Sangallo, Giuliano Giamberti da (c. 1445–1516)

Italian architect and woodworker, born in Florence. He may have designed Bartolomeo Scala's palazzo in the 1470s and he certainly became the favoured architect of Lorenzo de' Medici, for whom he designed the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano (c. 1486–1519) and the church of Sta Maria delle Carceri, Prato. After Lorenzo's death in 1492, Sangallo's fortunes declined. Although he was appointed one of the architects of St Peter's Basilica, Rome, in 1514 by the Medici Pope Leo X, his health was failing and he was overshadowed by Raphael.

Sangallo's earliest work was on choir stalls in Florence and Pisa, and throughout his life he continued to produce woodwork with his brother Antonio. But, as the art historian Giorgio Vasari observed, ‘woodworkers become architects’, and so did Sangallo. He may have designed Bartolomeo Scala's palazzo in the 1470s. His classicizing style owed something to Brunelleschi and something to his own study of ancient buildings and writings (in particular, those of Vitruvius). As well as the commissions for Lorenzo, Sangallo designed the Florentine palazzo of Giuliano Gondi in 1490.

After the exile of the Medici, Sangallo entered the service of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, designing his palace in Savona and travelling with him to France. When this patron was elected Pope Julius II, Sangallo travelled to Rome but failed to gain major commissions. He returned to republican Florence and turned his talents to military architecture, until he was called back to Rome by Leo X.