Bartolomeo di Giovanni d'Astore dei Sinibaldi, known as Baccio da
Montelupo, was born in Montelupo Fiorentino in 1469 to a family of
humble social extraction. From his early youth he certainly had the chance to frequent some of
the ceramic workshops that were active in his home town, and then, when
he was about twenty, he was accepted at the prestigious and exclusive
art school created by Lorenzo dei Medici and directed by Bertoldo di
Giovanni in the gardens of St. Marks in Florence. Michelangelo
Buonarroti was studying at the same academy in the same period and he
and Baccio soon became great friends. One of his most interesting early
works is his fragmentary Lamentation over the Dead Christ in San
Domenico at Bologna (1494), the city where he found refuge after the
arrival of Charles VIII in Florence. He was already back in Florence
again in 1495 and, until 1496, worked on some of the crucifixes that
were to bring him great fame during his artistic career. The first of
these was probably the one in the Basilica of San Lorenzo, followed by
the crucifixes in St. Marks, in the Badia (Abbey) of Arezzo and in the
Church of San Martino a Galgalandi near Lastra a Signa.
A staunch
follower of Savonarola, he was once more forced to flee the city after
the death of the monk and again chose Bologna. The 12 busts of Apostles
in terracotta now in the Cathedral of Ferrara date from this second
Bolognese period. By now Baccio was an affirmed artist and in 1506 the Order of the
Servites commissioned him to carry out a large group of sculptures in
wood for the Benedictine Abbey of San Godenzo. Of these, only a St.
Sebastian remains today, a work that is particularly significant
because it marks the artist's progress from the sculptural techniques
of the 15th century, still linked to the style of Donatello, and the
more "expressionist" trends of the school of Michelangelo.
Proof that
he was now fully accepted in Florentine artistic spheres was the
commission for a St. John the Evangelist in bronze that he was asked to
carry out in 1514 by the Silk Guild for one of the niches on the Church
of Orsanmichele. Its powerfully expressive face and gestures made it
the masterpiece of his maturity. In 1515 he carried out the marble
aedicola around the fresco of the miraculous image of the Virgin Mary
in the Church of Sant'Agostino at Colle Val d'Elsa.
By the end of the 1520's the artist had already managed to best express
his talents as a sculptor: he had tackled all kinds of materials, from
wood, terracotta, marble to bronze, and his crucifixes, in particular,
were to make his name known and appreciated both in Florence and
elsewhere. He worked above all in Lucca and the surrounding countryside
in the later stages of his career, and this was when he carried out the
Pietà in marble dated 1518 for the Parish Church of Segromigno (Lucca),
the work that was to open a new phase in his art. His last sculptures
include a series of funeral monuments, like that for Silvestro Gigli,
the Bishop of Lucca, carried out with his son Raffaello for the Church
of San Michele al Foro, though unfortunately only his rendering of the
Virgin Mary and Child still survives today; and the monuments in honour
of St. Silao (Museum of Villa Guinigi in Lucca) and for Giano Grillo in
the Church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Lucca. We do not know where or
how Baccio spent the last years of his life, as they are still deeply
wrapped in mystery, but he presumably died in 1523.
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