For Guidobaldo's wedding with Vittoria Farnese in 1548 Brandani was one of the team that embellished the Palazzo Ducale in
Pesaro, where he collaborated with
Taddeo Zuccari and
Ludovico Carracci. In 1551–53 he worked for
Pope Julius III at
Villa Giulia, Rome, "if, as seems probable, Brandani is the 'Federigo d'Urbino stuccatore' to whom payments are recorded for work 'alle fontane' of the Villa Giulia between September 1552 and June 1553." From the mid-1550s, Brandani worked on stucco ceilings and other decorations in the Palazzo Tirrani-Castracane in
Cagli for Felice Tiranni. He completed that work in about 1571, when he executed ''Vulcan's Forge
over the fireplace in the Salone. He contributed five high-relief panels to a vaulted ceiling in Palazzo Corboli, Urbino, adapting designs by Taddeo Zuccari, who was working at Villa Giulia when Brandani was there. He also worked on Palazzetto Baviera in Senigallia (1560); and Palazzo Rocca in Fabriano. Towards the end of his life he executed stucco decorations in the Castello Brancaleoni, Piobbico, for Antonio II di Monaldo (d.1598) and in the Urbino chapel at the Basilica of the Holy House, Loreto, commissioned by Guidobaldo in 1571–72. Another late work is the bas-relief of the Martyrdom of Saint Catherine'' in the Church of Santa Catarina, Urbino. A bronze bust of the courtier poet and diplomat
Antonio Galli (1510–61) at the
Frick Collection, New York, formerly attributed to
Leone Leoni, was reattributed to Brandani by
John Pope-Hennessy. Galli also served Guidobaldo della Rovere, as tutor to his son and as his ambassador at Rome and Venice. The bust, identified as Galli by a later inscription on the base, is the only bronze casting attributed to this sculptor, and the only portrait. Brandani was virtually forgotten until he was brought into focus as the premier sixteenth-century sculptor in
Marche by Luigi Serra in the 1920s. ==Notes==