LAURANA, FRANCESCO

born c. 1430, Vrana, Dalmatia, republic of Venice [now in Italy] died , before March 12, 1502, Avignon, France early Italian Renaissance sculptor and medallist, especially distinguished for his severely elegant portrait busts of women and as an early disseminator of the Renaissance style in France. Laurana's early career is obscure, the first notice of him, in 1453, being when he was paid by Alfonso II of Aragon for work on the Castel Nuovo in Naples. He probably designed and sculptured the triumphal gate of the Castel. Between 1461 and 1466 he was at the court of Ren, duke d' Anjou, rival claimant to the throne of Naples. By 1468, however, he was in Sicily, and he seems to have spent the remainder of his life there, at Naples, and in the south of France. Laurana's documented works include a series of medals executed for Ren, statues of the Madonna and bas-reliefs in Italy and Sicily, and tombs and architectural sculpture in the south of France. His portrait busts include those of Baptista Sforza (Bargello, Florence), Beatrice of Aragon (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), and Ippolita Maria Sforza (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). They are characterized by serene, detached dignity and reserve. Laurana created an ideal image of aristocratic elegance by reducing details to a minimum and concentrating on the essential geometry of forms harmoniously balanced, clearly and precisely carved. In its seriousness and gravity of impression, as well as in its simplification of forms, Laurana's work may be compared to that of Piero della Francesca, whom he may have known in Urbino, since his relative Luciano Laurana, the architect, was active there.