Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation

(Bozica Vekic) #1

enced by the Roman masters and by antiquity, before re-
turning to settle in Florence. VASARIsays that he painted in
the Belvedere of the Vatican and on the catafalque of
MICHELANGELObut his best-known works are to be seen in
the churches of Florence, such as his Madonna in San Sal-
vatore and Burial of Christ in San Giuseppe. Many of his
paintings are notable for their use of architectural per-
spectives. He was also a portrait painter and there are ex-
amples in the Uffizi, Florence.


Santillana, Íñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de
(1398–1458) Spanish, poet, critic, and patron
The son of the admiral of Castile and nephew of LÓPEZ DE
AYALA, Santillana was born at Carrión de los Condes, near
Burgos. The most powerful man in Castile after his defeat
of the Infantes Juan of Navarre and Enrique of Aragon at


the battle of Olmedo (1445), he also led the successful op-
position to the constable Álvaro de LUNA, the favorite of
King John II. Though he could not read Latin or Greek, he
collected classical manuscripts and formed a great library
at his palace at Guadalajara, open to all who wished to use
it. He commissioned translations of the Iliad, Aeneid,
Seneca’s tragedies, and the Divine Comedy, and had PE-
TRARCH’s Canzoniere copied in the original Italian, which
he read fluently.
Santillana’s Prohemio, introducing a selection of his
own poems sent to Don Pedro, the constable of Portugal,
is the first work of literary criticism in Spanish (Prohemio
é carta... envió al condestable de Portugal; 1449). In it he
calls for a patron of Iberian poets and discusses the im-
portance of studying Italian and French models, while
ranking poetry in Latin and Greek highest (cultivated ver-

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Jacopo SansovinoThe library of San Marco (Bibliotheca Marciana) is housed in the Libreria Sansoviniana on the Piazzetta,
Venice. Begun by Sansovino in 1536, it was eventually completed by Vincenzo Scamozzi in the 1580s.
Anthony Kersting, London

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