Antegnati (organ builder)
The Antegnati were a family of organ builders who worked in Brescia between the late 15th and early 18th centuries . They performed their work on organs as well as other instruments such as harpsichords and spinets . 19 people from the family were connected with this profession and contributed to the professional development of the artifex instrumentorum musicorum (craftsman of musical instruments), a profession that in the Middle Ages was considered “more mechanical than free” art and sometimes by people as “very low and almost begging ”was exercised.
15th century
1st generation
Bartolomeo Antegnati
An organ builder of this name was first mentioned in 1481, on the occasion of the competition for the renewal of the organ in the church of Santa Maria de Dom (Cathedral) in Brescia. Among the participants was Bartolomeo Antegnati (or Bartholomeus de Lomexanis de Bressia ), son of Giovanni, a legal scholar of noble origin from Antegnate ( BG ), who had gained citizenship in Brescia in 1436. Bartolomeo was probably a student of Bernhard von Germany. A few years later, in 1486, he worked in the cathedral of Mantua . In 1488 he was jointly entrusted by the Commune and the Chapter of Brescia with the task of maintaining and playing the two organs of the city. In 1490 he was called to Milan to build the new organ of the cathedral and to ensure the preservation of the old and the new organ. In 1494 he returned to Brescia, where he was again responsible for the maintenance of the city's organs for the next two years. In 1496 he was commissioned to build the organ of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo , but his work was rejected after three negative trials and a legal dispute broke out in which even the Pope had to intervene. In 1498 Bartolomeo built the organ of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Milan and in 1501 he led unsuccessful negotiations from the city of Albino about the construction of an organ in Lodi . He probably passed away shortly afterwards.
Bartholomäus had three sons: Giovan Battista (around 1490–1559), Giovan Giacomo (around 1495–1563) and Giovan Francesco I (around 1505 - after 1583).
16th Century
2nd generation
Giovan Battista
As the son of the founder Bartolomeo he was, as far as we know, the creator of only four instruments in the years 1534-1535, he was responsible for the organs of the two convents of Santo Spirito and Santa Maria della Pace in Brescia, and Padua built it from 1536 to 1538 two instruments for the Basilica of Saint Anthony and for the Church of San Francesco Grande, which were however judged negatively. According to L'Arte Organaria by Costanzo, Antegnati also built an organ for the Church of San Benedetto Vecchio , also in Padua. In 1544 he intervened for the organ of the Incoronata Church in Lodi and was exposed to further criticism, but exercised the activity of organ player and teacher in the city.
Giovan Giacomo
As the son of Bartolomeo, he worked from 1513 and, together with his son Benedetto, formed one of the two main branches of the family working in Milan. There he built three instruments between 1518 and 1525. In 1524 he was the organist of the church of Sant'Eufemia in Brescia and built the organs there for the churches of Santa Maria delle Grazie (1532), San Faustino (1533) and in the cathedral (1536–1537), which were highly valued by his contemporaries.
In the summer of 1538 he moved his business to Milan and expanded it to Varese , Lugano , Verona , Morbegno and Vigevano . In 1548 he built the organ for the Cathedral of Salò , which was however dispassionately received by the patrons and withheld payment for about a decade. At the time of his death he appears to have been in the middle of preparing to build an organ in the church of Sant'Alessandro in Brescia.
Giovan Francesco I.
Bartolomeo's third son supported his brother Giovan Giacomo in his work and was known for his hand-made production of keyboard instruments. About ten of his works have survived, including two polygonal spinets (kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and in the Museo Nazionale degli strumenti musicali in Rome ). Other copies are in Lombardy. One of them belongs to the Ateneo di scienze, lettere e arti , is still in its original state, and is exhibited in the Civici musei di arte e storia in Brescia, while the second, more richly decorated but modified by later interventions, in the Museo teatrale alla Scala in Milan.
3rd generation
Graziadio
“[...] fu il più esatto e perfetto in quest'arte fra i molti di questa illustrious famiglia [...] la solidità, la dolcezza delle canne, e la maestria delle medesime erano inimitabili."
"[...] was the most precise and perfect in this art among the many from this illustrious family [...] the solidity, the loveliness of the pipes and the mastery of them were inimitable."
