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Matteo Civitale, Benedetto da Majano, Mino da Fiesole, Luca della Robbia, Donatello, Jacopo della Quercia, Lo Scalza, Omodeo, and the Sansovini, not to mention less illustrious sculptors, filled the churches of Italy with this elaborate stone-work.
The name of this great master is variously written Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, or Omodeo, or degli Amadei, or de' Madeo, or a Madeo pointing possibly to the town Madeo as his native place. Through a long life he worked upon the fabric of the Milanese Duomo, the Certosa of Pavia, and the Chapel of Colleoni at Bergamo.
One ancestor, Omodeo, who lived in the year 1290, is worthy of special mention as the inventor of the system of postal communication, to which the world owes so much; and hence the family arms of a courier's horn and a badger's skin tasso being the Italian for badger which the post-horses, down to within fifty years ago, wore upon their harness.
Of good ancient stock the Tassi owed their acquisition of wealth to the re-establishment of the system of posting throughout Northern Italy in the thirteenth century, when the immediate progenitor of the poet, one Omodeo de’ Tassi, was nominated comptroller, and it is curious to note that owing to this circumstance the arms of the family containing the posthorn and the badger’s skin—Tasso is the Italian for badger—continued to be borne for many centuries upon the harness of all Lombard coach-horses.
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