SANTACROCE, Girolamo
Italian sculptor and medalist. In 1517 he was employed on the monument of Giovanni Antonio Caracciolo in the church of the Annunziata, Naples, and he worked in 1517-18 in the Caracciolo di Vico Chapel in San Giovanni a Carbonara as an assistant of Ordoñez. The sources of his style are, however, the work of Giovan Tommaso Malvito (active 1506-1524) and the Neapolitan sculptures of Benedetto da Maiano.
In 1520, he went with his associate Gian Giacomo da Brescia, to Carrara, where he was engaged, in conjunction with Raffaello da Montelupo, in carving two statues of Doctors of the Church for the Ximenes de Cisneros monument at Alcalá de Henares in Spain.
Returning to Naples in 1522, he assumed responsibility on 7 February 1525, with Gian Giacomo da Brescia and Antonio Caccavello, for an altar in San Domenico, and in 1526 designed an altar of the Sacrament for the Annunziata. His principal work of this time, the Del Pezzo Altar in Sant’Anna dei Lombardi, is inscribed with the date 1524, and was presumably begun in this year. The Sinialco Altar in Santa Maria delle Grazie a Caponapoli, with a relief of the Incredulity of St Thomas, was certainly executed after 1528, and perhaps in 1536.
A relief of St Jerome from a disassembled altar is in Sant’Agnello a Caponapoli. The latest of Santacroce’s surviving works is the monument of Carlo Gesualdo in the Museo di San Martino, Naples.
