(b Florence or Rome; d Vilnius, Lithuania, 1541). Italian architect and sculptor, active in Poland and Lithuania. Until 1529 he served as an assistant to the architect and sculptor Bartolomeo Berrecci in his work on the Sigismund Chapel, Kraków Cathedral. In about 1531 he founded an architectural–sculptural partnership with Giovan Battista Cini (d 1565) and Filippo da Fiesole (d 1540), also former collaborators of Berrecci. Their main achievement was the cathedral in Płock (1532–41): a basilica with a nave in three bays, aisles, transept with apse and a dome (raised in height, 1901–3), it was the only imitation north of the Alps of Renaissance basilicas of the type built in Rome by Florentine architects in the last quarter of the 15th century, e.g. S Agostino (1479–83) and S Maria del Popolo (1472–80). In July 1534 Zanobi and his associates entered into a contract to rebuild the cathedral in Vilnius (begun 1536; completed by Cini after 1546). Its Renaissance appearance has been obscured, however, by the Neo-classical reconstruction carried out c. 1783 by Wawrzyniec Gucewicz (1753–98). The workshop was probably also responsible for building the villa (extended after 1610) near Kraków of the humanist scholar Justus Ludwik Decjusz (c. 1520–67) and for extending the Grand-Ducal Lower Castle (destr.) in Vilnius.
From The Grove Encyclopedia of Northern Renaissance Art in Oxford Reference.
Subjects: Renaissance Art.