Biography

Italian sculptor, son of Leone Leoni. He has long been overshadowed by his father, although he was an accomplished sculptor who produced an impressive body of work. This is partly due to their close working relationship, which continued until Leone's death. Pompeo was trained by Leone, assisted him with the commissions from Charles V and Mary, Queen of Hungary, and accompanied these works to Spain in 1556 on the retirement of Charles V. Soon after his arrival in Spain, Pompeo entered the service of the regent, Joanna of Austria. He produced several medals in 1557, but in 1558 work came to a halt when he was sentenced by the Inquisition to a year's confinement in a monastery because of his unorthodox opinions. In 1564 he helped to complete his father's bronzes, and in 1570 he designed a series of colossal, fictive bronze statues for the triumphal arches erected to celebrate the entry into Madrid of Anne of Austria, Philip II's new wife.

During the 1570s Pompeo received important commissions for marble sepulchral effigies: the kneeling figure of Joanna of Austria (1574) for her tomb in the convent of Las Descalzas Reales, Madrid; the sensitive and naturalistic portrait of the Inquisitor General, Cardinal Diego de Espinosa (1577), in the church of Martín Muñoz de las Posadas, Segovia; and the elaborate Italianate tomb of Fernando de Valdés (1576) at the collegiate church, Salas.

However, all private work stopped in 1579 with the commission from Philip II for 15 bronze statues for the colossal retable of the Capilla Mayor at the Escorial, near Madrid. Pompeo travelled to Milan in 1582 to collaborate on the project with his father. He returned in 1589 and installed the statues in 1591.

Pompeo's last great project was the commission from Philip II for the kneeling effigies of himself, Charles V and eight other members of the Habsburg family that now flank the high altar of the Capilla Mayor. These over life-size, gilt-bronze figures of extraordinary quality and detail kneel in perpetual veneration towards the Sacrament Tabernacle on the altar, pious expressions of Habsburg eucharistic devotion and dynastic supremacy.

Like his father, Pompeo was a goldsmith, a medalist, and also an avid art collector. He assembled an impressive number of works, including notebooks by Leonardo da Vinci (the Atlantic Codex, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan; Ambrosiana; another at Royal Library, Windsor Castle).