Andrea di Cristoforo Bregno (1418–1506) was an
Italian Renaissance sculptor
Italian Renaissance sculpture was an important part of the art of the Italian Renaissance, in the early stages arguably representing the leading edge. The example of Ancient Roman sculpture hung very heavily over it, both in terms of style and t ...
and architect of the Early Renaissance who worked in
Rome from the 1460s and died just as the
High Renaissance was getting under way.
Early life
He was born in
Osteno
Claino con Osteno (Comasco: ) is a '' comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Como in the Italian region of Lombardy, located about north of Milan and about north of Como. It is a small ''comune'' on Lake Lugano, composed of a series of smal ...
,
Lombardy, into one of the most famous artistic families in Northern Italy. His father, Cristoforo Bregno, and his brothers, Ambrogio and Girolamo, were also sculptors. They formed a workshop in
Ferrara, and took over the supervision of the architecture at the
Doge's Palace
The Doge's Palace ( it, Palazzo Ducale; vec, Pałaso Dogal) is a palace built in Venetian Gothic style, and one of the main landmarks of the city of Venice in northern Italy. The palace was the residence of the Doge of Venice, the supreme au ...
in Venice after the death of
Bartolomeo Bon
Bartolomeo Bon (also spelled Buon; died after 1464) was an Italian sculptor and architect from Campione d'Italia. His career spans the transition between Venetian Gothic architecture and the rather late start of Venetian Renaissance architecture. ...
.
Career in Rome
Andrea Bregno was invited to move from Venice to Rome when the Venetian
Paul II was elected Pope.
During the pontificate of the Della Rovere
Pope Sixtus IV he received many commissions and headed a large workshop, producing many wall tombs of cardinals and other figures of the papal
curia
Curia (Latin plural curiae) in ancient Rome referred to one of the original groupings of the citizenry, eventually numbering 30, and later every Roman citizen was presumed to belong to one. While they originally likely had wider powers, they came ...
with varying degrees of personal responsibility. He was famous among his contemporaries, and was compared to the Greek sculptor
Polykleitos
Polykleitos ( grc, Πολύκλειτος) was an ancient Greek sculptor in bronze of the 5th century BCE. Alongside the Athenian sculptors Pheidias, Myron and Praxiteles, he is considered one of the most important sculptors of classical antiqui ...
in the epitaph of his tomb in
Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Raphael's father,
Giovanni Santi, mentioned Bregno in the 1480s, in his biography of
Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. Bregno often worked with
Mino da Fiesole in Rome, and his refined Lombard manner was rendered more classical by the contact and by the example of Roman sculptures that were increasingly coming to light, of which Andrea Bregno was an early collector: a certain "Prospettivo Milanese", writing in 1499-1500 refers to a torso in the collection of a "Maestro Andrea" that seems to have been the
Belvedere Torso
__NOTOC__
The Belvedere Torso is a tall fragmentary marble statue of a male nude, known to be in Rome from the 1430s, and signed prominently on the front of the base by "Apollonios, son of Nestor, Athenian", who is unmentioned in ancient literat ...
.
He moved in humanist circles and was an esteemed friend of the humanist in Sixtus' circle,
Bartolomeo Platina
Bartolomeo Sacchi (; 1421 – 21 September 1481), known as Platina (in Italian ''il Platina'' ) after his birthplace (Piadena), and commonly referred to in English as Bartolomeo Platina, was an Italian Renaissance humanist writer and gastro ...
, the librarian of the
Vatican Library. Bregno played a significant role in the standardization of an authentically classicizing style of epigraphy, in the inscriptions that accompany his tombs. In the
Sistine Chapel he collaborated with
Mino da Fiesole and Giovanni Dalmata to produce the little ''cantoria'' or choristers' gallery set into the wall, with its own coffered ceiling and carved marble
baluster
A baluster is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its cons ...
s, and the marble screen.
The attribution to Andrea Bregno and
Baccio Pontelli
Baccio Pontelli (c. 1450 – 1492) was an Italian architect, who designed the Sistine Chapel in The Vatican City. Baccio is an abbreviation of Bartolomeo.
Pontelli was born in Florence. Passing the phase of artistic formation with Giuliano and ...
of the Church of
Santa Maria del Popolo it, Basilica Parrocchiale Santa Maria del Popolo
, image = 20140803 Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo Rome 0191.jpg
, caption = The church from Piazza del Popolo
, coordinates =
, image_size ...
, commissioned by Sixtus IV, is traditional, as is the tradition that the two were responsible for the
Palazzo della Cancelleria.
Donato Bramante followed in both locations. In Santa Maria del Popolo, Bramante extended the apse,
[The high altar signed by Bregno, commissioned by Rodrigo Borgia (later Pope Alexander VI) in 1473, was removed to the sacristy.] but the facade is of the earlier campaign, picked out in architectural guides as one of the finest pieces of Early Renaissance architecture in Rome. Most of the hexagonal side chapels with sexpartite
ribbed vaults and balustrades preserved their original layout.
His late masterwork is the elaborate white marble
reredos of the Piccolomini altar in the
Duomo of Siena
Siena Cathedral ( it, Duomo di Siena) is a medieval church in Siena, Italy, dedicated from its earliest days as a Roman Catholic Marian church, and now dedicated to the Assumption of Mary.
It was the episcopal seat of the Diocese of Siena, and ...
, completed in 1503. It takes the form of an architectural facade round a large central
exedra with a half-domed head, and figures in niches. In 1481, Andrea Bregno had started the altar for the tomb of Cardinal Francesco Todeschini-Piccolomini, who was to succeed Pope Alexander VI briefly as
Pius III
Pius ( , ) Latin for "pious", is a masculine given name. Its feminine form is Pia.
