page_title: Francesco di Giorgio Martini
section_title: Return to Siena and Later Career (1485–1500)
hierarchical_section_title: Francesco di Giorgio Martini / Biography / Return to Siena and Later Career (1485–1500)
context_page_description: Francesco di Giorgio Martini was an Italian architect, engineer, painter, sculptor, and writer. As a painter, he belonged to the Sienese School. He was considered a visionary architectural theorist—in Nikolaus Pevsner's terms: "one of the most interesting later Quattrocento architects". As a military engineer, he executed architectural designs and sculptural projects and built almost seventy fortifications for the Federico da Montefeltro, Count of Urbino, building city walls and early examples of star-shaped fortifications.
  Born in Siena, he apprenticed as a painter with Vecchietta. In panels painted for cassoni he departed from the traditional representations of joyful wedding processions in frieze-like formulas to express visions of ideal, symmetrical, vast and all but empty urban spaces rendered in perspective.
  He composed an architectural treatise Trattato di architettura, ingegneria e arte militare, the third of the Quattrocento, after Leone Battista Alberti's and Filarete's; he worked on it for decades and finished sometime after 1482; it circulated in manuscript.
context_section_description: Letters from 1485 reveal that the Sienese government wrote to Francesco di Giorgio to request that he return to his native city and embark on the design and construction of public buildings. He did return to the city in 1486 and began receiving an annual salary of 800 florins for his position as official city engineer in which he would inspect all engineering projects throughout Siena. Di Giorgio also completed artistic projects for the city, such as the candle-holding angel sculptures which he contributed to the altar at the Opera del Duomo.
  This time was one of prosperity and popularity for Di Giorgio, whose presence and expertise were fought over by the rulers of several city-states, particularly Siena and Urbino. His tax documents from 1488 show material wealth as well as familial wealth in the form of six children.
  In 1490 he was commissioned by the government of Milan to produce a model for dome of the Milan Cathedral. This project led him to journey to the site of the cathedral, where he met Leonardo da Vinci who had also been hired to consult on the building. Di Giorgio apparently provided useful advice to the constructors of the cathedral, and was paid 100 florins for his trouble.
  His expertise as a war engineer came into play again during the Italian War of 1494–98, when he was in the employ of Ferdinand II of Naples. He used tunnels and explosives in what is considered the pioneering use of mining technology for warfare.
  In 1499 Di Giorgio was elected the capomaestro of the Opera del Duomo.
  In Leonardo da Vinci´s list of books Francesco di Giorgio Martini has been mentioned. This indicates that Leonardo had been in the possession of Francesco´s work.
caption: Altar at the Opera del Duomo in Siena. The angel candelabras are the work of Francesco di Giorgio.
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