 1494, before the statue was even finished, Alessandro Leopardi was already being recognized as the genius behind the creation of the monument. Today, many still think the statue was created solely by Leopardi.

When Colleoni bequeathed the money for his statue, he stipulated that it should be erected in the Piazza San Marco, but the Venetian state could not allow this and compromised by having it installed near the Scuola San Marco outside the church of SS Giovanni è Paolo, where it stands today.

In his last will, Cardinal Zeno (AKA Cardinal Giovanni Battista Zeno) stated he would leave Venice a considerable legacy if he was to be buried in a chapel the St. Mark's Basilica, later to be known as the Zeno Chapel. Between 1503 and 1505, Leopardi, with help from Antonio Lombardo, worked on designing the tomb and the alter of this chapel. In 1504, on May 23rd, Alessandro Leopardi was taken off the team for unknown reasons, leaving the rest of the church to be finished by Antonio Lombardo and Tullio Lombardo in 1515.

In 1505 he designed and cast the bronze bases, decorated in high relief, for the three great mast-like flagpoles in the Piazza San Marco. Each base is different and that in the centre has on a medallion a profile of the doge, Leonardo Loredan.

His model for the rebuilding of the Scuola Vecchia della Misericordia in Venice was provisionally accepted by the Scuola in 1507, but little progress was made with the project. Then, in 1531, after Leopardi's death, it was superseded by Jacopo Sansovino's model, although this also was never completed.

Later, he was engaged on the new church of Santa Giustina in Padua.

After the disastrous fire at the Rialto in January 1514 he was one of the four architects who submitted models for the rebuilding of the area, but the contract was given to Scarpagnino.

References

Books mentioned in the notes

• Howard, Deborah: Jacopo Sansovino Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice (Yale University. Press. 1975)
• Lorenzetti, Giulio: Venice and its Lagoon (1926. 2nd edn 1956) translated by John Guthrie (Lint, Trieste. 1975)
• Perocco, Guido & Antonio Salvadori: Civiltà di Venezia. Vol.2: Il Rinascimento. (3rd edition, revised and corrected. Venice. 1987)
• Pope-Hennessy, John: Italian Renaissance Sculpture (London. Phaidon Press. 1958)
• Passavant, Günter: Verrocchio: sculptures, paintings and drawings. (London. Phaidon. 1969)
• Vio, Ettore: The Basilica of St. Mark in Venice. (Antella, Florence. Scala. 1999)