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Article

Guarini, Guarino  

Peter Stein

(b Modena, Jan 17, 1624; d Milan, March 6, 1683).

Italian architect, mathematician, astronomer, theorist, writer and priest. Together with Francesco Borromini, he is the most renowned exponent of the anti-classical, anti-Vitruvian trend that dominated Italian architecture after Michelangelo but increasingly lost ground from the late 17th century. His subtly designed buildings, crowned with daring and complex domes, were ignored in Italy outside Piedmont, but illustrations published in 1686 and again in Guarini’s treatise Architettura civile (1737) proved a fruitful source of inspiration in the development of south German and Austrian late Baroque and Rococo architecture.

Guarini came from a deeply religious family; he and his four brothers all joined the Theatine Order. At the age of 15 he became a novice and was sent to Rome (1639–48), where he was able to study High Baroque architecture, in particular the work of Borromini, Gianlorenzo Bernini and Pietro da Cortona. The details of Guarini’s architectural training are not known, but in the excellently equipped libraries of his Order he presumably studied such well-known treatises as those of Serlio and Jacopo Vignola. In ...

Article

Kuban, Doğan  

Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom

(b. Paris, 1926).

Turkish historian of Islamic architecture. He studied in the faculty of architecture at Istanbul Technical University under Emin Onat, receiving his degree in 1949 for a study of Turkish Baroque architecture. He spent 1954–5 in Italy investigating Renaissance architecture, and 1962–3 in the USA on a Fulbright Fellowship. The following year he was a fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, where he studied Byzantine architecture in Anatolia, and for the next decade he was involved in the study and restoration of the Byzantine church known as Kalenderhane Cami in Istanbul. He taught architectural history and restoration at Istanbul Technical University from 1958 until his retirement in 1993 and was dean of the architecture faculty from 1974 to 1977. From 1978 to 1983 he served on the first Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and in 1980–81 he was Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His voluminous scholarship combines a thorough knowledge of European architectural history and theory with a close and intimate reading of Turkish and Islamic buildings and their structure....

Article

Platen, Wilhelm [Vilhelm] Friederich [Frederik] von  

Mette Bligaard

(b 1667; d Sønderborg, April 27, 1732).

German architect and administrator, active in Denmark. He was officially attached to the Danish court from 1687 and was sent by King Christian V (reg 1670–99) on a study trip to Italy and France in 1698 to perfect his knowledge of architecture, with the promise of being appointed Director of Works on his return. He was appointed to the position in 1705 and thereby became director of all building activity in Denmark. In 1706 he was appointed Marshal of the Court. During von Platen’s period in office a series of outstanding public buildings was erected in Copenhagen to designs by architects who worked under von Platen, including Johan Conrad Ernst (1666–1750), Ernst Brandenburger (d 1713) and Christoph Marselis (fl 1704–25). It is not possible to determine precisely von Platen’s involvement in these buildings, which are all expressions of the interest of King Frederick IV (...

Article

Pozzo [Puteus], Andrea  

Richard Bösel

(b Trento, Nov 30, 1642; d Vienna, Aug 31, 1709).

Italian painter, architect and stage designer. He was a brilliant quadratura painter, whose most celebrated works, such as the decoration of the church of S Ignazio in Rome, unite painting, architecture and sculpture in effects of overwhelming illusionism and are among the high-points of Baroque church art. He was a Jesuit lay brother and produced his most significant work for the Society of Jesus. This affiliation was fundamental to his conception of art and to his heightened awareness of the artist’s role as instrumental in proclaiming the faith and stimulating religious fervour. The methods he used were those of Counter-Reformation rhetoric, as represented in Ignatius Loyola’s Spirited Exercises (1548). His architectural works are eclectic, and his unconventional combination of varied sources led to bold experiments with both space and structure. His ideas were spread by his highly successful two-volume treatise, Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum (1693–1700).

He received his first artistic training in Trento, with a painter who appears to have worked in the studio of Palma Giovane. He then studied with an unidentifiable pupil of, among others, Andrea Sacchi, who would have been the first to instruct Pozzo in the art of the Roman High Baroque, and he followed this painter to Como and Milan. In Milan Pozzo joined the Society of Jesus on ...