Sansovino's sculptures

On 7 April 1529 Jacopo Sansovino was appointed proto of San Marco, the architect in charge of the works of the basilica.
In addition to the architectural consolidation and transformation of Piazza San Marco, Sansovino also oversaw the embellishment of the basilica.
Among the most significant interventions, the transformation of the choir from medieval to Renaissance.

According to scholars, Sansovino’s masterpiece is the bronze door of the Sacristy. The two main panels depict scenes of the Burial and the Resurrection, framed by three Prophets and the four Evangelists.

On 7 April 1529, the Procurators of San Marco appointed Jacopo Sansovino as their foreman, architect and director of the works, to supervise the basilica and all the buildings in and outside Venice.
In addition to overseeing various architectural and consolidation projects, Sansovino, as proto, was also responsible for embellishing the Basilica of St. Mark, which he did by transforming the choir. Currently, only the choir stalls, the sacristy door, and the small door to the altar of the Blessed Sacrament remain in their original positions in the presbytery, due to the radical modifications that occurred when the ducal chapel became a patriarchal basilica in 1807, and other interventions in the 1950s.

The presbytery of San Marco, designed by Sansovino, is divided into two areas: the main choir, where the Doge, the Signoria, and their entourage attend services, and the smaller choir, raised above the main choir by two steps, which serves as the actual presbytery and choir for the clergy. Under his direction, the new choir stalls with inlaid reredos were created, set against the walls of the main choir. From the 1550s onward, precious Medici tapestries depicting the Stories of Saint Mark were hung on these choir stalls during solemn services.
Sansovino created the bronze reliefs he signed for the two singers’ galleries to the right and left of the ducal area. Abolishing perspective depth, he immerses each story in an atmosphere full of classical references and arranges the figures, modelled with strong plasticity, in a tight dramatic and spectacular narrative that will influence Tintoretto’s subsequent works. With Sansovino’s reliefs, the miraculous powers of Saint Mark are once again exalted. The reliefs of the right-hand “pergola” (1537) depict episodes from the life of the Evangelist: Saint Mark baptising the infidels , the martyrdom of the saint in Alexandria , Saint Mark resurrecting a dead man, exorcising a possessed man, healing the crippled , and the fourth relief depicts Saint Mark and his lion .

A few years later (1541-1546) are the reliefs for the left “pergola”, depicting The Miracle of the Slave in Provence , The Miracle of the Rain in Puglia , The Miracle of the Soldier in Lombardy and Saint Mark in the Act of Reading .

But the master’s masterpiece, according to all scholars, is the bronze door of the sacristy, for which Sansovino had been modelling in wax since 1546.
The bronze door, which follows the curved shape of the apse wall, is framed by a marble frame. The two main panels depict scenes of the Entombment (lower panel) and the Resurrection (upper panel), framed horizontally by three semi-reclining Prophets and vertically by the four Evangelists . At the corners of the two larger panels, six heads emerge from smaller panels. Only three portraits have been identified, thanks to Francesco Sansovino: that of his father, Jacopo, Titian, and Pietro Aretino. The other three heads are subject to various conjectures: Palladio, Tintoretto, Veronese, and the two Palmas.

The tabernacle door with Christ in glory completes the altar in the apse, behind the High Altar. The fact that the door is a workshop piece doesn’t mean the Master wasn’t interested in it, but he likely supervised this copy of San Marco.

Sansovino’s sculptures for the presbytery are all made of bronze; they are individual works, but they cannot be considered independent or isolated, since they are interconnected thanks to Sansovino’s skillful direction, establishing a sense of unity in the choir.
From the documents we possess, we can gain a fairly precise idea of the stages in the creation of Sansovino’s bronzes. The master created a terracotta model, likely presented to the Procurators for approval before casting in bronze, while the rest of the process was entrusted to his workshop, under the supervision of a master craftsman.
The involvement of numerous collaborators in the casting process has been interpreted by some scholars as a sign of Sansovino’s distance from the project. Sansovino’s collaborators undoubtedly prepared the wax models, which were then entrusted to specialized casters, but this is due to the bronze casting process itself, which is long, complex, and extremely delicate. In Padua, Donatello himself, a century earlier, employed professional casters. As for the wax model for casting, its preparation can easily be entrusted to collaborators, as the wax must be finely modeled, in every detail, to assume the sculptor’s desired form. Furthermore, the formal perfection of a bronze sculpture is the result of long and patient reworking that corrects casting imperfections. It’s clear that for Sansovino, a highly sought-after and overworked sculptor and architect, the use of bronze was an optimal solution, as it allowed him to model sketches while leaving the lengthy casting process to others.
The bronzes of San Marco reveal Sansovino’s originality and creativity, which led him to experiment with Mannerism, also stimulated by contact with the Tuscans Giuseppe Salviati, who arrived in Venice in 1539, and Giorgio Vasari, who remained in the lagoon city for a few months between 1541 and 1542.

In updating the ceremonial space of the presbytery, using a more modern language, Sansovino celebrates the myth of Venice with a propaganda-inspired decorative program inside the basilica, in which the themes of religion and politics are intertwined, since the cult of St. Mark, since its very beginning, has had not only a religious but also, and above all, a political significance.