Giovanni Antonio Medrano

[2] Giovanni designed the Obelisk of Bitonto, the Palace of Capodimonte, and the Teatro di San Carlo in Italy for King Charles III of Spain.

In 1720, he was assigned to the garrisons of Catalonia, Valencia and Murcia, specializing in the design of large territorial infrastructures and plants for the military defense, such as Montjuïc Castle in Barcelona which he drew up in 1730.

[5] On the occasion of the festivities for the marriage of Prince Carlos (Charles III of Spain) with Maria Amalia of Saxony, Princess of Poland, a cuccagna, designed by Medrano, was built on the Chiaia waterfront in front of the church of San Leonardo.

[1] In December 1731, Medrano accompanied King Philip V's sixteen-year-old son, Charles of Bourbon, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, to Livorno, as an ordinary engineer and with the rank of lieutenant in 1733.

From 1732 to 1734 he remained in the service of the Infante, teaching him geography, history and mathematics, as well as military art and architecture during his stay in the cities of Florence, Parma and Piacenza.

Among the first professional commitments undertaken by Medrano in the Kingdom of Naples was the project of an obelisk to be built in Bitonto to celebrate the victorious outcome of the Bourbons over the Habsburgs in the battle of May 1734.

Located in the current square, the Carolinian obelisk, begun in 1736, was conceived by Giovanni Antonio de Medrano in a truncated pyramid shape with inscriptions on the four sides attributed to B. Tanucci, for a vertical development of about 18 metres.

[5] Outside the capital, in that same period, Medrano was also in charge of the construction on the Volturno, at the royal site of Venafro, of an imposing factory bridge, called di Torcino, which, destroyed by a flood of the river, was rebuilt around to 1750 by the engineer F.

[1] This is confirmed by an inscription found inside the silk garments of a polychromed terracotta figure from the 18th century, housed at the Met Museum in gallery 305, known as the "King's attendant," it can be read: The grandeur and beauty of this theater make it the most remarkable in Italy.

It was built under Charles III in 1737, based on the design of Chevalier Medrano, which Ange Carasale executed in 270 days...[7] The Teatro Reale di San Carlo, as originally named by the Bourbon monarchy but today known simply as the Teatro di San Carlo, is an opera house in Naples, Italy, connected to the Royal Palace of Capodimonte and adjacent to the Piazza del Plebiscito.

Characterized by Medrano's typical "horseshoe" layout,[9] with a semicircular profile towards the back of the stalls and straight connections towards the proscenium, the complex was also reproduced in the Recueil de planches of the Encyclopédie,[10] on the basis of surveys previously produced and published by GPM Dumont.

[13] King Carlos understood the need to create a system of self-representation capable of manifesting his new political identity in the context of the highly competitive Neapolitan society.

Giovanni Antonio de Medrano was employed to design the palaces necessary to enact Don Carlos’s new status, while a royal household and court etiquette were also established.

[13] King Charles, still unrecognized as a legitimate monarch by some European courts, knew that the Bourbon hold on Southern Italy depended on his ability to give birth to an heir and dynasty.

His trial, the great distance from quarries, and an insufficient supply of fresh water led the court to refocus efforts at Portici, and later, Royal Palace of Caserta.

Though only the parts of the building to the south and east were complete by the time Charles left Naples to become King of Spain in 1759, the palace set important precedents.

[14] Starting from the summer of 1741 Giovanni Antonio de Medrano began to lose control and supervision of the numerous construction sites that had been entrusted to him: from the works for the quay of the new port of Naples (1740) which continued under the expert direction of the military engineer G. Bompiede to those of the new cavalry district on the Riviera di Chiaia (1740), up to the continuation of the projects and works for the new palace of Portici, which were definitively entrusted to Canevari.

Lawyer Niccolò Maria Pirelli detailed five fraud charges against Medrano, three of which pertained to Capodimonte, involving misappropriation of funds for various construction projects.

[14] The well-documented forensic allegations produced by the Neapolitan lawyer N.M. Pirelli for the defense of Medrano, who, after eighteen months in prison and on charges of collusion and omission of official documents, on 25 September 1743 he was dismissed from all positions, demoted and sentenced to five years of closed garrison.

Giovanni Antonio de Medrano served his sentence at the military garrison of Peñon, where he was engaged in 1746 in the project for the plan of the fortress and the bay of Gibraltar.

[16] He obtained a pardon with the respective reduction of the sentence and returned to Italy in 1746, but his professional figure was severely attacked by fierce criticism from the Neapolitan engineers of the time.

[16] Having arrived in Naples, Giovanni Antionio de Medrano managed to carve out his own professional space and, from 1749 to 1754, was in charge of the restructuring of all the buildings of the Archconfraternity of the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, including the church, which he conceived according to a Latin cross layout.

A project which, however, during the construction phase was reduced to the premises of the crypt and to the arrangement, in collaboration with M. Gioffredo and N. Tagliacozzi Canale, of the houses owned by the Archconfraternity itself, located between the church and Porta Medina.