Giuliano da Maiano

Giuliano da Maiano (1432–1490) was an Italian architect, intarsia-worker and sculptor, the elder brother of Benedetto da Maiano, with whom he often collaborated.

He was born in the village of Maiano, near Fiesole, where his father was a stone-cutter who moved his family and business to Florence, where, according to Vasari, he operated a stonemason's yard, providing mouldings and carved stone detail for construction. Giuliano showed early promise, and his father hoped at first to make of him a notary, but his talent for sculpture and design won out. His first designs were for the intarsia inlay in the fittings for the New Sacristy of the Duomo, Florence, carried out in collaboration with Benedetto in 1463-1465, where Giuliano carved the wooden bas-reliefs of putti and garlands in the frieze, and for works in Palazzo Vecchio in collaboration with Benedetto, notably the ceiling in octagonal compartments and the white marble doorcase in Benedetto's Sala d'Audienza intarsia in the Sala dei Dugento (1472–1477) and in the Sala del Giglio. In 1480 he finished a tabernacle of the Madonna dell'Olivo for the Cathedral of Prato, executed in collaboration with his brothers Benedetto and Giovanni.

As an architect he was virtually the house architect for the Pazzi, rebuilding Palazzo Pazzi (1462–1472), the main seat of the family, for Jacopo de' Pazzi. For the Strozzi, at the Palazzo dello Strozzino he added a piano nobile (c. 1456) in the manner of Palazzo Medici-Riccardi to a ground floor that had been begun by Michelozzo; he is also often credited with Palazzo Antinori (1465–1469). In Siena, he built Palazzo Spannocchieschi (c. 1475), in the Florentine manner of delicately rusticated facade and twinned arch-headed windows within a blind arch that had been established in Florence by Alberti's Palazzo Rucellai and Michelozzo's Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. Between the two cities, at San Gimignano, Giuliano is credited with enlarging the Romanesque church of Santa Maria and building the chapel of Santa Fina, in collaboration with Benedetto; at Arezzo, where Benedetto built the Portico of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Giuliano built the cloister of the Badia.

...
Wikipedia