Palazzo Bevilacqua

The Roman version of the High Renaissance style was imported to the north by artists who had experienced the new grand manner in full operation in the Rome of Julius II and Leo X. One of these was Michele Sanmicheli, an architect from Verona who worked from 1509 to 1521 at the Cathedral of Orvieto and who, in 1526, collaborated with Antonio da Sangallo the Younger in a survey of papal fortifications. On his return to Verona after the Sack of Rome in 1527, Sangallo began constructing fortifications, ornamented with splendid Renaissance gates, and Renaissance palaces and churches that transformed this Gothic city into one of the richest centres of Renaissance architecture in northern Italy. While based on the general principles of Bramante, with a rusticated lower story and a columned piano nobile, such Sanmicheli palaces as the Palazzo Bevilacqua are strikingly original and often include references to details of the Roman monuments still standing in Verona.