Antonio Fazuni

Antonio Fazuni (* before 1538 probably in Malta ; † after 1555; also written Faissant ) was an Italian architect and fortress builder of the Renaissance .

Antonio Fazuni is one of those artists of the past whose personalities very little is known. His year and place of birth are unknown, all we know is that he came from Malta and belonged to Italian culture. The person Antonio Fazuni is only tangible in the council exits, council books and appointment documents with salary receipts from the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg between 1538 and 1555 in connection with the bastions he designed in the north-west of Nuremberg Castle and some other work for the city.

Two art historians also want to connect Fazuni with other important Renaissance buildings in the German cultural area. Adolf Peltzer tries to identify Fazuni with the "Anthoni", the creator of the Ottheinrich building at Heidelberg Castle . (Other assumptions see the Nuremberg builder, goldsmith, medalist and graphic artist Peter Flötner as the architect of this Renaissance building.) Adolf von Öchelhäuser believes Fazuni to be the Italian Antonio di Teodoro, who in 1553 as the maker of works on the Piastenschloss in Brzeg that was stylistically very similar to the Ottheinrichsbau (formerly Brieg) in Silesia . Both identifications, however, remain largely hypothetical.

Services

In 1538 Fazuni was probably looking for a new area of ​​activity and approached the council of the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg as someone “if you pretend to be a man who understands the art, even in the kay [serlichen] m [ajestät] dienst as a pewangeber And he should be a judge that, for the sake of himself, he found the stat Nurmperg so convenient that it would like to be vested by everyone else in a German nation "(Ratsverlass vom 25 April 1538, German:" [...] who claimed to be a special artist and man who knew how to build, [and] was also said to have been a master builder and building organizer in the service of the Imperial Majesty, who said he was so well located geographically and topographically through independent inspection found that it could best be fortified by all other [cities] of the German nation. ”). Fazuni was thereupon checked for his qualifications in a colloquium with the chief builders and some councilors of the city with the result that “with this senior Anthonio she found such an understanding about pew, something she had never heard from anyone before, that he was on everyone Ime thrown question and held counterpart so skilfully, intelligently and loudly answer and whose causes are always indicated that apparently it is true, that his admission was based "(Council leave of April 29, 1538, German:" [...] that They found in this Mr. Anthonio such a knowledge of buildings that they had never heard from anyone before that he answered all questions and replies submitted to him so skillfully, honestly and clearly and [moreover] his motives showed that his proposal to considerably improve the city fortifications was obvious in its urgency. ").

Antonio Fazuni had thus proven his outstanding artistic and, above all, fortification-architectural qualifications before the Nuremberg Council and was then commissioned to design the bastions in the north and west of the imperial castle , which were completed in 1545 under his and the imperial city master builders' direction. These bastions survived the devastating bomb attacks that destroyed large parts of the castle complex and can still be seen today in their original form. Parts of the massive casemate system in the foundation of the facility were even successfully used as air raid shelters.

In addition to some other work, Fazuni made a comprehensive report on the entire city fortifications in 1542. This manuscript, bound in pigskin - probably a fair copy of the translation into German by the hand of a council clerk, because Fazuni always needed an interpreter - is now accessible again in the Nuremberg City Archives (Reichsstädtisches Baumamt, Official Books No. 69). At one of the Nazi party rallies in Nuremberg, the then Nazi mayor presented this manuscript to Adolf Hitler as a gift from the city, while the city archives then had to be content with a photocopy. At the end of the war, the original found its way into dark canals as looted and reappeared on the international art market in the 1950s, where the then city archives director was able to acquire this manuscript again for the Nuremberg city archive.

Antonio Fazuni appears in the Nuremberg sources for the last time in 1555, when he addressed a request for financial support to a member of the council because he "was again robbed in welschlanndt and fell into poverty" (Ratsverlass dated April 21, 1555, German: "[ ...] was again robbed in Italy and got into poverty. ").

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} City fortifications Nuremberg - The city wall. In: nuernberginfo.de. Retrieved May 12, 2011 .  
2. ↑ ^{a b} Heinz-Joachim Neubauer: The construction of the large bastion behind the fortress 1538–1545 . In: Communications from the Association for the History of the City of Nuremberg . 69th volume. Nuremberg 1982, p. 196-263 . Online edition of the article
3. ^ Adolf Peltzer: Anthoni, the master from Ottheinrichsbau in Heidelberg . Heidelberg 1905, p. 19 .
4. ^ Adolf von Öchelhäuser: Communications on the history of the Heidelberg Castle . Part II, p. 220 .