It may refer to:
People Popes
* Pope Pius (disambiguation)
* Antipope Pius XIII (1918-2009), who led the breakaway True Catholic Church sect
Given name
* Pius ...
in 1503.
Bregno died in Rome in 1506. His tomb, dated 1506, in
Santa Maria sopra Minerva, bears his portrait bust, probably a work of
Luigi Capponi.
A symposium held at Urbino, 24–25 June 2006, resulted in the publication ''Andrea Bregno Giovanni Santi e la cultura adriatica del Rinascimento : Atti del Convegno di Studi'', Giuliana Gardelli, ed., (Rome, 2007).
Tombs (almost all in Rome)
*Niche tomb of Cardinal
Louis d'Albret
Louis d'Albret (1422–1465) was a French Cardinal. He was a son of Charles II of Albret, Count of Dreux.
He was bishop of Aire in 1445, bishop of Cahors in 1460. He was created Cardinal in 1461. In 1465 he was Bishop of Tarbes and Camerlengo ...
(died 1465),
Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Rome. Traces of gilding and color remain on the marble.
*Tomb of the polymath Cardinal
Nicholas of Cusa
Nicholas of Cusa (1401 – 11 August 1464), also referred to as Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus (), was a German Catholic cardinal, philosopher, theologian, jurist, mathematician, and astronomer. One of the first German proponents of Re ...
(died 1464),
San Pietro in Vincoli
San Pietro in Vincoli (; Saint Peter in Chains) is a Roman Catholic titular church and minor basilica in Rome, Italy, best known for being the home of Michelangelo's statue of Moses, part of the tomb of Pope Julius II.
The '' Titulus S. Petr ...
; with a polychrome relief of Saint Peter flanked by the kneeling cardinal and the Angel of Resurrection. (''illustration, upper right'')
*Tomb of
Cardinal Tebaldi (died 1466),
Santa Maria sopra Minerva, executed with Giovanni Dalmata.
*Tomb of Cardinal
Alain de Coëtivy (died 1474), in
Santa Prassede
*Tomb of Cardinal
Pietro Riario
Pietro Riario (1445 – 3 January 1474) was an Italian cardinal and Papal diplomat.
Biography
Born in Savona, he was the son of Paolo Riario and Pope Sixtus IVs' sister, Bianca Della Rovere. Sixtus nominated him in 1471 bishop of Treviso and car ...
(died 1474, in the Church of
Santi XII Apostoli
Santi Dodici Apostoli (Church of the Twelve Holy Apostles; la, SS. Duodecim Apostolorum), commonly known simply as Santi Apostoli, is a 6th-century Roman Catholic parish and titular church and minor basilica in Rome, Italy, dedicated origina ...
.
*Tomb of Cardinal
Cristoforo della Rovere
Cristoforo della Rovere (13 June 1434 – 1 February 1478) (called the Cardinal of Tarentaise) was an Italian Roman Catholic bishop and cardinal.
Biography
A member of the House of della Rovere, Cristoforo della Rovere was born in Turin on 13 ...
(died 1477), a nephew of Sixtus IV, in the
Della Rovere Chapel,
Santa Maria del Popolo it, Basilica Parrocchiale Santa Maria del Popolo
, image = 20140803 Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo Rome 0191.jpg
, caption = The church from Piazza del Popolo
, coordinates =
, image_size ...
. A ''Madonna'' is by
Mino da Fiesole.
*Tomb of Raffael Della Rovere (died 1477), the brother of Sixtus IV, crypt of Santi XII Apostoli (unfinished)
*Tomb of Cardinal
Juan Díaz de Coca (died 1477),
Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome.
*Wall tomb of Fra
Lippo Lippi, Spoleto cathedral, c. 1492.
*Tomb of Cardinal
Jorge da Costa, in the
Costa Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, 1502
*Tomb of Cardinal
Antoniotto Pallavicini, in the
Montemirabile Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo (workshop)
Other works
*''Madonna'', marble bas-relief in the Ospedale di
San Giacomo in Augusta
San Giacomo in Augusta (also known as San Giacomo degli Incurabili) is a Baroque church in Rome, Italy. It was the church of the Hospital of San Giacomo degli Incurabili.
Location and name
Located on Via del Corso, roughly three blocks south of ...
, Rome.
*Altar (1469) in the Salviati Chapel,
San Gregorio Magno al Celio
San Gregorio Magno al Celio, also known as San Gregorio al Celio or simply San Gregorio, is a church in Rome, Italy, which is part of a monastery of monks of the Camaldolese branch of the Benedictine Order. On 10 March 2012, the 1,000th annive ...
. With a relief of ''The Apparition of St Michael to St Gregory''.
*Tabernacle, Sanctuary of
Santa Maria della Quercia,
Viterbo
Viterbo (; Viterbese: ; lat-med, Viterbium) is a city and ''comune'' in the Lazio region of central Italy, the capital of the province of Viterbo.
It conquered and absorbed the neighboring town of Ferento (see Ferentium) in its early histor ...
*Two
ciboria, in the
Montemirabile Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo.
Notes
References
*Touring Club Italiano, ''Roma e Dintorni'' (1962).
External links
Web Gallery of Art:Andrea Bregno
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bregno, Andrea
1418 births
1506 deaths
15th-century Italian sculptors
Italian male sculptors
16th-century Italian sculptors
15th-century Italian architects
16th-century Italian architects
Catholic sculptors
Italian Renaissance sculptors