Giovanni Portinari (flourished 1526 – 1572) was an Italian

military engineer Military engineering is loosely defined as the art, science, and practice of designing and building military works and maintaining lines of military transport and military communications. Military engineers are also responsible for logistics b ...

who served several Tudor monarchs of

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. He is most famous for organising the demolition of

Lewes Priory Lewes Priory is a part-demolished medieval Cluniac priory in Lewes, East Sussex in the United Kingdom. The ruins have been designated a Grade I listed building. History The Priory of St Pancras was the first Cluniac house in England and had o ...

in 1538 on the orders of

Thomas Cromwell Thomas Cromwell (; 1485 – 28 July 1540), briefly Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false charge ...

, the chief minister of

King Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disag ...

Biography

Little is known about Portinari's early life, but he was probably born in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

, which was home to a number of prominent individuals with this surname, such as

Beatrice Portinari Beatrice "Bice" di Folco Portinari (; 1265 – 8 or 19 June 1290) was an Italian woman who has been commonly identified as the principal inspiration for Dante Alighieri's ''Vita Nuova'', and is also identified with the Beatrice who acts as h ...

and

Tommaso Portinari Tommaso Portinari (c.1424? – 1501) was an Italian banker for the Medici bank in Bruges. He was a member of a prominent Florentine family, coming from Portico di Romagna, near Forlì; that family had included Dante's muse, Beatrice Portinari. ...

. He was living in England by 1526, in which year he is recorded as one of the

gentlemen pensioners His Majesty's Body Guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms is a bodyguard to the British Monarch. Until 17 March 1834, they were known as The Honourable Band of Gentlemen Pensioners. Formation The corps was formed as the Troop of G ...

(a position he retained until at least 1547), and in February 1537 he was formally naturalised as an English subject. Around the same time he further demonstrated his commitment to his new homeland by taking an English wife. In the late 1530s the Dissolution of the Monasteries got under way, and Portinari was hired by

, the king's chief minister and principal architect of the anti-monastic policy, to undertake the demolition of the Cluniac

Priory of St Pancras Lewes Priory is a part-demolished medieval Cluniac priory in Lewes, East Sussex in the United Kingdom. The ruins have been designated a Grade I listed building. History The Priory of St Pancras was the first Cluniac house in England and had o ...

Lewes Lewes () is the county town of East Sussex, England. It is the police and judicial centre for all of Sussex and is home to Sussex Police, East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service, Lewes Crown Court and HMP Lewes. The civil parish is the centre of ...

. After completing the work, Portinari submitted a detailed report to Cromwell, and this together with physical evidence from the site enables the demolition process to be reconstructed to an unusually extensive degree. First, the lead roof tiles were removed and melted down on site in specially-built portable furnaces. Once this was done, Portinari and his men dug tunnels under the walls and then set fires within them. These burned away the wooden props, causing the tunnels to cave in and bringing down the walls on top of them. Much of the rubble was subsequently cannibalised for building materials on construction sites in the area, and stones from the priory are still visible in the walls of Southover Grange. Portinari was willing to serve Henry's daughter,

Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...

, and was recommended by the diplomat

Nicholas Throckmorton Sir Nicholas Throckmorton (or Throgmorton) (c. 1515/151612 February 1571) was an English diplomat and politician, who was an ambassador to France and later Scotland, and played a key role in the relationship between Elizabeth I of Englan ...

. In 1560, he gave professional advice on the rebuilding of the town walls of

Berwick-upon-Tweed Berwick-upon-Tweed (), sometimes known as Berwick-on-Tweed or simply Berwick, is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, south of the Anglo-Scottish border, and the northernmost town in England. The 2011 United Kingdom census recor ...

, the vital border town between England and

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. The new fortifications were being constructed in the modern '' trace italienne'' style, so-called because it had originated in Italy during the

Italian Wars The Italian Wars, also known as the Habsburg–Valois Wars, were a series of conflicts covering the period 1494 to 1559, fought mostly in the Italian peninsula, but later expanding into Flanders, the Rhineland and the Mediterranean Sea. The pr ...

, and Portinari's opinion was clearly highly valued on account of his Italian background. He proposed extending the walls east to the coast, which would bring the Magdalene Fields within the defensive perimeter and make the town considerably easier to defend against landward assault, but his scheme was rejected, apparently because it would have been too expensive. Portinari was nevertheless retained as a consultant on the project for several years, along with his fellow-Italian Jacopo a Contio, but there were frequent disagreements between them and the English chief engineer, Sir Richard Lee, continuing to at least 1564. The date and circumstances of Portinari's death are not recorded, but it must have occurred after 1572, which is when he is last attested.

References

Sources

* * * * *{{cite journal , last=MacIvor , first=Iain , date=1965 , title=The Elizabethan Fortifications of Berwick-upon-Tweed , url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquaries-journal/article/abs/elizabethan-fortifications-of-berwickupontweed/A4B03C2A389726ED8109D92ED3302D61 , journal=The Antiquaries Journal , volume=45 , issue=1, pages=64–96 , doi=10.1017/S0003581500051568 , s2cid=162430677 16th-century Italian engineers Italian military engineers Italian emigrants to England