ALESSI, GALEAZZO. — Architect, born in Perugia probably in 1512, died there on 30 Dec. 1572. Having almost certainly trained in Rome in contact with Michelangelo, after returning to Umbria—where minor works are attributed to him—he moved to Genoa in 1548. The Roman proportions, filtered through Alessi’s style, found in the Genoese landscape and environment a new imprint that resolved itself aristocratically in the formal definition of the palace and the patrician villa. The church of S. Maria di Carignano renews in its plan the Bramantesque conception of St Peter’s, but rises
Alessandro Severo – Bust – Vatican Museum.
in elevation solemn within, with calmer forms outside, with painterly chiaroscuro effects that anticipate the Baroque evolution. The Cambiaso and delle Peschiere villas, balanced in their masses and strictly coordinated in their architectural elements, soberly adorned and immersed in the greenery of gardens facing the sea, will echo across the surrounding hills in infinite variations, so that the whole Ligurian architecture of the 16th and 17th centuries may justly be called Alessian.
With the Cambiaso palace he began the Strada Nuova (now via Garibaldi), and in Milan, for the Genoese De Marini, he built the Palazzo Marino, larger and richer, together with the churches of Santa Maria presso S. Celso and of S. Vittore al Corpo.
The pictorial and functional value of Alessi’s architecture struck Rubens, who published in Antwerp in 1622 the elevations of all the palaces of Genoa. — See Plate LXIII.