Filarete
Filarete, original name Antonio di
Pietro Averlino or Averulino (born c. 1400, Florence?—died c.
1469, Rome), architect, sculptor, and writer, who
is chiefly important for his Trattato d’architettura (“Treatise
on Architecture”), which described plans for an ideal
Renaissance city.
Filarete is thought to have
been trained under Lorenzo Ghiberti in Florence. From 1433 to
1445 he was employed by Pope Eugenius IV to execute the bronze
central doors of Old St. Peter’s in Rome (installed in the new
St. Peter’s in 1619). By comparison with the contemporary bronze
doors of Ghiberti and Donatello in Florence, Filarete’s door is
less accomplished in composition and technique but is important
for its hieratic classicizing style. The first Renaissance
monument of a specifically Roman type, it influenced the work of
Isaia da Pisa and later Roman sculptors of the 15th century. In
1448 he returned to Florence, entering in 1451 the service of
Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan. In Milan he was active
principally as an architect and designed the Ospedale Maggiore
(1457–65, finished in the 18th century), among the first
Renaissance buildings in Lombardy.
Between 1460 and 1464 he wrote
his famed Trattato. Inspired by Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise
De re aedificatoria, Filarete’s work describes a model city
called Sforzinda. Among the projects he envisioned for this
ideal Renaissance city was the tower of Vice and Virtue—a
10-story structure with a brothel on the first floor and an
astronomical observatory on the 10th. An English translation by
John R. Spencer was published in two volumes in 1965.
The name Filarete, probably
assumed during his Milanese period, was derived from the Greek
meaning “lover of virtue.”
Encyclopædia Britannica
