Sangallo, Giuliano da

(1443-1516)

   Giuliano da Sangallo was the founding member of a dynasty of Florentine architects. Like Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti who influenced him, he was deeply interested in ancient architecture. The notes he took on the ancient monuments he studied during an early stay in Rome (c. 1465-c. 1472), the Codex Barberiano, are now housed in the Vatican and record some Roman buildings that no longer stand. Upon his return to Florence and armed with the knowledge he acquired in the papal city, Sangallo worked on the courtyard of the Palazzo Scala (1472-1480), a commission he received from the statesman and humanist Bartolomeo Scala. Made to look like an ancient peristyle, the courtyard features arches flanked by pilasters on the lower story and above these a series of reliefs, also executed by Sangallo, based on a poem, the Cento Apologi, written by his patron that deals with moralizing mythological themes. After this, Sangallo became the architect favored by Lorenzo "the Magnificent" de' Medici. For him he built the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano in the early 1480s, the earliest attempt by a Renaissance architect to recreate an ancient suburban villa based on the descriptions of Vitruvius and Pliny the Younger. It is also the first domestic structure with a completely symmetrical arrangement of rooms around a large central hall. In this, it foreshadows the villas of Palladio.

   Sangallo's Church of Santa Maria delle Carceri in Prato, built in 1484-1492 and also commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici, was meant as repository for an image of the Virgin that effected miracles. This structure, shaped like a Greek cross, depends on the mathematical system of proportions introduced by Brunelleschi earlier in the century. The dome and interior are also Brunelleschian, this last relying heavily on Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel at Santa Croce, Florence (1433-1461). In the exterior, Sangallo applied the Colosseum principle introduced by Alberti in his design for the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence. These structures for Lorenzo were followed by the Palazzi Gondi (beg. 1490) and Strozzi (1489-1490), this last completed by Cronaca and Benedetto da Maiano.

   After the expulsion of the Medici from Florence in 1494, Sangallo returned to Rome. There he worked for Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, later Pope Julius II. When Donato Bramante died, Sangallo was called by Leo X, a Medici, to work alongside Raphael on New St. Peter's, but was soon dismissed as the commission proved to difficult for him to handle. He returned to Florence where he submitted designs for the façade of San Lorenzo (1515-1516), by then considered antiquated. Disheartened, Sangallo died in 1516.

   See also Sangallo the Elder, Antonio da; Sangallo the Younger, Antonio da.