ANTONACCI, PIETRO. — Jesuit writer, born in Tolentino on 1 July 1801 and died in Rome on 31 October 1874. Received into the Society as a coadjutor brother in 1828, after having studied medicine, he served for many years as infirmarian and pharmacist at the Collegio Romano. In view of his extensive scientific knowledge, he was made a member of various academies.
He rendered valuable service to the missions through various publications intended for missionaries: Manuale pratico di medicina, chirurgia e farmacia per commodo delle missioni straniere (Rome 1845; 5th ed., 4 vols., 1866), supplemented by a Catechismo medico... per commodo specialmente delle missioni estere (Rome 1854); Repertorio generale delle più varie e utili operazioni fisico-chimiche ed industriali per commodo di tutti ma specialmente delle missioni straniere (2 vols., Rome 1858). By order of Pius IX, he compiled and published a Codice farmaceutico romano teorico-pratico (Rome 1868), together with a special Formulario (there, 1869).
BIBL.: Sommervogel, I, cols. 427–29; Streit, Bibl., I, passim. Edmondo Lamalle
ANTONELLI, ALESSANDRO. – Born at Ghemme (Novara) in 1798, he was an engineer and a pupil of Bonsignore; he subsequently taught at the Albertina Academy from 1836 to 1857. He built the dome of S. Gaudenzio in Novara, 125 metres high, with tiers of pilasters alternating with columns and a spindle-shaped spire, as well as the better-known Antonellian Mole in Turin, 168 metres high, which was expressly intended as a synagogue. Both works express great technical daring and, through their masonry structures, emulate contemporary iron constructions, revealing the taste, typical of those years, for deriving artistic forms from pure technicalism; this error of conception deprived the architecture of A. of the compositional unity essential to a work of art. His other works, such as the cathedral of Novara and the churches of Bellinzago and Oleggio, etc., are of little interest. He died on 10 October 1888.
BIBL.: N. Tarchiani, Architettura italiana dell'Ottocento, Florence 1937; A. M. Brizio, Ottocento e Novecento, Turin 1939; A. Daverio, Attualità di A., in Metron (1948), pp. 24–28.
Guglielmo Matthiae
