SORMANI, Leonardo - b. ~1530 Savona, d. ~1589 Roma - WGA

SORMANI, Leonardo

(b. ~1530 Savona, d. ~1589 Roma)

Italian sculptor and restorer. While earlier sources incorrectly state that he was from Sarzana, more recent documentation accurately cites his birthplace as Savona. The biographical information pertaining to Sormani remains incomplete, but it is suggested that he worked as an apprentice in his father’s workshop in Carrara after spending his early childhood in Savona. Sormani worked in Rome from 1551 until his death, remaining there except for a brief return visit to Carrara in 1561-62, possibly concerning the death of his father.

In addition to minor restoration and sculptural work in Rome during the earlier years of his career, Sormani is credited with an extensive amount of sculpture in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome. In 1574 Cardinal Felice Peretti (later Pope Sixtus V) commissioned a tomb for Pope Nicholas IV in Santa Maria Maggiore from his architect Domenico Fontana. Fontana designed the structure of the tomb itself, and Sormani completed the marble sculptures that stand within its three rectangular niches. Sormani executed for the central, more prominent niche a seated statue of Pope Nicholas IV, wearing the traditional papal tiara and cope and gesturing with his right hand. The sculpture of the Pope is flanked by the allegorical figures of Religion on the left and Justice on the right. The tomb was originally placed on the left side of the high altar but was moved to the left of the main entrance in 1746, when Pope Benedict XIV refurbished the basilica, under the direction of Ferdinando Fuga, for the Holy Year of 1750.

Statue of Pope Pius V

The seated figure of Pope Pius V is in the centre of his tomb in the Cappella Sistina in Santa Maria Maggiore. The large chapel was constructed for Pope Sixtus V with monuments to himself and his early patron, Pope Pius V.

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Statue of St Peter on the Column of Trajan

As part of the extensive rebuilding of Rome, Pope Sixtus V capped the Trajan’s Column with a large bronze statue of St Peter in 1587. The artist for the statue, Leonardo Sormani, was part of a stable of artists and architects whom Sixtus used for his numerous projects. Essentially as house artists, they worked well together and understood their patron’s wishes. Although working on different projects, they belonged essentially to a large workshop directed by Sixtus’s master architect, Domenico Fontana, and controlled by the pope.

Sormani’s muscular St Peter has an active striding pose, the figure turning on axis as he extends his keys into space. The exaggerated facial features, perhaps necessitated by the great height of the figure from the ground, recall those of earlier papal images.

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Tomb of Nicholas IV

In 1573 Cardinal Felice Peretti (later Pope Sixtus V), a Franciscan, ordered Domenico Fontana to design a new tomb for the remains of Nicholas IV, the first Franciscan pope in the thirteenth century, and commissioned Leonardo Sormani to provide the sculpture of the seated pope and allegorical figures of Religion and Justice.

Fontana designed the structure of the tomb itself, and Sormani completed the marble sculptures that stand within its three rectangular niches. Sormani executed for the central, more prominent niche a seated statue of Pope Nicholas IV, wearing the traditional papal tiara and cope and gesturing with his right hand. The sculpture of the Pope is flanked by the allegorical figures of Religion on the left and Justice on the right. The tomb was originally placed on the left side of the high altar but was moved to the left of the main entrance in 1746, when Pope Benedict XIV refurbished the basilica, under the direction of Ferdinando Fuga, for the Holy Year of 1750.

The effect of the tomb is of a decorously correct, if chilly, classicism - a foretaste of Sormani’s imperial stylistic associations in Sixtus’s later projects.

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