Francesco
di Giorgio
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Francesco di Giorgio Martini (baptised September 23, 1439 – 1502)
was an Italian painter of the Sienese School, a sculptor, an
architect and theorist, and a military engineer who built almost
seventy fortifications for the Duke of Urbino.
Born in Siena, he
apprenticed as a painter with Vecchietta. In panels painted for
cassoni he departed from the traditional representations of joyful
wedding processions in frieze-like formulas to express visions of
ideal, symmetrical, vast and all but empty urban spaces rendered in
perspective. Francesco di Giorgio is also known for architectural
designs and sculptural work for Federico III da Montefeltro, Duke of
Urbino, for whom he built star-shaped fortifications.
He composed an
architectural treatise Trattato di architettura, ingegneria e arte
militare that he worked on for decades and finished sometime after
1482; it circulated in manuscript. Its projects were well in advance
of completed projects at the time. The third book is preoccupied
with the "ideal" city, constrained within star-shaped polygonal
geometries reminiscent of the star fort, whose wedge-shaped bastions
are said to have been his innovation.
Francesco di
Giorgio finished his career as architect in charge of the works at
the Duomo di Siena, where his bronze angels are on the high altar.
