Alessandro Vittoria

Training under Jacopo Sansovino is recorded. Johan Gregor van der Schardt is recorded as having studied under Alessandro Vittoria. The recorded working language is Italian. The field of work recorded is art of sculpture. Places of work recorded in the authority are Venice. Works named in the authority record are Santi Apostoli, Palazzo Balbi and Bust of Tommaso Rangone. Work by Alessandro Vittoria is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum and National Gallery of Canada.

Vittoria was born Alessandro Vittoria di Vigilio della Volpa, in Trento, Italy, in what is now northern Italy, and was the son of a tailor. Vittoria was trained in the atelier of the architect-sculptor Jacopo Sansovino; he was a contemporary of Titian whose influence can be detected in his compositions. He was a virtuoso in terracotta, often presented with gilded surfaces, marble and bronze. Like all Italian sculptors of his generation, Vittoria was influenced also by Michelangelo and by the Florentine Mannerist, Bartolomeo Ammannati. The closeness of his associations in projects by architects Sansovino, Sanmicheli and Palladio, working with painters Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese placed him squarely among the protagonists of the art world in late 16th-century Venice.

• Illustration — Bust of Marino Grimani, after 1599, terracotta with paint (Walters Art Museum) Vittoria was first trained in his native city, Trento, then moved to Venice on 25 July 1543, where he trained and worked with Jacopo Sansovino. His long artistic relationship with Sansovino was a stormy one. After one quarrel with Sansovino, he removed from Venice and worked in Vicenza, where he collaborated with Veronese on the decorations of the Villa Barbaro at Maser (1560–62) before returning. The two masters worked jointly on great sculptural commissions until Sansovino's death. Vittoria took up his studio and completed Sansovino's unfinished commissions. His pupils included Camillo Mariani and Andrea di Alessandro. Vittoria joined the Scuola Grande di San Marco on 24 January 1563 and the Accademia del Disegno, Florence, c. 1567. He died at Venice on 27 May 1608. His tomb, with his self-portrait bust, is in the church of San Zaccaria. Vittoria is known for his classicising portrait busts, a genre that scarcely existed in Venice before him, and for medals as well as for his full-length figures, some of which surmount Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana.

• Illustration — San Zaccaria, San Zaccaria, Venice • Illustration — Anthony the Great, San Francesco della Vigna, Venice • Illustration — Saint Roch, San Francesco della Vigna, Venice • Illustration — Saint Roch, San Salvador, Venice • Illustration — Saint Sebastian, San Francesco della Vigna, Venice • Illustration — Saint Sebastian, San Salvador, Venice • Illustration — John the Evangelist, San Zanipolo, Venice • Illustration — Virgin of pain, San Zanipolo, Venice • Illustration — Cast of Vittoria's bust of Apollonio Massa