Desiderio da Settignano
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Desiderio da Settignano, real name Desiderio de Bartolomeo di Francesco detto Ferro (c. 1430 – 1464) was an Italian sculptor active during the Renaissance.
[edit] Biography
He came from a family of stone carvers and stone masons in Settignano, near Florence. His work shows the influence of Donatello, specifically his use of low reliefs.
During 1450 to 1455 he finished a frieze with cherubims in the Pazzi Chapel of Santa Croce in Florence. In 1453 he matriculated from the Guild of Stone and Wood Craftsmen of the city, and later executed the tomb of chancellor Carlo Marsuppini in the same church, inspired by Bernardo Rossellino's tomb of Leonardo Bruni. It shows the dead lying on the sarcophagus, with a triumphal arch, supported by pilasters, hanging over him. From about 1455 is the bust of Marietta Strozzi, now in Berlin, and a Maledeine in polychrome wood, for the church of Santa Trinita in Florence; the latter's soft rendering has been favourably compared to the seemingly ageing of the contemporary Donatello's work.
In 1461 he finished a tabernacle for the Sacrament Chapel in San Lorenzo.
He died in Florence in 1464. The most famous of his pupils is Simone Ferrucci.
Giorgio Vasari includes a biography of Desiderio da Settignano in his Lives of the Artists[1].
[edit] Selected works
- The tomb of Carlo Marsuppini in Santa Croce, Florence
- Beauregard Madonna (c. 1455) - marble relief
- A Little Boy (c. 1455-1460) - marble bust
- The Virgin and Child (c. 1455-1460) - marble relief
- The Christ Child (c. 1460) - marble bust
- The Altar of the Sacrament in San Lorenzo, Florence (completed in 1461)
- Saint Jerome in the Desert (c. 1461) - marble
