Tommaso Formenton

Tommaso Formenton

Tommaso Formenton (also: Formentone ; * around 1440 ; † before April 28, 1492 ) was a builder in Vicenza .

Life

Formenton was "carpentarius" in 1473 and in this capacity led the installation of a new heraldic lion on the market column of Vicenza; In 1474, under his direction, a new bell was installed on the campanile . At the beginning of the 1480s he became "Ingegnere del Comune". From 1489 he was entrusted with the supervision of the construction of the old basilica.

In 1489 he brought a wooden model for the Palazzo Municipale to Brescia , which led to him being considered the first architect of the Brescia Loggia. With the construction of the loggia in Brescia, however, began only after Formenton's death; besides, apart from three documents published in the Memorie di Brescia by Zamboni in 1872, there are no names of Formenton that could be connected with the construction of the loggia. Probably he had just made a carpenter's model for the building in Brescia according to someone else's specifications. Formenton was also credited with building the courtyard hall at Palazzo Vescovile in Vicenza. There are also doubts about this because, according to Thieme / Becker construction also began after Formenton's death.

So the representation at Thieme / Becker. In the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani , Lorenzo Finocchi Ghersi gives life dates that differ significantly from this : According to this source, Tommaso Formenton was Stefano Formenton's older son and was born around 1428 in Vicenza, where he initially worked in his parents' business. He had a brother named Ferretto and a sister named Alba, and his mother Domenica must have been pregnant with another child in 1452, when Stefano was drafting his will. In 1448, Tommaso Formenton's first wife Angela, with whom he had a son named Stefano, was married. With his second wife Lucia he had the son Nascimbene. According to Ghersi, he was mentioned as Ingegnere del Comune as early as 1467, and from around this time he was already busy with the Palazzo Publico in Vicenza. With regard to the erection of the lion and the mounting of the bell in Vicenza, the information given by Thieme / Becker and Ghersi is identical. Ghersi describes the model of the loggia for Brescia, which he brought in 1489, as a project that was never realized. Ghersi also gives April 28, 1492 as the terminus ante quem for Formenton's death.

Arches, which Formenton constructed for the Palazzo della Ragione in Vicenza, collapsed after just two years and could not be reconstructed in the following decades by numerous experts such as Sebastiano Serlio , Michele Sanmicheli or Giulio Romano ; Only Andrea Palladio found the solution by using the Serliana instead of Roman arches and thus being able to react flexibly to the changing span of the arches in the core building.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Article in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
2. ↑ Marco Frascari, Eleven Exercises in the Art of Architectural Drawing , Taylor & Francis 2011, ISBN 9781136859380, p. 56