GALILEI, ALESSANDRO. - Architect, b. in Florence on 25 July 1691, d. in Rome on 21 Dec. 1736. He spent seven years of his youth in England, winning there a good reputation if, on returning to Florence in 1719, he received from Cosimo III and from Gian Gastone de' Medici the post of "first architect and superintendent of the royal buildings"; but no works of his from this time are known.
In 1730, Pope Clement XII of the Florentine Corsini family having been elected, G. was called to Rome, where in 1732 he began the new facade of St. John Lateran, for which a competition had been announced in which Fuga and Vanvitelli had also taken part; the grandiose work, completed in 1735, recalls in its Palladian use of the single order the examples of the Englishmen Jones and Wren. In the same church, in 1734, G. completed the Corsini Chapel, commissioned from him by the Pontiff, a clean construction on a Greek cross. His last work is the facade of St. John of the Florentines, where in the use of two superimposed orders there is revealed an adherence to the schemes of the Counter-Reformation, interpreted, however, with a sensibility that preludes the Neoclassical one.
Bibliography4 worksWillich, s. v. in Thieme-Becker, XIII, p. 96 ff.; G. Pucci, s. v. in Enc. Ital., XVI (1932), pp. 272-73; G. De Logu, L'architettura del Seic
BIBL.: Willich, s. v. in Thieme-Becker, XIII, p. 96 ff.; G. Pucci, s. v. in Enc. Ital., XVI (1932), pp. 272-73; G. De Logu, L'architettura del Seicento a Settecento, Florence n. d.; A. De Rinaldis, L'arte a Roma nel Seicento e Settecento, Bologna 1949, passim.
Zocca, Mario. “Galilei, alessandro.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. V, col. 1871. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1950. https://azioneromana.com/article/galilei-alessandro.
MLA
Zocca, Mario. “Galilei, alessandro.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. V, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1950, col. 1871. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/galilei-alessandro.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec5_galilei_alessandro,
author = {Zocca, Mario},
title = {Galilei, alessandro},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {V},
pages = {1871},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1950},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/galilei-alessandro}
}
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