A certain Francesco Giamberti, a carpenter that worked in Florence in the fifteenth century, was surnamed as Francesco da Sangallo owing to the fact that he lived in Florence next to Porta Sangallo. The same denomination was given to his sons Giuliano and Antonio il Vecchio, to his nephew Antonio di Bartolomeo Cordini, born of Smeralda, Giuliano and Antonio il Vecchio's sister, and known as Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane , and to Francesco il Grosso known as il Margotta , Giuliano's son.

Antonio da Sangallo il Vecchio

Italian architect (Florence around 1455 - 1534 or 1535). Giuliano da Sangallo's brother and collaborator, he was mostly a military architect, but he also dedicated himself to civil and sacred constructions. At first he worked under his brother's guide, that he followed to Rome, and then on his own, giving a coarse and robust character to his fabrications. In the church of S. Biagio in Montepulciano he re-took the Greek cross plant scheme used by his brother in the church of the Madonna delle Carceri in Prato, he added to the prospect two campanili (one of which was not completed) and crowned the vault with a round cupola. A work of mature language, S. Biagio externally appears as a powerful block, plastically modeled, to which the employment of the Doric order façade adds a severe elegance, while the inside is built by a grandiose vane with mighty moldings. Analogous merits of robustness of the masses appear in the two palazzos Contucci and Nobili-Tarugi in Montepulciano, while a notable sense of balance and finesse in the details characterize Palazzo del Monte (Monte San Savino), quite close to Bramante's Roman palazzos. As a military architect he built defenses in Castel Sant'Angelo and numerous forts among which the one in Civita Castellana, erected for Cesare Borgia, is quite beautiful.

Antonio Cordini known as Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane Italian architect (Florence 1483 - Terni 1546). Giuliano and Antonio da Sangallo il Vecchio's niece on the side of his mother Smeralda, their sister, he took the mother's surname. He continued the activity of constructor, both military and civil, distinctive of his family, but in a level and with such an extent of interests and works that make of him an artist of main importance in the Renaissance . He was initiated in the art of carpentry and engraver, as well as in architecture, while staying with his uncles, in Rome, he collaborated with Bramante and Raffaello and formed himself on the study of the antiquities, revealing a great technical capacity in a style permeated of simplicity, balance and clarity, meant to value the structural elements in agreement with Bramante and Antonio da Sangallo il Vecchio, but also to conduct new light and shade researches.

These intentions are already visible in the church of di S. Maria di Loreto in Roma (1507), perhaps his first work, whose outer part is squared with simplicity to place in evidence the severe linearism of the shapes of Roman bath, while the octagonal inner part, animated by large niches, gives way to light and shade games that prelude to the Roman sixteenth century. The cupola, swollen and heavy, is not Antonio's, but of the latter G. Del Duca. In the meanwhile, under the protection and by assignment of cardinal Alessandro Farnese, Sangallo begun the works of restoration and rebuilding of Palazzo Farnese (iter 5), his most demanding and accomplished work. In the façade, the building looks as simple stone-work block, of robust yet harmonious proportions, in which all the void and full elements compose a serene balance, that is the synthesis of the Italian architectonic Renaissance. From a monumental lobby, ornamented with niches, and therefore rich with chiaroscuro effects, we accede to the grandiose court, imagined by Sangallo with a three-fold order of galleries, a theme reprised from the Roman amphitheaters. Michelangelo, Vignola and later G. Della Porta, who completed the building, partly modified the project, but it still constitutes the sixteenth century most beautiful Italian palazzo. As a civil constructor, Sangallo left numerous other palazzos in Rome, such as: Palazzo Baldassini (Via delle Coppelle, 35 - Iter 6 ), also called Banco di S. Spirito. Helped by a crowd of collaborators he also carried out a vast urbanistic work, continuing in Loreto the Basilica's Piazza, begun by Bramante, tracing the plan for the city of Castro, wanted by the Farnese and then destroyed, and giving a functional and ample arrangement to the tracing of a group of Rome's streets . He also worked in many Roman churches and built, besides S. Maria di Loreto, also S. Spirito in Sassia, in the façade of which he created a type that was later repeated and developed in Rome for many decades. One of his original and clever constructions is S. Patrizio's well in Orvieto, 62 meters deep, 13 meters long, this well is comprised out of a cylindrical chimney, around which, on the outside, two ample winding staircases unfold forming two superimposed and concentric spirals, each staircase has 248 steps and is illuminated by 72 large windows opened in the chimney and by these one can descend to the water's level. A great military architect, he dressed with art forms and equipped with clever devices the fortresses of Basso (Florence) and of Civitavecchia, he performed fortification works in many other cities of central Italy (Rocca Paolina, Perugia; Strongholds in Rome and Parma; Cittadella di Ancona; etc.). To all these activities Antonio added that of director of St. Peter's works, succeeding to Raffaello in the assignment ; one of his projects to re-elaborate Bramante's plan did not turn out to be a good plan due to the excessive fractioning of the masses and the cupola's sharp shape and it did not obtain Michelangelo's approval. In his vast and complex work Antonio results as the most important among the architects that worked in Rome after Bramante and before Michelangelo; he represents, exactly, the passage from Bramante's conceptions, still linear and fifteenth-century-like, to a more animated and restless interpretation of the masses and of space, that is at the same time a re-evocation of the ancient greatness.

