ANTOLINI, Giovanni Antonio

Italian architect and writer. When still quite young, he was taught geometry and hydraulics by the engineer Vincenzo Baruzzi. At the age of 20, he went to Rome. In 1776, he assisted with the drainage of the Pontine Marshes but, after catching malaria, soon returned to Rome. As a result, he decided to devote the rest of his career to architecture.

Antolini was attracted by the study of ancient monuments, publishing an illustration of the Temple of Hercules in Cori. In 1796, he designed a triumphal archGLOSSARYIn the architecture of ancient Rome, a large and usually free-standing ceremonial archway built to celebrate a military victory. Often decorated with architectural features and relief sculptures, they usually consisted of a large archway flanked by two smaller ones. The triumphal archway was revived during the Renaissance, though usually as a feature of a building rather than as an independent structure. In Renaissance painting they appear as allusion to classical antiquity. with Doric columns for the city of Faenza dedicated to the gloryGLOSSARY(1) The supernatural radiance surrounding a holy person. (2) To have the distinction of one's deeds recognized in life and to be revered for them posthumously: this was glory. The nature of true gloria was much discussed, whether it must be connected with the public good, whether the actions that led to it must conform with Christian ethics, how it differed from notoriety. The concept did not exclude religious figures (the title of the church of the Frari in Venice was S. Maria Gloriosa), but it was overwhelmingly seen in terms of secular success and subsequent recognition, as determining the lifestyles of the potent and the form of their commemoration in literature, in portraits and on tombs. As such, it has been taken as a denial of medieval religiosity ('sic transit gloria mundi'), and thus a hallmark of Renaissance individual ism; as a formidable influence on cultural patronage; and as spurring on men of action, as well as writers and artists, to surpass their rivals - including their counterparts in antiquity. of the French nation. Inaugurated in 1799, it was decorated with bas-reliefs by the sculptor Villafranca but was quickly destroyed by the Austrians. After the French returned, it was rebuilt to celebrate the Battle of Marengo but was then again demolished.

In 1801, after the French had returned to Milan, Antolini was commissioned to draw up plans for redesigning the city around the Sforza Castle which Napoleon had begun to demolish. Antolini, however, in his Foro Bonaparte project which was inspired by the Forum of Ancient Rome and by the works of the French architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux, proposed keeping the core of the castle, adding a facing of Doric columns, and developing a vast circular plaza around, some 570 metres in diameter. Surrounded by a Doric colonnadeGLOSSARYRow of columns with a straight entablature and no arches., the plaza was to be bordered by administrative buildings, ministries, court houses, baths, theatres, universities and museums. Evaluated and modified several times by a special commission, the plans were finally shelved owing to the sheer grandeur of the project. Antolini's original plans were however considered to be one of the most important endeavours of Neoclassical architecture, so much so that the Foro Bonaparte was soon to inspire Naples' semicircular Piazza del Plebiscito with the church of San Francesco di Paola.

From 1803 to 1815, Antolini was professor of architecture at the University of Bologna and thereafter at Milan's Brera Academy. His written works include Idee elementari di architettura civile (Elementary concepts of civil architecture, 1813) and Osservazioni ed aggiunte ai Principii di architettura civile di Francesco Milizia (Observations and additions concerning the Principles of civil architecture by Francesco Milizia, 1817).