Jacopo Sansovino

Jacopo d'Antonio Sansovino was born on 2 July 1486, trained as both sculptor and architect during the Italian Renaissance. His defining work came in Venice, where he reshaped the area around Piazza San Marco with a series of buildings that became landmarks of Venetian Renaissance architecture. Among them was the Biblioteca Marciana, which Andrea Palladio — in the preface to his Quattro Libri — singled out as the best building erected since Antiquity. Giorgio Vasari thought enough of him to publish Sansovino's Vita as a separate volume, an honor he granted no one else. He died in Venice on 27 N…