PIANTA, Francesco
Italian sculptor, lived and worked in Venice, who signed himself “Franciscus Pianta iunior venetus” (Francesco Pianta the Younger of Venice) on the base of his portrait of Tintoretto. The group of altar frontals which decorate three walls of the Sala Grande Superiore (Upper Hall) of the Scuola di San Rocco is linked to his name.
He came from a family of stonecarvers, but the list of books left to his heirs documents a level of culture unusual for a stonecarver. They focus on the classics and include Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, a knowledge that seems implicit in the group of carved altar frontals, the conception of which and the execution, at least in part, is ascribable to him. The symbology of Ripa’s text offered Pianta a precise point of reference and an inspirational point of departure for those figures in which conceits alternate with acute realism (Cicero), or which border on caricature (portrait of Tintoretto, Scandal and Scruple), or blend with the grotesque (Abundance).
Pianta’s work, unique on account of its themes and high quality, takes its place in the history of Venetian wood sculpture in which foreign artists are often prominent.
