FILARETE. - Antonio Averlino or Averulino, called F., Italian sculptor and architect, b. in Florence c. 1400, d. after 1465. Son of a plaster master, he may have been, in his youth, an assistant to Ghiberti on the first door of the Baptistery; summoned by Eugenius IV, he went to Rome in 1433, where he worked for twelve years on the bronze door of St Peter’s, while also undertaking other commissions, among which is attributed to him the tomb of Cardinal Antonio Chiaves in S. Giovanni in Laterano, though he had to leave it unfinished because he was forced to flee after being accused of intending to steal the head of the Baptist. Returning to Florence, he soon left again to wander through Lombardy and the Veneto, until in 1449 he settled in Venice, from where he departed once more to go to Milan, recommended by Francesco Sforza through Piero de’ Medici.
Here he chiefly carried out architectural works, including the façade of the Castello, but on account of disputes with the other engineers, he asked for leave twice; however, in 1456 he was still in Milan when he received the commission for his greatest Milanese work, the Ospedale Maggiore, for which he prepared the design and to whose construction he attended until 1465. After that date, even his traces are lost. Among his other activities, it is recalled that in 1452 he was named engineer of the Fabbrica del Duomo, and that he was in various cities of the duchy as consultant to the duke. And in gratitude to the duke, he dedicated his *Trattato di architettura*, written between 1460 and 1464, in which, in 25 books, imagining that he had received the order to build an ideal city, he gives precisely the plans and advice for the construction of this city, which he named Sforzinda.
His sculptural work on the door of St Peter’s was already criticised by Vasari, and in truth one cannot fail to observe in it a certain hybridism between Gothic arcane forms and the new spatial researches of the Renaissance, as well as a weakness of modelling and a superficiality of expression that assigns him a very modest place among the sculptors of his time. In his architectural work, he indulged his Gothic ornamental fantasy: he could not free himself from the suggestion of the traditional elements of Lombard art, even if on paper he was elaborating, according to purely humanistic principles, that city of his which was meant to revive the excellence of ancient Mantua. — See pl. LXXXV.