MICHELOZZO DI BARTOLOMMEO (1391-1472?)  ,

Italian sculptor, was a Florentine by birth, the son of a tailor, and in early life a pupil of Donatello . He worked in marble, bronze and silver . The statue of the young St John over the door of the Duomo at Florence, opposite the Baptistery, is by him; and he also made the beautiful silver statuette of the Baptist on the altar-frontal of San Giovanni . Michelozzo's great friend and patron was Cosimo dei Medici, whom he accompanied to Venice in 1433 during his short exile . While at Venice, Michelozzo built the library of San Giorgio Maggiore, and designed other buildings there . In 1428, together with Donatello, he erected an open-air pulpit at an angle of the cathedral of St Stephen at Prato . The magnificent Palazzo dei Medici at Florence built by Cosimo, was designed by him; it is one of the noblest specimens of Italian 15th-century architecture, in which the great taste and skill of the architect has combined the delicate lightness of the earlier Italian Gothic with the massive stateliness of the classical style . With great engineering skill Michelozzo shored up, and partly rebuilt, the Palazzo Vecchio, then in a ruinous condition, and added to it many important rooms and staircases . When, in 1437, through Cosimo's liberality, the monastery of San Marco at Florence was handed over to the Dominicans of Fiesole, Michelozzo was employed to rebuild the domestic part and remodel thechurch . For Cosimo I. he designed numerous other buildings, mostly of great beauty and importance . Among these were a guest-house at Jerusalem for the use of Florentine pilgrims, Cosimo's summer villa at Careggi, and the strongly fortified palace of Cafagiuolo in Mugello . For Giovanni dei Medici, Cosimo's son, he built a very large and magnificent palace at Fiesole .

In spite of

Vasari's statement that he died at the age of sixty-eight, he appears to have lived till 1472 . He is buried in the monastery of San Marco, Florence . Though skilled both as a sculptor and engineer, his fame chiefly rests on his architectural works, which claim for him a position of very high honour even among the greatest names of the great 15th-century Florentines . See Hans Stegmann, Michelozzo di Bartolommeo, eine kunstgeschichtliche Studie (1888) ; Fritz Wolff, Michelozzo di Bartolommeo (t9oo) ; cf. also Hans Semper, Donatello (1887) .