DUCA, Giacomo del
Italian sculptor, architect, bronze-caster and garden designer. He was part of an Italian family of artists. Of Sicilian origin, they were active in Central Italy, mainly in Rome, in the second half of the 16th century.
Giacomo trained in Sicily with Antonello Gaggini and then in Rome with Michelangelo. He became one of Michelangelo’s principal assistants and continued to work for him until Michelangelo’s death in 1564. He also worked independently before that date; his marble relief for the abbey of San Bartolomeo di Campagna (now Trisulti; in situ) was begun before 1561.
In 1562-63 Giacomo assisted Michelangelo on a new gate to Rome, the Porta Pia, commissioned by Pope Pius IV, for which he executed the winged figures above the main arch, as well as the mask on the keystone. Also in this period he worked with Michelangelo on Santa Maria degli Angeli, Rome. Work began in 1562 and continued under Giacomo’s supervision after Michelangelo’s death. Giacomo completed the cupola over the entrance vestibule and the marble flooring, but the exact extent of his contribution is difficult to determine. Giacomo executed a large bronze tabernacle (begun 1565; now Naples, Capodimonte) for the church from Michelangelo’s design. His work in the late 1560s probably included the monastic buildings adjacent to Santa Maria degli Angeli. The design of the colonnades in the large cloister, with Doric columns supporting simple semicircular arches, is particularly refined.
One of his most significant works of the 1570s is the monument to Elena Savelli in San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome (moved but in situ), in which the legacy of Michelangelo is revealed in the interpenetration of architectural elements.
Two important ecclesiastical commissions for Giacomo date from the mid-1570s. Santa Maria di Loreto, Rome, had been begun by Donato Bramante c. 1507 and continued by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. The lower parts of the church and the principal façade to the south were complete when after 1573 the work restarted under Giacomo, who built the powerful cupola with a complex lantern. Between 1573-75, he remodeled Santa Maria in Trivio, Rome, a small, aisleless, rectangular church on an extremely restricted site.
The most significant work designed by Giacomo in the 1580s was the upper gardens and palazzina (Casino) of the Villa Farnese at Caprarola. The complex, including terraces, fountains and sculpture, is remarkable for its synthesis of natural and manmade elements.
By 1592 Giacomo had returned to Sicily as chief architect of Messina, where his work included the tribune of San Giovanni di Malta and the Cappella del SS Sacramento in the cathedral.
His brother, Lodovico del Duca (active 1551-1601) was a bronze-caster, who collaborated with his brother and many important sculptors in Rome during the papacy of Sixtus V.
