ANTONELLI, ALESSANDRO

ANTONELLI, Alessandro. — Born in Gherme (Novara) in 1798, an engineer, a pupil of Bonsignore, later a professor at the Accademia Albertina from 1836 to 1857. He built the dome of S. Gaudenzio in Novara, 125 meters high, with alternating orders of pilasters and columns and a spindle-shaped spire, and the more famous Mole Antonelliana in Turin, 168 meters high, intentionally intended for a synagogue. Both works are expressions of great technical daring and emulate with their masonry structures the contemporary iron constructions, revealing the taste, typical of those years, of drawing artistic forms from the purely technical; this conceptual error deprived A.'s architecture of that compositional unity which is essential in a work of art. Of little interest are his other works, such as the Novara cathedral, the churches of Bellinzago and Oleggio, etc. He died on 10 Oct. 1888.