Giovanni Battista del Tasso

Giovanni Battista del Tasso (* 1500 in Florence, † May 8, 1555 in Florence, often Giovan Battista, Giovambattista or Giambattista ) was an Italian sculptor, architect and sculptor of Mannerism.

Life and work

Giovanni Battista del Tasso comes from a traditional family of craftsmen who has been resident since the Quattrocento Florentine- quarters around the Church of Sant'Ambrogio. His training takes place initially in the renowned workshop of his father Marco del Tasso, later he holds jointly with his peer Benvenuto Cellini on to study in Rome.

An early major work of the young carver represent the ornate inlaid ceilings and the pews of Michelangelo's Laurentian Library in Florence, a work that Giovanni Battista began about 1526. In the following years also his contribution to the establishment of ephemeral hard sets and carvings on galleys for the Medici and Andrea Doria are detected in Genoa. From the mid 1540s he assumes the role of an official Hofkünstlers for Duke Cosimo I de ' Medici and performs multiple jobs, including increasingly architectural work, from, concerning, for example, fortifications and architectural decoration in smaller Tuscan cities as well as in Florence. From 1548 he has headed the remodeling and expansion of the Palazzo Vecchio ( in this role he will be replaced after his death by Giorgio Vasari ), and also in 1548 Giovanni Battista del Tasso begins with his now famous work, the free-standing and still used as a market hall Mercato nuovo, which is built halfway between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Ponte Vecchio.

After his death on May 8, 1555 Giovanni Battista is buried in the family chapel in Sant'Ambrogio. His son Domenico del Tasso continues the family tradition, but he does not gain his father comparable leading rank in the artistry of Florence.

Giovanni Battista del Tasso had contacts with academic circles, such as the correspondence with the scholars Niccolò Martelli occupied, but especially his participation in the survey of Benedetto Varchi to art-theoretical problem of the Paragons. However, since the most important chronicler of artistic discussions and art production this year, Giorgio Vasari, for personal and professional reasons in Tasso saw a competitor, he refused to give their own Vita in the written by him artist biographies and manifests itself in the few places where he to speak on Tasso comes exclusively negative. The damnatio memoriae Vasari lingered up to today, so far only a fraction of the biography and the putative oeuvre of the artist could be reconstructed from the research.