Architect and military engineer, born in San Michele, NE Italy. Initially a pupil of his father and uncle, he went to Rome, where he came to be regarded as the successor of Bramante. He was master builder of the cathedral of Orvieto (150928), and was employed as military architect for Venice (from 1535). Noted for his treatment of military fortifications, his most important works include the Porta Nuova (153340) and the Porta S Zeno (1541).
Michele Sanmicheli (1484–1559) was an Italian architect.
Sanmicheli was born in the borgo of San Michele near Verona, which at the time was part of the Venetian terra ferma.
He learnt the elements of his profession from his father Giovanni and his uncle Bartolomeo, who both practised successfully as builder-architects in Verona. In visiting Cyprus and Crete for the Serenissima Sanmichele is probably the only practicing Italian architect of the sixteenth century to have had the opportunity to see Greek architecture, a possible source for his use of Roman Doric columns without bases.
He went at an early age to Rome, probably to work as an assistant to Antonio da Sangallo (Murray), where he had opportunities to study classic sculpture and architecture.
Sanmicheli was in Verona by 1527 at the latest, working on the monumental cannon-resistant city gates; he began to transform the fortifications of Verona according to the newer system of corner bastions, a system for the advancement of which he did much valuable service. Sanmicheli built two massively fortified and richly decorated city gates for Verona, the Porta Nuova' and the Porta Palio, in which the richest possible Roman Doric is superimposed against layers of rustication. Giorgio Vasari's impression was that "in these two gates it may truly be seen that the Venetian Senate made full use of the architect's powers and equalled the buildings and works of the ancient Romans— the constant aim and ultimate goal of the Renaissance architects.
He found time to spare from his official commissions to build three palazzi that have been central to his reputation, though documentation has proved elusive.
Palazzo Pompei (probably begun around 1530) is an enriched version of Bramante's House of Raphael.
Palazzo Canossa (under construction in 1537), with another seven-bay front, has a triple-arched central entrance in a high rusticated basement that is pierced by low mezzanine windows. In the piano nobile arch-headed windows are framed by doubled pilasters, so that each bay reads as a unit complete in itself, while the arch imposts are emphasized by a moulding that appears to run continuously behind the pilasters, to tie together the sequence of bays.
Palazzo Bevilaqua (under construction in 1529), the most famous of the three and often cited as an exemplar of Mannerism in architecture, is the richest façade of its generation, rivalling Giulio Romano's Palazzo del Te. Its complex superimposed layers, its alternating superimposed rhythms of large and small bays and straight and spiralling fluting, the rich carved decor in its keystones and in the spandrels of the piano nobile arches, climax in the rich sculpture of its corbelled cornice.
One of Sanmicheli's most graceful designs is the Cappella Pellegrini in the church of San Bernardino at Verona, where the cyclindrical exterior masks a domed interior that rearranges elements of the Pantheon.
Beside the graceful Ponte Nuovo, his last work, begun in 1559, was the Santuario di Madonna di Campagna (or S.
The book that was mistaken for Sanmicheli's own in Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 I Cinque Ordini d' Architettura, printed at Verona in 1735, was by conte Alessandro Pompei, the heir of Sanmicheli's patron, who lived in Palazzo Pompei, Verona.
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