I had never received any assignments for religious buildings in Vicenza in my first fifty years.
 
My friends and clients, the Trissino, the Thiene, the Da Porto, the Angarano, the Repeta and several others lived on the border between Roman Orthodoxy and heresy, having imported the winds of continental reform from the continent to Vicenza.
My son Orazio was directly involved ..
 
However, I would later become the architect of the Venetian families closest to Rome, as well as of Cardinal Paolo Almerico, who before his Villa asked me for this side door to the cathedral, built at his own expense.
 
Why?
I think because no one else in Vicenza could have done it.
In those same years I also completed the dome.