He was the son of Giovanbattista; very little biographical data are known about him. The period between his first work at the age of 15 in a workshop of flaschis scloporum in Brescia and his first organs, which he made in 1562 for the municipality of Coccaglio and especially in 1565, at the age of forty, for the Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara in Mantua on behalf of Guglielmo Gonzaga created is in the dark. It is not known whether on this occasion he finally made an effort to take care of the workshop of his father's inheritance, which he could not take care of before due to problematic family circumstances. Graziadio has built fewer than a dozen instruments in a quarter of a century, including a new one for the Chiesa del Carmine in Brescia in 1578. His perfectionism was fueled by a very prosperous economic situation resulting from his father's legacy and two other successive inheritances revealed.
From him remains the largest and most famous Antegnati organ in the world, the 16-foot organ, which was built in 1581 in collaboration with his son Costanzo for the brothers of the Church of San Giuseppe in Brescia . Another valuable instrument that has been preserved and restored by Giorgio Carli is the organ of the Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara in Mantua. It rarely has 7 enharmonic keys, a peculiarity that Grazidio developed in a very short time in collaboration with the organist Girolamo Cavazzoni . The organ was used by some great personalities of the time, such as B. Giaches de Wert , Claudio Monteverdi , Luca Marenzio , Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi , Amante Franzoni and Francesco Rovigo.
The organ in Bellinzona , Switzerland, which was built by Graziadio in 1588 (signed), still contains eighty percent of the original pipes. This organ is based on twelve feet and has eleven stops. Of the other instruments he built with his son, there was almost nothing left, except for a few dozen reeds. They have to be examined more closely for their historical and artistic meanings. To make up for his irregular family situation, he worked hard for the education and career of his son Costanzo.
Benedetto
Giovan Giacomo Antegnati had twelve children; the only one who continued his father's activity was Benedetto, who was active between 1559 and 1584. He intervened in the instruments his father had built and made about ten new ones, three of them in Parma and one in Turin Cathedral .
17th century
4th generation
Costanzo
He was the son of Graziadio. In addition to his education in family art, Costanzo also had a musical education. At the age of 21, his father sent him to Mantua to repair the Santa Barbara organ and confirmed his skills to Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga . In 1595, Caterina Gonzaga, daughter of Marchese Alfonso Gonzaga, commissioned the construction of the organ for the Chiesa prepositurale di Sant'Erasmo in Castel Goffredo (near Mantua). From that point on, the collaboration has continued continuously and is sometimes confirmed by joint signatures within the largest pipes such as those found inside the 16-foot pipe (over 5 meters) of the organ of the San Giuseppe Church. In forty years he completed about 25 jobs. It remains to be determined how many subcontracts he subcontracted to Bernardino Virchi or the Moroni brothers (as in the case of the Corlo Church) and how many works he actually carried out as the person responsible for his father.
Apart from a few of his instruments, there is almost nothing left. In Brescia he made organs for San Giuseppe (1581) and Bagolino (1590, both together with his father), in Gardone Riviera and Carmine di Salò (1594), San Gaetano in Città (1596), Lonato and Calcinato (1601); for Polpenazze (1609) he was the guarantor for his son. In the Bergamo area , the organ of the Church of San Nicola in Almenno San Salvatore (1588) is noteworthy. This organ was restored at the end of the 20th century with the support of organological and philological research (completed in 1996).
5th generation
Giovan Francesco II
After Costanzo's death, only Giovan Francesco II of the four sons continued to work. Constanzo referred to him in his three wills (from 1600, 1603 and 1615) as a contact person for organ art and as his universal heir . Contrary to his father's expectations, Giovan Francesco II was unable to develop adequately. He died of the plague in 1630 at the age of 43 .
6th and 7th generation
The sons of Giovan Francesco, Graziadio III, Faustino II and Girolamo, as well as his nephew Bartolomeo Ludovico, son of Graziadio III, completed the heyday of their ancestors mainly through the manufacture, maintenance and rare new instruments in which they probably created the desired new Meiarian style copied. The tribe died out in 1710 with the death of the last representative in the parish of Sant'Agata.
family tree
| Lorenzo bl. 1436 |
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| Giovanni bl. 1436 |
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| Bartolomeo * ≈ 1440 - '46 - † 1501 |
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| Giovanni Giacomo * ≈ 1480 - '85 † 1563 |
Giovanni Francesco * ≈ 1485 - '90 - † ≈ 1559 - '64 |
Giovanni Battista * ≈ 1498 - 1500 - † 1560 - '61 |
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| Benedetto * ≈ 1535 - † 1608 |
Orfeo * before 1536 † after 1577 |
Ercole * ≈ 1536 †? |
Giovanni Paolo * ≈ 1538 †? |
Graziadio * 1523 - '25 † 1590 - '91 |
Claudia * before 1561 † after 1592 |
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| Costanzo * 1549 † 1624 |
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| Giovanni Francesco * 1587 † 1630 - '32 |
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| Graziadio * 1608 † 1656 - '57 |
Faustino * 1611 † 1650 |
Girolamo * 1614 † 1650 |
Costanzo * 1618 † after 1661 |
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| Bartolomeo * 1639 † 1691 |
Giacomo bl. 1684 |
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| Bernardino bl. 1723 |
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Individual evidence
- ↑ The quotations come from the work of Costanzo Antegnati L'arte organica . The treatise was written to dispel the son's doubts about what he proudly called the art of the Antegnata.
