Jacopo Tatti, was a distinguished Italian sculptor and architect, and was born at Florence in the month of January 1477, and not in 1479, as Tenanze would have it. Tatti was born in the same street (Via Santa Maria) with Michael Angelo, who was then rising to the zenith of his fame; and it is said the mother of the youth, whom he strongly resembled, caused him to be secretly taught drawing, for which he had shown great aptitude, with the ultimate design that her son should rival the glory of his townsmen, Michael Angelo. He assumed the name of Sansovino, out of compliment to his generous master, Andrea Contucci of Monte Sansovino, with whom he had learned the rudiments of his art. He seems likewise to have profited much by a very close intimacy with Andrea del Sarto. Sansovino becoming acquainted with Guiliano Sangallo, the architect, this artist took Sansovino to Rome, where he procured for him the friendship of Bramante and of Pope Julius II. On his return to Florence, he executed his celebrated statue of Bacchus, which was destroyed by fire in 1762. During his residence in his native city he tried his hand at architecture, and designed several triumphal arches of great beauty, to celebrate the public entry of Leo X. in 1515. He returned to Rome, only to leave it in 1527, when it was taken and sacked by the imperial troops of Charles V. of Spain. Having sought Venice on his way to France, whither he had been solicited by the court, he was induced to take up his abode in that city, where he afterwards spent his life in the enjoyment of much honour and fame. He began his labours in Venice by repairing the dome of St Mark's, and subsequently erected numerous structures for private individuals and for the Venetian republic. Among his works of this class are the unrivalled Library, opposite the Public Palace; La Zecca or the Mint (his finest work), the Loggia del Campanile, San Geminiano, the Palazzo Cornaro à San Maurizio (one of this artist's most excellent works), San Giorgio de' Greec, La Scuola della Misericordia, San Francesco della Vigna, Palazzo Delfino, Fabbriche Nuove di Rialto, &c., Sansovino did not neglect his sculpture while he raised his reputation as an architect. Three of the most beautiful statues in Venice, according to Vasari, a Laocoon, a Venus, and a Madonna surrounded by angels, are from Sansovino's hand. In addition to these, he executed two colossal figures of Mars and Neptune, which adorn the Giants' Staircase, in the ducal palace, when considerably upwards of seventy years. "In his draperies," says Vasari, "his children, and the expression which he gave to his women, Jacopo never had an equal." He died at the ripe old age of ninety-three, on the 2d of November 1570.