Tiziano Aspetti

Tiziano Aspetti (1559–1606)^[1] was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance. He was born in Padua and active mainly there and in Venice. He completed both large and small sculpture in bronze. Among his large works are bronze statues in the façade of San Francesco della Vigna and of Saint Anthony and many other sculptural decorations for the Basilica of Sant'Antonio of Padua.

When Aspetti began his public career in the 1590s, Alessandro Vittoria had practically stopped sculpting and Girolamo Campagna had a monopoly on the main sculptural commissions. Although Aspetti beat Campagna to the commission for the Sant'Antonio altar, he was not so successful in Venice, producing nothing quite as powerful as Campagna's high altar for San Giorgio Maggiore (1590–1593) and the altar at San Salvatore (c. 1590).

However, he had no rivals in Florence for producing reliefs, other than perhaps Giovanni Battista Caccini and his contemporary Giambologna, which may have been Aspetti's reason for moving there in 1604, completing a bronze relief of the Death of St. Lawrence now in the Florentine church of Santa Trinita in Florence. He flourished in Tuscany and died in Pisa, though it is impossible to fully analyse him as an artist until more is discovered about the now-lost works he produced there, especially eight mythological works.