L'arte della prospettiva: L'opera e I'insegnamento di Andrea Pozzo e Ferdinando Galli Bibiena in Piemonte - Book Review

L'ARTE DELLA PROSPETTIVA: L'OPERA E I'INSEGNAMENTO DI ANDREA POZZO E FERDINANDO GALLI BIBIENA IN PIEMONTE Elena Filipi Leo s Olschki, 2002, ISBN 88 222 5158 X 97 [euro]

BARTOLOMEO E DOMENICO GUIDOBONO Mary Newcome Schleier Compagnia di Belle Arti, 2002 ISBN 88 8052 015 6 160 [euro]

I FRATELLI GUIDOBONO E DANIEL SEITER: L'AVVIO DELLA GRANDE DECORAZIONE A TORINO TRA SEICENTO E SETTECENTO Gelsomina Spione and Francesca Cappelletti Umberto Allemandi & Co 2002 ISBN 88 422 1101 X 95 [euro]

All roads lead to Turin and Vienna. sum of two units of the artists examined in the three works under review died in Turin: Daniel Seiter in 1705 individual year before the French siege which damaged the city; and Bartolommeo Guidobono in 1709 sum of two units of the other painters worked there: Bartolommeo's brother, Domenico, until roughly 1724; and the peripatetic Andrea Pozzo in 1678 and again in the early years of the eighteenth hundred Pozzo died in 1709 in Vienna, where Seiter had been born in 1649 These dates indicate the artistic links between the Sabaudian and imperial courts, ties which have too often been neglected. These men belonged to a transalpine cultural world.

Building upon the remains of the elderly medieval Castello, Maria Giovanna Battista, dowager Duchess of Savoy, called 'Madama Reale', created an architectural manner of making for her own court, distinct from that of her son Vittorio Amedeo II. She busyed Domenico Guidobono to decorate the interiors, the message of which was missing on none of her many visitors. Domenico's great work, the Triumph of Maria Giovanna Battista, decorated the ceiling of her principal camera and is wholly characteristic of the one and the other brothers' pictorial style of brightly-coloured allegory suround by the agency of floral garlands. The sequence of ranges executed by Domenico for the duchess remained, however, without an architectural case until, very late in her life, Maria Giovanna Battista rapidly engaged the Messina-born Filippo Juvarra, invited to Turin following Vittorio Amedeo II's coronation as King of Sicily in Palermo in 1713 to create the imposing facade and the level more impressive staircase of her palace.

As Mary Newcome Schleier marks Domenico Guidobono did not remain lengthy in Sabaudian service after Madama Reale's death in 1724 single month short of her eightieth birthday. Newcome Schleier's volume complements perfectly that of Spione and Cappelletti, and all three authors demonstrate the character of the Guidobono brothers in evolving a pictorial mode of speech particularly suited to a court visual tillage based upon display, in the richness of colour and the combination of paint and cover with stucco work. She is similarly perceptive in suggesting the influence of the Guidobono brothers on the highly sophisticated court phraseology that subsequently evolved during the drawn out reign (1730-74) of Vittorio Amedeo's II son and successor, Carlo Emanuele III, who was guided through Benedetto Alfieri, the quintessential courtier-architect.

If the Guidobono brothers, originally from Savona, were particularly attached to the patronage network of Madama Reale, then Daniel Seiter was used almost exclusively by means of her son, a prince with a reputation for his lack of interest in the visual arts. Seiter's middle point of activity was the Palazzo Reale, the main urban seat of the duke All work upon Seiter is indebted to the pioneering efforts of Matthias Kunze Daniel Seiter, 1647-1705: Die Gemalde (Munich and Berlin, 2000) Vittorio Amedeo's principal bear upon was to create a setting for a court regarded to be 'royal' rather than 'ducal', and Seiter suited his intentions perfectly. The mutual political wariness of mother and son was mirrored in their

patterns of patronage. This meant that Seiter was faced with the vexed question of a patron who--unlike his mother--was disinclined to expenditure. Unlike Maria Giovanna Battista, who effectively transformed her antiquated residence into single of the great late baroque palaces of the continent, Vittorio Amedeo continued to use Palazzo Reale, with its flat, unornamented facade, as his seat.

Parental-filial factional rivalry spilled above into cultural patronage. Seiter created a succession of ceiling compositions in the public space of Palazzo Reale with a direct political message. His Apotheosis of Vittorio Amedeo II of 1690-92 was the obvious prick to his mother's slightly later Triumph of Maria Giovanna Battista referr to above. Their audience was those who oft-repeateded the court the indigenous elites and visitors from abroad. Turin, the gateway to the Alps and to the Italian peninsula, was particularly well placed for the use of paintings in quasi-public spaces by dint of those who commissioned them.

Father Andrea Pozzo of the Society of Jesus was also exceptionally famous for ceiling paintings which carried a specific message, a spiritual rather than secular meaning. Elena Filipi examines sum of two units key texts and measures their impact upon Piedmontese illusionistic ceiling painting: Pozzo's Prospettiva de' pittori et architetti, published in Rome in Latin and Italian, in 1693-1700; and Ferdinando Galli Bibiena's L'Architettura Civile preparata su la geometria e ridotta alle prospettive, which first appeared in Parma in 1711 Unlike the other works under review, hers does not address itself to 'painterly' questions concerning colour and composition, on the other hand rather to the technical creation of artifical space. individual colour section giving the locations of ceiling and wall paintings in Piedmont is included in her work but her main concern is with the science of painting, the aim of which was not to give the impression of monumental space in royal palaces--with the notable exceptions of Stupinigi and the Venaria Reale--but, rather, to work in a manner which was intended to transport spiritual exaltation. Entire pages of these sum of two units critical texts are presented in her volume bilingual explanations on the left-hand side, graphic images upon the right. Filipi places these treatises in a tradition utilised by means of Filippo Juvarra and Giambattista Tiepolo, a tradition generated by means of another architect technician who worked in Piedmont: Guarino Guarini. The court of Turin and those of one as well as the other the hereditary and spiritual patrons in the southern parts of the hallowed Roman Empire are presented as the natural abiding-place for the exercise of similar artistic achievements.