Desiderio da Settignano

Desiderio da Settignano, real name Desiderio de Bartolomeo di Francesco detto Ferro (c. 1428 or 1430 – 1464) was an Italian sculptor active during the Renaissance.

He came from a family of stone carvers and stonemasons in Settignano, near Florence. Although his work shows the influence of Donatello, specifically in his use of low reliefs, it is most likely that he received his training in the large Florentine workshop run by Bernardo and Antonio Rossellino. Desiderio matriculated into the Arte dei Maestri di Pietra e Legname, Florence's guild of Stone and Woodworkers, in 1453 and shortly thereafter already was supplying cherub head medallions for the frieze running across the front of the Pazzi Chapel in the second cloisteryard of the Basilica of Santa Croce.

It is rather surprising that he would have received such an important commission as the Tomb of Carlo Marsuppini so early in his career. Apparently, his design capabilities and sensitivity to the tactile qualities of marble had already been recognized. In composing this wall tomb for the Basilica of Santa Croce, Desiderio relied upon the precedent set only a few years earlier in Bernardo Rossellino's Tomb of Leonardo Bruni. This seems quite appropriate since Marsuppini had succeeded Bruni in the position of Florentine State Chancellor and had been mentored by him just as Deiderio had received his training from Bernardo Rossellini. In fact, in his design for the tomb, Desiderio was paying homage to Bernardo's example in much the same fashion as Marsuppini did when he had composed the epitaph for the Bruni Tomb. Desiderio took over the essential compositional scheme of an elevated triumphal arch containing a sarcophagus and effigy bier from the Bruni monument but transformed the sobriety of the earlier memorial into a work of heightened decorative fancy. In the Marsuppini tomb, Desiderio placed standing children holding heraldic shields on either side of the sarcophagus, draped long festoons from an ornate candelabra which surmounts lunette sarch, and positioned running youths above the pilasters which frame the funeral niche. In the niche itself he ignored the symbolism of the Trinity by using four instead of three panels as the backdrop for the sarcophagus. To increase the visibility of the deceased scholar and statesman, he tilted Marsuppini's effigy forward toward the viewer and carved elaborate floral decorations on the rounded corners of the lion-footed sarcophagus. The motifs used are all classicizing in inspiration and the total effect is light and charming, even joyous, if somewhat unfocused.

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