Jacopo da Trezzo
Jacopo da Trezzo (c. 1515 or 1519 – 1589) was an Italian Renaissance sculptor of medals and jeweller, who after beginning his career in Milan moved to employment by the Spanish Habsburgs in 1554.
[3] By the 1540s he was a successful artist, mostly based in Milan, his patrons including Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who paid him in 1550–52 for two large vessels, a vase and a cup, in rock crystal (quartz).
Milan was ruled by Spain, and the home of Leone Leoni, master of the mint there from 1542, and the main producer of large portrait sculptures for the Habsburgs.
[8] It was therefore after Mary's marriage medal was produced when on New Years Day 1555 Jacopo was appointed court sculptor (escultor) to Philip in London.
While in Brussels he made, but did not design, Philip's "great seal", in use by 1557, and engraved a diamond with the coat of arms of Charles V, who also paid him in 1556 for a rock crystal drinking glass.
[9] In Madrid he made various hardstone carvings and cameos for the court, but these were generally not signed, leading to some uncertainty in attributions.
[11] With Pompeo Leoni and another artist he executed the tomb monument for Joanna, Princess of Portugal (d 1573), Philip II's sister, in the church of the Convent of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid, which she had founded in her parents' palace in 1559.
To a design by the architect Juan de Herrera he made the tabernacle for the main altar in the church of the monastery of El Escorial (1586), in gilt-bronze, rock crystal and coloured hardstone.
[3] He, or his workshop, may have carved the lapis lazuli cameos of the Twelve Caesars that were (probably later) incorporated round the border of an elaborate platter in engraved rock crystal, gold, gems and enamels.
Other medals were of Ascanio Padula (1577), as the inscription says an "Italian nobleman",[13] and the architect Juan de Herrera (1578),[14] the Grand Inquisitor Diego de Espinosa (1568), and the Austrian ambassador Hans von Khevenhüller (1577), a neighbour in Madrid,[3] who helped arrange some foreign commissions, as did the medallist Antonio Abbondio.
[11] An unusually intimate portrait by Anthonis Mor, probably painted in Brussels in 1555–59, was sold by Sotheby's in London, on 4 December 2019 for £1.93 million.
Another portrait is known to have belonged to Philip but is now lost; it showed "the celebrated sculptor beside the tabernacle he executed for the high altar of the basilica of San Lorenzo at the Escorial".