- ↑ The organ was damaged when the town was sacked in 1512 and was reconstructed in 1514 by Giovanni da Pinerolo, who built another instrument in the church of Sant'Eufemia in 1507. The carver Stefano Lamberti also took part in the work for the housing, Floriano Ferramola for the decoration and Alessandro Bonvicino for the doors.
- ↑ Oscar Mischiati, p. 364.
- ^ Oscar Mischiati: Bernardo d'Alemagna . Treccani (Italian, treccani.it ).
- ↑ In the contract concluded on this occasion, he emphasizes his ability to repair existing instruments as well as to build new ones in a very short time (about a month).
- ↑ In Milan was his workshop in the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie , which he then attended exactly as Leonardo da Vinci to be the communion created.
- ↑ In the documents he was referred to as "the boring Bartholomew" because he kept asking to receive the payment in cash rather than in wax.
- ↑ Giovanni Maria Lanfranco: Scintille di musica , 1533: “Organs that were worked by Giovan Giacobo ... so well that they seem to have been created not by the hand of man, but by nature, with their coordination that each area is his Whole, round and flawless pipes are preserved: You can see that on the organ he built in the church of Santa Maria dalle Gracie in this city of Brescia. "
- ↑ In the negotiations for the organ in Salò, Giovan Giacomo's brother Giovanni Francesco testifies in a letter to experimenting with a type of lead that has proven to be unsuitable.
- ^ Quote from Giovanni Maria Lanfranco: Scintille di musica , 1533: " Monochordi , Arpicordi and Clavacymbali diligently made by Giouan Francesco Antegnato from Brescia".
- ↑ Giuseppe Serassi: sugli organic. Lettere 1816 . Stamperia Natali, Bergamo, S. 27 (Anastatic reprint by O.Mischiati, Pàtron, Bologna 1973).
- ^ Licia Mari: In memoriam Francisci Rovigij - Organisti e maestri di cappella tra XVI e XVII secolo .
- ↑ Composizione dei registri dell'organo ( it )
- ^ Carlo Gozzi: Raccolta di documenti per la Storia di Castelgoffredo e biografia di que 'principi Gonzaga che l'hanno governato personalmente. 1840
- ↑ The first one was found recently, still sealed and countersigned by (among others) Giovanni Paolo Maggini , a famous guitar maker from Brescia and a student of Gasparo da Salò .
literature
- Costanzo Antegnati: L'Arte Organica . Francesco Tebaldino, Brescia 1608 (Italian, liuteriabresciana.it [PDF; accessed April 25, 2019]).
- Oscar Mischiati (Ed.): Gli Antegnati. Studi e documenti su una stirpe di organari bresciani del Rinascimento . Pàtron editore, Bologna 1995, ISBN 978-88-555-2347-9 (Italian).
- Flavio Dassenno: Bellissimi organi bresciani, un inestimabile patrimonio sonoro e visivo . Provincia di Brescia - Assessorato alla Cultura, Brescia 2002 (Italian).
- Ugo Ravasio: La genealogia degli Antegnati organari . In: Ateneo di Brescia . supplemento per l'anno 2002. Ateneo di Brescia, Brescia 2005 (Italian, brescia.it [PDF; accessed April 25, 2019]).
- Grant O'Brien: A New Organology: the Analysis of the Nuremberg Antegnati Virgina c.1558 . In: Behind the notes. Musical instruments as a research area. Festschrift for Friedemann Hellwig on his 80th birthday . Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg 2018, p. 33-51 (English).
Web links
- Flavio Dassenno: Gli Antegnati ( it )
- Giorgio Carli, Flavio Dassenno, Umberto Forni, Licia Mari, Damiano Rossi: L'organo della Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara ( it ) Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara.
- L'organo di San Nicola ( it ) Comitato per l'organo Antegnati di San Nicola.
- Associazione Amici dell'organo Antegnati: L'organo di Bellinzona (CH) ( it )