Conception and Construction: Galeazzo Alessi and the Use of Drawings in Sixteenth-Century Architectural Practice

This article examines drawings associated with the sixteenth-century Italian architect, Galeazzo Alessi, focusing primarily on two important collections: the 112 folios held in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan for the Milanese church of S. Maria presso S. Celso and the so-calledLibro dei Misteriin Varallo's Biblioteca Civica, which contains 318 drawings for the pilgrimage site of the Sacro Monte there. By comparing Alessi's handwriting and drawing style across a variety of different letters and drawings present in archives in Genoa, Milan and Varallo, it is argued that all the drawings held in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana folder and in theLibro dei Misterimust be the work of Alessi himself. The article then moves on to a discussion of Alessi's use of drawings in his practice and the developing role of the architect in the sixteenth century, which, it is argued, was increasingly defined by the ability of the architect to invent and to draw rather than to build.