page_title: Michele Sanmicheli
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Michele Sanmicheli / Works
caption_attribution_description: English: "Porta Terraferma" in Zadar, built under the Venetian rule (the Lion of Saint Mark was the symbol of the Republic of Venice). Italiano: Zara (Croazia) - Porta Terraferma (porta della città antica).
context_page_description: Michele Sanmicheli, was a Venetian architect and urban planner of Mannerist-style, among the greatest of his era. A tireless worker, he was in charge of designing buildings and religious buildings of great value.
  Hired by the Serenissima as a military architect, he designed also numerous fortifications in the extensive Venetian Empire, thus ensuring a great reputation. In fact, not only in Italy, where you can find his works in Venice, Verona, Bergamo and Brescia, he worked also in Dalmatia, Zadar, Šibenik, Crete and Corfu. He was probably the only practicing Venetian architect of the sixteenth century to have had the opportunity to study Greek architecture, a possible source of inspiration for the use of Doric columns without bases.
context_section_description: He found time to spare from his official commissions to build three palazzi in Verona that have been central to his reputation, though documentation has proved elusive. These are:
  Palazzo Pompei (probably begun around 1530) is an enriched version of Bramante's House of Raphael. The entrance has been moved to the center of a seven-bay façade and given a slightly wider central bay; in order to prevent the composition from rifting apart, the corner columns of the outermost bays are stressed by being doubled with  square pilasters.
  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. There is a second mezzanine above the piano nobile, under a powerfully projecting cornice capped with a balustrade, with a skyline of figural sculptures. Strong mouldings continue the imposts of the arched openings and windows. The palazzo wraps round a three-sided court open to the Adige on the fourth side.
  Palazzo Bevilacqua (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 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 cylindrical exterior masks a domed interior that rearranges elements of the Pantheon. His other works include Palazzo Corner a San Polo and Palazzo Grimani di San Luca in Venice, the Porta Terraferma in Zadar and the funerary Petrucci Chapel in the church of San Domenico in Orvieto.
  Beside the Ponte Nuovo in Verona (demolished in the late 19th century), his last work, begun in 1559, was the Santuario di Madonna di Campagna (or Santa Maria della Pace), formerly outside Verona on the road to Venice. The cylindrical church, with a band of blind and windowed arcading under a wide plain frieze, crowned with a dome, was probably modified during its construction by Bernardino Brugnoli.
caption: The lion of St. Mark on the Porta Terraferma, Zadar, Croatia
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