POLETTI, LUIGI. - Architect, b. in Modena on 28 Oct. 1792, d. in Milan on 2 Aug. 1869. As a young man he studied in Bologna at the Accademia Clementina, then, from 1818, he settled in Rome with Raffaello Stern in the years when the latter was engaged in the work on the Braccio nuovo of the Vatican Museums.
Having risen in the esteem of the competent offices of the Camera Apostolica, in 1833 P. was entrusted with continuing the reconstruction of the basilica of St. Paul already begun by Pasquale Belli. And this work, which remained his greatest, continued by him until his death, he carried out by introducing some modifications to the original designs and by erecting beside the apse a strange bell tower in the shape of a lighthouse. In 1833 P. was also working on the restoration of the Lateran Palace and then designed and built the two façades of classicizing tone at the heads of the Borghi, toward Castel S. Angelo, which have been demolished in the modern rearrangements of the area. Appointed an academician of St. Luke and of the Virtuosi al Pantheon, considered the leader of Roman architectural purism (v.), P. was entrusted with directing various works in the basilica of S. Maria degli Angeli in Assisi and erected in Rome (1854-58) the column dedicated to the Immaculate Conception that stands in the Piazza di Spagna. Outside Rome, meanwhile, he built the theatres of Fano (1845-63), of Terni (1849) and of Rimini (1857). The latter construction, especially in the interior, unfortunately badly damaged in the Second World War, is undoubtedly solemn and grand. Other buildings of his are the Scots College in Via Quattro Fontane in Rome, the church of S. Filippo in Nocera Umbra and the rebuilt basilica of S. Venanzio in Camerino. In this last building he used forms imitated from Burgundian Gothic.
A typical exponent of architectural purism in using Vignolesque syntactic forms to express new concepts, P., as he advanced in years, inclined toward a certain eclecticism of romantic tone, of which proof is the S. Filippo of Nocera Umbra in neo-Gothic forms and the same Canadian College with its quattrocento stamp.
Bibliography3 works
Emilio Lavagnino