A. Ghisetti GIavarina Abstract

The first architectural work of Nicola Filotesio, the painter Cola dell'Amatrice, is the facade on via del Trivio of the Palazzo del Popolo in Ascoli Piceno, that was built between 1518 and 1520: the same years when it was started in Rome, on a project by Raphael, the construction of the villa of Giulio de 'Medici, known today as Villa Madama. It was a work that greatly affected Cola, to the point that while it was being built, he imitated the arrangement and the design of his doors and his windows in the Ascoli façade. As early as 1512, Filotesio had been conquered by Raphael's pictorial work and, a few years later, he enriched his training as an architect with the study of the Roman buildings of Sanzio, such as the Chigi Chapel, the church of Sant'Eligio degli Orefici , the Jacopo da Brescia palace and the Branconio dell'Aquila palace.

Even the greatest architectural commitment of Cola dell'Amatrice, the façade of the basilica of San Bernardino in Aquila, which began in 1524, appears directly inspired by an unrealized project by Raphael: the façade of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence, known through a drawing from the Uffizi collection. In the Aquila façade, with three superimposed orders, both the Doric basement and the Ionic above correspond faithfully to Raphael's design, of which niches and recesses are also repeated up to the central palladian window, although it is a late insertion compared to the moment of the conclusion of the work. But according to the details it would be said that Cola could also have known at least project drawings of the Sant’Eligio degli Orefici façade.

An admiration for the great Urbinate artist, which Cola would always cultivate, if we consider that even in the design of the façade of the Ascoli church of S. Maria della Carità he cited the Corinthian order of the Chigi Chapel, of which he evidently had appreciated the elegance.

However, we can only make hypotheses about how Filotesio himself learned about Raphael's drawings, and the two people to whom it is perhaps possible to refer are Giovanni Battista Branconio, executor of Raphael's will, or Eurialo Morani, poet friend of the pupils and hiers of Sanzio, Giulio Romano and Giovan Francesco Penni.