The Pellegrini Chapel (Italian: Cappella Pellegrini), initially named "Guaresco," is a religious building commissioned by Countess Margherita Pellegrini to the famous architect Michele Sanmicheli and built between 1528 and 1559. It occupies a prominent place in Renaissance architecture.
It is located within the Franciscan complex of San Bernardino in Verona, which consists of a Gothic-style church and a series of valuable cloisters and became a coveted place for Verona's noble families to build their aristocratic chapels between the 15th and 16th centuries.
History
Sanmicheli's design and direction
Around 1527, having finished his stay in Rome and before being commissioned to build important fortifications for the Venetian Republic, Michele Sanmicheli resided in Verona with his cousin Paolo, with whom he collaborated on numerous construction sites. During that period he had the opportunity to associate with several noble families, befriending Guaresco Raimondi, father-in-law of Countess Margherita Pellegrini. The life of the Veronese noblewoman was ravaged by serious family bereavements, including the death of her husband Benedetto Raimondi, two children, Nicola and Anna, her father-in-law and finally, in 1528, her 18-year-old son Niccolò, with whom the line of descent of the Raimondi-Pellegrini family was permanently interrupted.
This chapel, originally dedicated to St. Anne, was thus desired by Pellegrini to commemorate the death of her son but equally to celebrate herself and the family to which she belonged: the building was to serve as a funerary monument to contain the remains of the patron and her family members, although the final result betrayed this project. The idea of building a chapel, rather than a simpler tomb, probably came to her after she learned of the construction of the Emilei chapel at the church of San Michele in Isola, while the decision to have such a monumental work erected certainly contributed to the fact that it took on the significance of wanting to hand down to posterity the importance of the family, which was destined to disappear.
The design of the work was entrusted to Sanmicheli, who created a space endowed with a great harmony of parts and a clear distribution of light, with an architecture reminiscent of ancient buildings, particularly the Pantheon in Rome, Porta Borsari and the Gavi Arch in Verona. Construction began between the second half of 1528, after Niccolò's death, and October 15, 1529, the date of one of Margherita Pellegrini's wills, in which it is confirmed that work had already begun.
Controversy and completion by the Marastoni
Initially Sanmicheli personally directed the work, but in 1534 he had to abandon it to go to Venice for further assignments, so his cousin Paolo took over the direction of the building site. Disagreeing over some contractual issues, on July 8, 1538 Margherita obtained from the podestà of Verona the cancellation of the contract and compensation for damages. From then on, the architect and his collaborators no longer worked on the building.
The countess's dislike of Paolo Sanmicheli's management of the building site was due to her eagerness to see the chapel completed, given her precarious health condition: seeing that the work was proceeding very slowly caused her anxiety and concern. In addition, among the reasons that led to the dismissal of the Sanmicheli cousins was probably the high cost of the work, which was characterized (like Michele's other early works) by a rich and articulate decorative apparatus, combining elements and themes from Verona's Roman monuments with the proportions and modules of Renaissance architecture.
The workshop assigned to continue the work turned out to be that of the Marastoni stonemasons, who found the chapel already completed up to the height of the balcony with parapet. Despite the changes made during the work, which included the use of less noble materials and a decidedly simpler style, the new artisans were unable to speed up the work. The Marastoni, in fact, took nineteen years to complete the work, which the client did not manage to see completed. Pellegrini's last will is dated September 24, 1557, and reports that the monument was still being completed, which is why she requested that the construction of the chapel continue after her death and that the building be kept in good condition. The noblewoman passed away shortly after the document was drafted while the work was completed in 1559.
