Leonardo Sormani (active ca 1550- ca 1590) was an Italian sculptor active in Rome during the Renaissance. Details of his life are not well known, and authors seemingly refer to him by different names: Giorgio Vasari spoke of a Lionardo Milanese; Giovanni Baglione wrote biographical details of a Lionardo da Serzana or Sarzana;[1] while by the 1670s Giovanni Vincenzo Verzellino and Raffaele Soprani tried to distinguish Vasari's Lionardo from a Leonardo Sormani, originally from Savona. These names, however, appear to refer to the same sculptor. Attributions however of individual works are difficult.[2]
Sarzana appears to have been a restorer as well as a sculptor. Works attributed to Sarzana include:
- Seated statue of Pope Pius V (died 1572) made for the Papal tomb at the Sistine Chapel at Santa Maria Maggiore,[3] commissioned by Cardinal Peretti, soon to be Sixtus V[4]
- Bust of Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi (died 1564) in the Church of Santa Trinità dei Monti, Rome
- Saints Peter and Paul for the chapel of Cardinal Giovanni Ricci of Montepulciano in San Pietro in Montorio.
- Contributions to statues in the tomb of Pope Nicholas IV in Santa Maria Maggiore
- Contributions to the statue of Moses for the Fountain of Acqua Felice in Rome
- Statue of enthroned Pope Paul III Farnese
- ^ Baglione, Giovanni (1733) [1641]. Le Vite de' Pittori, Scultori, Architetti, ed Intagliatori dal Pontificato di Gregorio XII del 1572. fino a' tempi de Papa Urbano VIII. nel 1642 [Lives of the painters, sculptors, architects, and engravers during the papacies of Gregory XII in 1572 to Urban VIII in 1642]. Naples: Giovanni Battista Passari. p. 85.
- ^ Treccani Encyclopedia, Entry on SORMANI, Leonardo, by Alessandro Grandolfo; Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 93 (2018).
- ^ Storia della scultura dal suo risorgimento in Italia, Volume 3, by Count Leopoldo Cicognara, Tipografia Picotti, Venice (1818) page 34.
- ^ Steven F. Ostrow, "The discourse of failure in seventeenth-century Rome: Prospero Bresciano's Moses," The Art Bulletin (June 2006).