Kategoria BISAC: Architecture >> History - Baroque & Rococo

Though little known in the English-speaking world, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) was one of the most important and influential European baroque architects. The buildings that he designed for the emperor of Austria and his courtiers reveal an element of theatricality--an element that author Esther Gordon Dotson probes in this attractive volume.

In his architectural designs, Fischer incorporated devices from ceremonial pageantry and scene design, controlled lighting effects, and a sense of dramatic progression in approaching and moving through a building. Dotson...

This is the first study to characterize the architectural patronage of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667-1740), and to identify twelve architects during his half century of patronage in his Ecclesiastical court of the Cancelleria. Most eminent among them were Filippo Juvarra and Domenico Gregorini. Commercial and private theaters in the palace are located from archival data, room measurements, drawings, diary accounts, Correspondence of the French Academy, and palimpsests of architectural details. The size, shape, appearance, capacity, and location of Filippo Juvarra's theater are discussed....

In "When All of Rome Was Under Construction," architectural historian Dorothy Metzger Habel considers the politics and processes involved in building the city of Rome during the baroque period. Like many historians of the period, Habel previously focused on the grand schemes of patronage; now, however, she reconstructs the role of the "public voice" in the creation of the city. She presents the case that Rome's built environment did not merely reflect the vision of patrons and architects who simply imposed buildings and spaces upon the city's populace. Rather, through careful...