Alessandro Leopardi
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Bartolomeo_Colleoni_by_Andrea_del_Verrocchio.jpg/250px-Bartolomeo_Colleoni_by_Andrea_del_Verrocchio.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/Quadri-Moretti%2C_Piazza_San_Marco_%281831%29%2C_16.jpg/220px-Quadri-Moretti%2C_Piazza_San_Marco_%281831%29%2C_16.jpg)
Alessandro Leopardi (sometimes called Leopardo) (1466 [citation needed] – 1512) was a Venetian sculptor, bronze founder and architect.
Biography
Leopardi was born and died in
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
Leopardi was exiled for 5 years on a charge of fraud in 1487,
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.
Leopardi worked between 1503 and 1505 on the chapel of Cardinal Zeno at St. Mark's, which was finished by 1515 by Antonio Lombardo and Tullio Lombardo.[6]
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.[7]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Bartolomeo_Colleoni_by_Verrochio_cast_by_Leopardi_on_plinth_by_Leopardi_Venice.jpg/250px-Bartolomeo_Colleoni_by_Verrochio_cast_by_Leopardi_on_plinth_by_Leopardi_Venice.jpg)
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by the Scuola in 1507, but little progress was made with the project and in 1531, after Leopardi's death, it was superseded by Sansovino's model, although this also was never completed.[8]
Later, he was engaged on the new church of Santa Giustina in Padua.[9]
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.[10]
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 1958)
Notes
- ^ Lorenzetti p. 915.
- ^ Pope-Hennessy p. 355.
- ^ G.Passavent: Verrocchio (1969) pp. 62-63.
- ^ Lorenzetti p. 315.
- ^ Pope-Hennessy pp. 65, 315.
- ^ Pope-Hennessy p. 355.
- ^ Perocco & Salvadori pp. 719-21.
- ^ Howard p. 102. and note 26 on p. 178. On the Scuola see pp. 96-112.
- ^ Bruce Boucher: Andrea Palladio. The Architect in his Time. (1998) p. 164.
- ^ Howard p. 52.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Alessandro Leopardi in Enciclopedie on line bei treccani.it