Giuliano da Sangallo and 85

Chapter 6 Giuliano da Sangallo and Leonardo da Vinci: Cross- Pollination or Parallels?

Sabine Frommel École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, Paris

Giuliano da Sangallo and Leonardo da Vinci—who were born around the same time, 1448 and 1452, respectively—worked as apprentices at the well-known workshops of Francione and Andrea Verrocchio in Florence. Both emerged from the shadow of their master at the beginning of the seventh decade of the fifteenth century. By 1472, Leonardo had become an esteemed painter and a member of the Compagnia di San Luca dei Pittori—The Guild of St. Luke— and, not long thereafter, he created the first masterpieces officially ascribed to him. Sangallo, on the other hand, had, between 1473 and 1480, started building his own reputation as an architect and an antiquity expert while working at Palazzo Scala and Palazzo Cocchi.1 Leonardo’s passion for architecture, which was to last throughout his career, may be traced back to the years between 1472 and 1478, as evidenced by paintings such as his Madonna of the Carnation and The Annunciation. In the second half of the 1470s, thanks to his close collabora- tion with Lorenzo de’ Medici, Leonardo may have been in touch with Giuliano da Sangallo, who was also part of the Magnifico’s entourage.2 Yet, there are no works in Leonardo’s œuvre that might testify to an actual cooperation between him and his patron comparable to that between Giuliano da Sangallo and the Magnifico. From 1481 to 1482, for the main altar of San Do- nato a Scopeto, Leonardo worked on The Adoration of the Magi, which was then left unfinished when he moved to the Sforza court. Both artists studied ’s extremely innovative works: his drawings for the lantern of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore and the so-called Rotonda degli Scolari (Scholars’ Rotunda) in Santa Maria degli Angeli, San Lorenzo, and Santo Spiri- to—all of which were to become fundamental references for their later crea- tions. Through Vasari’s words we learn that in October 1492 Leonardo was

1 See Sabine Frommel, Giuliano da Sangallo (Florence: Edifir, 2014). 2 On the relationship between Lorenzo de’ Medici and Leonardo cfr. Gabriele Morolli, “Lorenzo, Leonardo e Giuliano: da San Lorenzo al duomo a Poggio a Caiano; paralipomeni architettonici minimi in vista del semimillenario della morte del Magnifico,” Atti della Società Leonardo da Vinci 3 (1990): 5–14 (with bibliography).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004304130_008 86 Frommel present in Vigevano when Sangallo presented his wooden model for the Villa Medici in Poggio a Caiano to Ludovico il Moro:

Per che presentando egli il modello per parte del magnifico Lorenzo, riempié quel Duca di stupore e di meraviglia nel vedere il esso l’ordine e la distribuzione di tanti begli ornamenti, e con arte tutti e con leggiadria accomodati ne’ luogo loro […] Fu trovato da Giuliano Lionardo da Vinci che lavorava col Duca.3 (For when, on behalf of Lorenzo the Magnificent, he [Giuliano] presented the model to the Duke, he was struck by such a marvellous display of such coherence and such beautiful ornaments gracefully distributed with art […] Giuliano then also met Lionardo da Vinci who was working with the Duke).

Once Leonardo was back in Florence in 1500, after the Sforza had been defeat- ed by the French, he crossed paths again with Giuliano, who was also in his hometown. The two artists were charged to express their expert opinions on the church of San Salvatore, whose foundations had become unstable.4 If Leonardo were in Rome in 1505, he might have met Sangallo there too, since the latter was working in the capital as an architect in service of Pope Julius II.5 When Leo X was elected to the papacy, both artists were living in the Eternal City, which Sangallo left only in 1515 to move back definitively to Florence, where he died in 1516. In the same year, Leonardo accepted an invitation from Francis I to join his court in France. Giuliano’s last drawings represented the façade of San Lorenzo, paralleling Leonardo’s own project recently taken up concerning the same church: the enlargement of its square which, having the shape of an elongated trapezoid extending between the church and what is now known as via Ricasoli, would have included the reconstruction of San Giovannino and a new palace for the Medici family where the Palazzo Pancia­ tichi stands today.6 The interest in architecture shared by the Florentine artists, however, evolved in two very different ways. Giuliano, after leaving Francione’s

3 , Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori: nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, vol. 4 (Florence: Sansoni, 1976), 138–139. Vasari got the attribution wrong, because Lorenzo il Magnifico died in April 1492. 4 Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo architetto (Milan: Electa, 1995), 137. 5 About Leonardo’s journey to Rome, see Carlo Pedretti, “Le ‘magne opere romane,’” in Leonardo e il leonardismo a Napoli e a Roma, exh. cat. (Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte; Roma, Palazzo Venezia, 1983–1984), ed. Alessandro Vezzosi (Florence: Giunti, 1983), 191–198. 6 Georg Satzinger, und die Fassade von San Lorenzo in Florenz: Zur Geschichte der Skulpturenfassade der Renaissance (Munich: Hirmer, 2011), 16.