Giovanni Antonio Medrano

During this Andalusian period, Medrano began to deal with the military and architectural education of the Infante Don Carlos and his brothers; of these tasks, for "instruction and amusement of the Most Serene Prince our Lord and Lords Infantes", there are two plans of a Fort, erected between 1729 and 1730 in Buenavista, on the outskirts of Seville, which included a ravelin dedicated to the Infante don Carlos himself.

In December 1731 he followed 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. 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.[1] The fact that he was promoted in 1733 to lieutenant and ordinary engineer and, later and already in Naples, in 1737, to brigadier and chief engineer, testifies to his efforts and work. After the coronation of Charles as king of the Two Sicilies in 1734, probably due to his close bond with the young sovereign, but more generally for reasons related to the need for the government to have more direct control over the entire local system of public works, Medrano was invested with some of the most prestigious and strategic positions of a public nature initiated by the Bourbons in the capital.

While still a teenager, he moved with his family to Spain, where he embarked on a military career within the royal corps of engineers created in 1711 by King Philip V of Bourbon. Giovanni had entered the service of Spain in 1719 as a Military Architect, although it is probable that he had already joined the army of the Marquis of Verboom Jorge Próspero de Verboom (one of the best students enrolled in Don Sebastian Fernandez de Medrano's Royal Military Academy of Brussels 1675 -1705), in the Sicilian campaign of 1718, since in December of that same year he appeared as extraordinary engineer and sub-lieutenant of this body. As an extraordinary engineer and with the rank of second lieutenant he participated in the Spanish campaign to reconquer Sicily in December 1718 and two years later he was assigned to the garrisons of the principality of Catalonia (Valencia and Murcia), specializing in the design of large territorial infrastructures and plants for the military defence, such as the fortress of Montjuic in Barcelona which he drew up in 1730.

He reappears in 1729, when Medrano was commissioned to organize the roads for the journey of the royal family, headed by Philip V and Isabel de Farnese, from Madrid to Seville.[2]

Commemorative Obelisk of Bitonto by Giovanni Antonio Medrano

He became a brigadier in the army of Charles of Bourbon, while he was king of the Two Sicilies. Following the Battle of Bitonto in 1734, Charles had Medrano construct a commemorative obelisk in Bitonto. Among the first professional commitments undertaken by Medrano in the Kingdom of Naples is 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 26 May 1734, the Carolinian obelisk, begun in 1736, was conceived by Medrano in a truncated pyramid shape with inscriptions on the four sides attributed to B. Tanucci, for a vertical development of about 18 metres. 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. Gasperi.

Palace of the Viceroys of Naples

Back in Naples, Medrano still intervened in 1734 - without knowing the scope of his work in the Palace of the Viceroys of Naples by Domenico Fontana. In January 1735, he accompanied the King, already as Senior Engineer of the Kingdom and Lieutenant Colonel, on his trip to Sicily, in the company of Michelangelo de Blasio, also an engineer, who was, however, arrested on charges of treason in the month February.

Exterior of the Teatro di San Carlo

Medrano also appears as "Major Regius Praefectus Mathematicis Regni Neapolitani"(Major Royal Governor of Mathematics of the Kingdom of Naples) even apparently a year before he was named chief engineer of the kingdom, a title he did not receive until 1735.[1] In 1737, Charles commissioned Medrano to design the new San Carlo opera house in Naples.[1]

Palace of Capodimonte designed by Giovanni Antonio Medrano

Medrano then went on to design the Museo di Capodimonte, Charles's new palace and museum in Naples. Medrano started work on this in 1738, but the building was not finally completed until 1840. First promoted to brigadier and then major engineer of the Kingdom, in the short span of time between 1734 and 1738 he supervised the renovation and expansion works of the viceregal palace (1734), he intervened with some restoration projects on the Palazzo dei Regi Studi (1735 ), designed the first plant of the San Carlo theater (1737) and started the planning and the first phase of the construction sites of the royal palace of Portici (1737-38). In recent years he finally took over from the architect A. Canevari as sole manager of the new palace of Capodimonte.

Charles III commissioned Medrano to excavate Herculaneum

However, still in 1738, with the engineer from Zaragoza Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre, Medrano was commissioned by Charles to began the excavations of Herculaneum, giving rise to a new type of activity.[3]

In 1741 he was accused, together with Carasale, of tax fraud in carrying out the works at Capodimonte. At the same time, relations with the royal family gradually began to weaken with the loss of control of the construction sites entrusted to them.

After eighteen months in prison, with the sentence served at the Peñon garrison, he was dismissed from his main posts and demoted. 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. With these heavy criticisms he was marginalized from public offices.

He resumed his work as a military engineer, since in 1746 he signed a plan of the plaza and bay of Gibraltar, where he would have moved for effect, but to return to Naples, where he was in 1751, projecting the Terrasanta of the church of the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini (Santa Maria di Materdomini), whose environment has recalled solutions with a Vanvitellian flavor and testifies to a single relative eclipse of his Neapolitan fortune. [1]