(c) 2018 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Jacopo da Trezzo I

Milan, 1515/1519 - 1589, Madrid

BiographyTrezzo, Jacopo da, I (Italian medalist, sculptor, and jeweler, born 1515/1519, died 1589)
(b Milan, 1515–19; d Madrid, 23 Sept 1589).

Italian medallist, sculptor, gem-engraver and jeweller. Nothing is known of his background and early life. His family apparently came from Trezzo-sull Adda but were living in Milan at the time of his birth. By 1550 he had achieved a level of fame that deserved mention in the first edition of Vasari’s Vite. His activities in Milan, in which city he lived until 1555, included gem-engraving and the fabrication of objects in precious and semi-precious stones for Cosimo I, Duke of Florence. Several letters in archives in Florence, dated 1552, 1572 and 1575, describe this work and the difficulties Trezzo experienced in receiving payment. Between 1548 and 1578 Jacopo produced eleven medals, including variants, eight of which are signed. The first of these is the medal of the Cremonese engineer Gianello delle Torre, of which one example (Florence, Bargello) bears the date 1548. Although not signed, it has been attributed both to Trezzo and to Leone Leoni. Stylistic evidence strongly favours Trezzo as the author of the medal: the portrait is forceful, and the details of hair, beard and drapery are delicately modelled without being fussy. The reverse, showing the Fountain of the Sciences, is a masterpiece of relief sculpture with expressive movement, strong modelling, subtle variations in relief and a precise but lively depiction of faces, water, and drapery.

While in Milan, Trezzo produced two signed medals (both London, V&A), doubtless commissioned by the Governor of Milan, Ferrante Gonzaga. One was of Gonzaga’s wife, Isabella de Capua, Princess of Molfetta (d 1559), and the other of their daughter, Ippolita Gonzaga (1535–63), dated by the age of the subject to 1552. The obverse of the latter was copied from a medal made a year earlier by Leoni with some changes in the drapery and jewellery and with a perceptible loss of refinement in the portrait. The reverse, however, showing Aurora in a Chariot Riding across the Heavens, is handled with considerable skill in its modelling and suggestion of space. The medal of Isabella de Capua recalls the placid strength of the Gianello delle Torre medal, as well as having similar drapery.

Jacopo da Trezzo: Mary I (left, obverse; right, reverse), cast...In 1555 Trezzo moved to the Low Countries, probably to Brussels, in the service of Philip II of Spain, who had also become the ruler of Milan. The documentation of Trezzo’s move indicates that he carved two seals for Philip in 1557. He also produced his most beautiful medallic portrait, that of Mary I of England (reg 1553–8; London, BM; see fig.), who married Philip in 1554. Her features are given an extraordinary alertness, while the details of her costume are rendered with a precision that is nonetheless subordinate to the form of the body beneath and to the overlapping layers of drapery. The reverse shows Mary in the guise of Peace setting fire to a pile of arms with her left hand and holding aloft palm and olive branches in her right, while suppliants kneel behind her beneath a rain-cloud. The medal, which is signed, resembles that of delle Torre. Its pendant is a medal of Philip II, signed and dated 1555, of which there are two variants (Florence, Bargello). The portrait of Philip does not have the intensity of that of Mary, nor does its reverse equal that of the Ippolita Gonzaga medal, which it resembles in subject-matter, the quadriga of Apollo replacing Aurora’s chariot.

In 1559 Trezzo followed Philip to Spain, where he apparently spent the rest of his life. As well as producing cameos and working as a goldsmith, he made two surviving medals in this period: one (signed and dated 1577; Washington, DC, N.G.A.) is of an Italian nobleman, Ascanio Padula; the other (signed and dated 1578; Madrid, Mus. Arqueol. N.) is of the architect Juan de Herrera. Neither of the portraits is particularly distinguished; however, the reverse of the Herrera medal, depicting a personification of Architecture holding measuring instruments, is one of his more successful compositions. The placement of the figure and the surrounding buildings establishes a perspective within which the severe fluting of the piers to the left is contrasted dramatically with the soft contours and richly flowing lines of drapery of the female figure to the right. Trezzo also produced important work on a larger scale, for example a lectern in Plasencia Cathedral and decorative sculpture at the Capilla Mayor at El Escorial, near Madrid (see Escorial, §3), for which he carved the great tabernacle of the high altar (1579–86) from designs by Herrera. Trezzo’s son Jacopo da Trezzo II (d Madrid, 16 Jan 1607) was also a sculptor.
Bibliography

Forrer

G. Vasari: Vite (1550); ed. G. Milanesi (1878–85)

A. Armand: Les Médailleurs italiens (2/1883–7), i, pp. 241–3; iii, pp. 114–15

I. B. Supino: Il medagliere mediceo nel R. Museo Nazionale di Firenze (Florence, 1899), pp. 140–42

G. F. Hill and G. Pollard: Renaissance Medals from the Samuel H. Kress Collection at the National Gallery of Art (London, 1967), pp. 83–4

G. F. Hill: Medals of the Renaissance (London, 1920; rev. and enlarged by G. Pollard, 1978), p. 97

V. Johnson: ‘La medaglia italiana in Europa durante i secoli XV e XVI’, pt 2, Velia Johnson: Dieci anni di studi di medaglistica, 1968–78 (Milan, 1979), pp. 51–68

Splendours of the Gonzaga (exh. cat., ed. D. Chambers and J. Martineau; London, V&A, 1982), pp. 182–3

G. Pollard: Italian Renaissance Medals in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello (Florence, 1985), iii, pp. 1238–51

The Currency of Fame: Portrait Medals of the Renaissance (exh. cat., ed. S. K. Scher; Washington, DC, N.G.A.; New York, Frick; 1994), pp. 158–61, 383–4

J. Ortega Vidal: ‘La Capilla sepulcral de Doña Juana en las Descalzas Reales: una joya en la penumbra’, Reales Sitios: Rev. Patrm. N., xxxv/138 (1998), pp. 40–54

P. B. Conti and F. Repishti: ‘Considerazioni e novità documentarie sull’apporto di lapicidi e scultori lombardi alle fabbriche reali in Spagna, tra Cinquecento e Seicento’, Magistri d’Europa: eventi, relazioni, strutture della migrazione di artisti e costruttori dai laghi lombardi. Atti del convegno: Como, 1996 (Milan, 1998), pp. 211–20

A. Garcia Sanz: ‘Nuevos datos sobre los artífices de la capilla funeraria de Juana de Austria’, Reales Sitios: Rev. Patrm. N., xl/155 (2003), pp. 16–25

Stephen K. Scher

Grover Art online, accessed 1/31/2014 by E. Reluga

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Last Updated8/7/24

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