Biography

Francesco di Giacomo da Sant'Agata, Italian goldsmith and sculptor. Documents dating from between 1491 and 1528 record his activity as a goldsmith in the area near the church of Sant'Agata in Padua, from which he derives his name. His one securely documented work to survive, a boxwood Hercules with a Club (Wallace Collection, London), signed OPVS. FRANCISCI. AVRIFICIS, was highly praised in 1560 by Bernardino Scardeone, who stated that it was in the collection of Marc'Antonio Massimo in Padua. This sleek and highly finished statuette of a muscular Hercules wielding his club established the standard against which a number of similar boxwood and bronze figures have been compared. The analogies between the work's posture and modelling and those of another statuette of Hercules (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) prompted some critics to ascribe this to da Sant'Agata as well, although it has been reattributed to Vittore Gambello.

Other bronzes associated with da Sant'Agata include statuettes of a languid Niobe and a Narcissus (both Wallace Collection, London) and a Naked Youth with Raised Arms (Frick Collection, New York), of which there is also a boxwood version, identified as St Sebastian (Skulpturgalerie, Berlin). A graceful group of Hercules and Antaeus (National Gallery of Art, Washington) has also been assigned to da Sant'Agata. Later attributions included such bronzes as a Horse and Rider (Metropolitan Museum, New York), Europa and the Bull (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest) and a grimacing Susanna (Frick Collection, New York). These were ascribed to da Sant'Agata on account of their jewel-like surfaces and chasing, suggesting the work of a goldsmith who was aware of the sculpture of Andrea Riccio.