Michele Sanmicheli was born on 1484 in San Michele, near Verona, and
diedon 1559.
He his studies in Verona with his father and his uncle, both architects,
but then left at age 16 to study classical sculpture and architecture at
Rome in the workshop of Antonio da Sangallo.
In 1509 Sanmicheli removed to Orvieto in Umbria, where he soon developed a
successful career as architect of a number of churches and palaces,
including the Church of S. Domenico in Orvieto itself and the duomo
[cathedral] at Montefiascone just 20 miles away. Following the sack of
Rome in 1527, however, Sanmicheli removed to Verona and continued his
career there. His work at Verona included the Church of S. Bernardino and
several prominent palaces, including Palazzo Pompei, Palazzo Canossa and
Palazzo Bevilacqua. Bringing with him the benefit of his Roman studies,
Sanmicheli was one of the pioneers of Renaissance architecture in the
Veneto.
Sanmicheli gained equal or greater fame, however, as an architect of
military fortifications. While based in Rome, Sanmicheli was retained by
Pope Clement VII to improve the defenses at Parma and Piacenza. In 1529 he
fortified Legnago, southeast of Verona, on behalf of Venice. By 1535 he
had been placed in charge of all fortifications of the Republic, not just
in the Venetian lagoon, but on the mainland and in Venice's possessions in
the eastern Mediterranean as well, including Crete and Cyprus. His largest
project for Venice was Fortezza di Sant'Andrea (1545), defending the Lido
entrance to the Venetian lagoon.
It was in the military field that Sanmicheli's career was first influenced
by the Cornaro family. Sen. Girolamo Cornaro (B-64/H-1), then newly
installed as Capitano [military commander] at Padua, encountered
Sanmicheli in 1538 as architect for the famous fortification there that
became known as Bastion Cornaro. In the following year he also
commissioned Sanmicheli to design a new palace, Villa Cornaro, in nearby
Piombino Dese to replace the earlier family manor there, which had been
burned more than 25 years earlier in the War of the League of Cambrai.
Later, Girolamo's brother Cav. Proc. Giovanni Cornaro (B63/G-1)
commissioned Sanmicheli to design a new atrium for Ca' Lando-Cornaro
[later known as Ca' Cornaro-Spinelli] on the Grand Canal in Venice, c.
1542, and then an entirely new palace. The Sanmicheli-designed Ca' Cornaro
was constructed, 1555-64, in Campo S. Polo, on the site of an earlier
family palace there that had been destroyed by fire in 1535. The second
great Venetian palazzo designed by Sanmicheli was Ca' Grimani, constructed
on the Grand Canal in the late 1550s.
Sanmicheli outlined his ideas on classical architecture in I Cinque Ordini
dell' Architettura [The Five Orders of Architecture]. He closed his career
with the design of the circular Church of the Madonna di Campagna near
Verona, 1559.
This article is published under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Italian Renaissance".