Lorenzetto
Lorenzo di Lodovico di Guglielmo (1490–1541), known by the pseudonyms Lorenzo Lotti or Lorenzetto, was an Italian Renaissance sculptor and architect in the circle of Raphael.
He was born in
Sculptural works
According to
At the urging of Raphael, Lorenzetto received a commission from
According to Vasari, the almost simultaneous death of Chigi and Raphael (both within four days of the other in 1520) heralded a decline in Lorenzetto's fortunes. Chigi's heirs left Lorenzetto's statues for the Chigi Chapel sit in Lorenzetto's workshop "for many years" and Lorenzetto "robbed for those reasons of all hope, found for the present that he had thrown away his time and labor."[1]
Lorenzetto did, however, find work creating a statue for Raphael's tomb in the Pantheon, assisted by Raffaello da Montelupo. Called the Madonna del Sasso (Madonna of the Rock), it is so named because Mary rests one foot on a boulder.
In 1524, Lorenzetto completed the tomb of poet Bernardino Cappella in
By the time he worked on the tombs of the Medici popes (
Work on St. Peter's
In his later years, Lorenzetto also assisted Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as an architect and surveyor for the never-ending work on St. Peter's Basilica under Pope Paul III. According to Vasari, this proved to be the most lucrative engagement of Lorenzetto's career because:
the walls were being built at a fixed price of so much for every four braccia. Thereupon Lorenzo, without exerting himself, in a few years became more famous and prosperous than he had been after many years of endless labor, through having found God, mankind, and Fortune all propitious at that one moment. And if he had lived longer, he would have done even more towards wiping out those injuries that a cruel fate had unjustly brought upon him during his best period of work.[1]
Lorenzetto died in Rome in 1541 at age 47.
References
- ^ a b c d e "Link to on-line biography of Lorenzetto from Vasari's Vite". Archived from the original on 2009-02-22. Retrieved 2007-05-17.
- ^ Blue Guide, Rome and environs, (1994) at p.162.