L’ingegnere-architetto tra Napoli e Spagna nella seconda metà del Cinquecento: la figura di Benvenuto Tortelli Ingegnero dela Regia Corte a Napoli e maestro mayor a Siviglia The engineer-architect between Naples and Spain in the second half of the sixteenth century: Benvenuto Tortelli Ingegnero dela Regia Corte in Naples and maestro mayor in Seville

An interesting figure of the second half of the 16th century was the engineer-architect Benvenuto Tortelli (1533-1594). Born in Chiari, he came to Naples via Perugia and Montecassino; his first known assignments were commissioned by religious orders. In the early 1560s, he was appointed «Engineer of the Royal Court» at the time of Viceroy Pedro Afán de Ribera, Duke of Alcalà, who commissioned him to renovate his palaces in Seville and the castle of Bornos. In Spain, he also became «maestro mayor … del Concejo Hispalense». His Spanish career (1566-1571) was interrupted by the death of the Viceroy. Once again in Naples, during the viceroyalty of Antonio Perrenot de Granvelle, he was responsible for the northern fortifications of the Kingdom’s coastline, when he designed the renovation of the islet of Ischia Castle, of which two of his drawings exist, one in the so-called Codice Tarsia (Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli), the other in de Granvelle’s album (Biblioteca del Palazzo Reale di Madrid). Tortelli was an architect-engineer, a typical professional figure who was an expert in architecture, both military and for assignments from aristocrats and religious orders. Tortelli’s professionalism, typical of the period, favoured the dissemination of building theories and practices; Spain was central to these cultural exchanges because, as a great economic and political power with many territories of its own, it had an extreme need for continuous updates in the field of military architecture. But cultural exchange also involved contaminations of artistic language, as Tortelli’s Seville works demonstrate.