Francesco Chiaramella de Gandino

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Francesco Chiaramella de Gandino (second half of the 16th century) was an Italian builder.

He came from the Bergamasque town of Gandino, where he was born in the early 16th century. Nothing is known about his family so far, a sculptor named Francesco da Chiaramella (son of Bartolomeo), who was then in the Venetian service, is not definitely related to him. His father's name is given as Giovanni in the 1571 will. Before 1549 he married a certain Divina, with whom he probably had the son Giancarlo mentioned in 1571. Probably by taking part in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he achieved the accolade before 1560, so that he called himself "cavalliero". Francesco Ciaramella died between 1582 and 1584.

On behalf of Emperor Charles V , he laid down the Hessian fortifications of Kassel , Rüsselsheim and Gießen from 1547 , but was rather careless and suspected of corruption. This eventually led to the resignation from the imperial service. In Trentino ( Italy ) he built or renovated the Palazzo delle Albere at the gates of Trient for Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo in 1550–1554 . He then worked for King Philip II of Spain in the Spanish Netherlands, where he is documented in 1558. At the mediation of the imperial general Lazarus von Schwendi , he switched to the service of Duke Heinrich II of Braunschweig-Lüneburg in 1559. For those he worked on the fortifications of Wolfenbüttel , but the client complained about the high costs and the inconstancy of chiaramella. The disgruntlement made it easier to change again in 1559/60, now to the service of the margraves and electors of Brandenburg.

Francesco Chiaramella de Gandino is best known as one of the builders of the Brandenburg fortress Peitz , the bastion of the royal seat of Küstrin and the Spandau citadel . The design for those buildings (1559) comes from him and he has been in charge of construction since 1560 (?), Certainly from 1562 to 1578, after which it was taken over by the new builder Rochus Guerrini Graf zu Lynar . In 1562, Chiaramella advised the Franconian Margrave Georg Friedrich von Brandenburg-Ansbach and -Kulmbach on the construction of the Plassenburg in Kulmbach and suggested the construction of a fortress in Baiersdorf in Franconia (near Erlangen), but this was not implemented.

For the Duke of Mecklenburg, Chiaramella designed fortifications for Schwerin Castle in 1562–1564 and a fortress in Rostock in 1566 , but the latter was not completed for political reasons. He was probably also involved in other projects and buildings (e.g. for Brandenburg nobility), but little research has been done on this.

literature

  • Uwe Kieling: Berlin - buildings and master builders. Von der Gotik bis 1945 , pp. 29, 224, 226, ISBN 3-8148-0095-8
  • Daniel Burger : The state fortresses of the Hohenzollern in Franconia and Brandenburg in the age of the Renaissance (series of publications on Bavarian state history 128), Munich 2000, v. a. Pp. 213-220. ISBN 978-3-925162-20-6 .
  • Daniel Burger: Francesco Chiaramella da Gandino and the building of the fortress in Spandau. About the problems of a fortress builder with his clients (and vice versa) . In: Spandauer Forschungen 2 (2012), pp. 72–89.