Francesco da Sangallo known as Il Margotta – Italian architect and painter (Florence 1494 – 1576). Son of Giuliano da Sangallo and nephew of Antonio da Sangallo il Vecchio, he continued the family profession becoming an architect, but was even more famous as a sculptor. He had an unequal style, at times inspired by an still fifteenth-century-like bare and effective realism ( Giovanni dalle Bande Nere ; Florence) or to a powerful plasticism (face of bishop Angelo Marzi, in the monument to the same in SS. Annunziata in Florence), and other times inspired to a classicism that is plain and meticulous almost to pedantry. For the Orsanmichele in Florence he performed the gorgeous group of the Madonna col Figlio e S. Anna ; in the marble dressing of the S. Casa di Loreto the relief with the Presentazione al tempio was done by him . Foreman of Florence's Dome, little is known about his activity as an architect.

Giuliano da Sangallo – Italian architect and sculptor (Florence around 1445 - 1516). Son of Francesco Giamberti, a carpenter and wood-carver, he received from his father and from Francione, a skilled builder of fortresses, his formation as craftsman artist and as practical and shrewd architect. A further development of his personality came from the Florentine environment and then from Rome's, where he was able to study and reproduce in numerous drawings the ancient monuments. Returning to Florence (1471), he built for Lorenzo dei Medici the beautiful villa in Poggio a Caiano, ended in 1485, in which there's an echo of classical motifs united with the quest to solve with a taste for the picturesque the mass problems to insert the construction in the gorgeous landscape that surrounds it. Also around 1485 he raise in Prato the church of S. Maria delle Carceri, a masterpiece full of simplicity and balance in the proportions introducing the Greek cross plant and marrying his love for the ancient and for the linear Brunelleschi's subtleness. Analogous characters are found in the Sacresty of S. Spirito in Florence, while the cupola of Loreto‘s Basilica, the wooden model for Palazzo Strozzi (Florence) and the lovely Palazzo Gondi in Florence, present elements more strictly tied to the fifteenth century tradition. Protected by the Medici and by cardinal Della Rovere, the future pope Giulio II, after 1490 Giuliano worked in many parts of Italy, and also in France carrying out projects of palaces, and constructions works, like the re-making of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome, and military works in Rome (Castel Sant'Angelo) and elsewhere, introducing interesting innovations to the technique of defense works. He also worked in the projects for St. Peter, maybe in collaboration with Bramante, and of course after his death with fra' Giocondo and Raffaello, contributing with fervor of ideas to the great enterprise. Quite uninteresting is his activity as a sculptor, while of great importance are his drawings for S. Lorenzo's façade in Florence, because the early Michelangelo the architect felt their influence and because from their study derive certain architectonic developments of the late sixteenth century. Giuliano da Sangallo is therefore one of the greatest artists of our Renaissance , since, although remaining tied to the fifteenth century he opens the way to those shapes that affirmed themselves in Rome in the early sixteenth century and to others that are even latter.