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Sansovino's art of the 1530s shows an adept integration of Venetian and central Italian elements. His fertile imagination and classicism satisfied diverse clients and transformed Venice with architecture liberally decorated with sculpture. An experimenter, he never conciously set out to break rules like the Mannerists. Throughout his career he maintained a classical equilibrium between sculptural and architectural elements, as in the Loggetta of the Campanile.
This small structure was set in an architecturally diverse square. To Sansovino's credit, he produced a work distinctive yet in harmony with adjacent buildings. Like the original edifice it replaced (destroyed by lighning in 1489 and by an earthquake in 1511), it served as a civic meeting place or patrician house.
The entire structure is based on the triumphal arch with three openings and an entablature in imperial Roman style. It is sumptuously decorated with composite columns in coloured oriental marbles and seems more like a large sculptural screen than architecture. In 1545 the four bronze figures (Pallas, Apollo, Mercury and Peace) were installed in their niches, thereafter influencing the development of Venetian statuettes. There are also 8 reliefs of mythological subjects above and below the niches, 5 in the attic and 6 victory figures in the spandrels, all in a lyrical style.
The structure was later modified and rebuilt after the 1902 Campanile collapse.
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