Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1502)

Sienese painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and bronze-caster. He worked mainly in his hometown, though also in Naples and elsewhere in Italy, and had a studio for a time with his brother-in-law Neroccio di Bartolommeo Landi.

Trained as a painter and sculptor in the workshop of Vecchietta in his native Siena, Francesco subsequently turned to architecture and military engineering.

In his capacity as military engineer, Francesco travelled to Milan, Naples, and Urbino, pioneering a design for the angled bastion, and in 1477 he succeeded Luciano Laurana as architect to Federigo da Montefeltro. Moving to Urbino, he probably continued construction of the Palazzo Ducale there and provided plans for the ducal palace in Gubbio, as well as building many fortresses in the Marches.

His architectural work is poorly documented, but his singular style makes attribution fairly secure. His hallmarks include the use of arches supported on piers and capitals with flat fluting, evidenced in the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, and the Palazzo Communale, Iesi (1486-98); superimposed pilasters whose capitals are formed by the stringcourse, executed in the churches of San Bernadino in Urbino (1482-90), and Santa Maria del Calcinaio, just outside Cortona (completed 1516); and the deployment of classical lettering in the courtyards of the ducal palaces of Urbino and Gubbio.

Having maintained professional links with Siena throughout his career, Francesco returned there in 1497, after a six-year stay in Naples, to advise on military fortifications.

Francesco was also a painter - his only signed work being a Nativity (Pinacoteca, Siena) - a sculptor, and a writer. Over his career, he produced a collection of manuscripts, now grouped under the title Trattati dell 'architettura civile e militare/Treatises on Civil and Military Architecture, which include, for example, his own translation of Vitruvius.