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(b Puławy, June 1756; d Florence, Feb 8, 1841).

Polish architect and writer, also active in Italy. He probably studied in Rome in the late 1770s and returned to Italy in 1785–6 under the aegis of Stanisław Kostka Potocki, a collector and amateur architect with whom he collaborated throughout his life. In 1786 Aigner and Potocki refronted the church of St Anna, Warsaw, using a giant composite order on high pedestals. The political turmoil of the 1790s disrupted Aigner’s career, but during his second phase of creativity (1797–1816) he won fame through his work on the great estate of the Czartoryski family at Puławy, on the Vistula west of Lublin, the most important centre of cultural life in Poland during the Enlightenment. Aigner had already erected the Marynka Palace there in 1790, a variation on the Petit Trianon at Versailles, France, and from 1798 he began to add ornamental buildings to go with the new Picturesque layout of the Puławy gardens: a Chinese pavilion, a Gothick house and a peripheral Temple of the Sibyl with a shallow dome. In ...

(b Monza, Aug 22, 1776; d Milan, May 23, 1852).

Italian architect and writer. He studied architecture at the Accademia di Brera, Milan, under Giuseppe Zanoia (1752–1817), the Accademia’s secretary, and later taught there himself. At the beginning of his career he was involved in the hurried completion (1806–13) of the façade of Milan Cathedral, which was carried out under the direction and with the collaboration of Zanoia. Napoleon’s order that the façade should be completed economically determined the execution of the work, which was carried out in a simple Gothic style derived from the cathedral’s aisles, and it was later judged to be deficient on a number of counts, including its workmanship. The church of S Carlo al Corso (1838–47) in Milan was Amati’s most significant building. Here he grafted 16th-century motifs on to a centralized Roman plan in such a way as to recall both the Pantheon in Rome and the circular Milanese church of S Sebastiano, as well as Bramantesque models and the buildings frequently seen in the backgrounds of Renaissance paintings. The design for the church was part of a proposal (largely unexecuted) to reorder the entire centre of the city. Amati proposed that a vast arcaded square be opened up around the cathedral and that the Corsia dei Servi (now Corso Vittorio Emanuele) should be straightened to lead up to S Carlo, where another piazza, relating architecturally to the church, was proposed. At the time when eclecticism was spreading in Italy and overturning accepted criteria of artistic quality, Amati advocated a return to Vitruvian principles. To this end he produced a series of publications devoted to Vignola, Vitruvius, Roman antiquities in Milan, and on archaeology. The completion of the church of S Carlo and Amati’s death, however, marked the end of the Neo-classical movement in Italy....

(b Montrouge, Paris, April 4, 1806; d Paris, April 29, 1885).

French painter and writer. A student of Ingres, he first exhibited at the Salon in 1830 with a portrait of a child. He continued exhibiting portraits until 1868. Such entries as M. Geoffroy as Don Juan (1852; untraced), Rachel, or Tragedy (1855; Paris, Mus. Comédie-Fr.) and Emma Fleury (1861; untraced) from the Comédie-Française indicate an extended pattern of commissions from that institution. His travels in Greece and Italy encouraged the Néo-Grec style that his work exemplifies. Such words as refinement, delicacy, restraint, elegance and charm pepper critiques of both his painting and his sedate, respectable life as an artist, cultural figure and writer in Paris. In contrast to Ingres’s success with mature sitters, Amaury-Duval’s portraits of young women are his most compelling. In them, clear outlines and cool colours evoke innocence and purity. Though the portraits of both artists were influenced by classical norms, Amaury-Duval’s have control and civility in contrast to the mystery and sensuousness of Ingres’s....

(b Castel Bolognese, Ravenna, 1756; d Bologna, March 11, 1841).

Italian architect, engineer and theorist. He graduated from the University of Bologna in engineering and architecture. From 1775 to 1796 he was in Rome, where his design for the new sacristy of St Peter’s (1775) was admired by Pius VI, although the commission was awarded to Carlo Marchionni. Antolini took part in the scheme to drain the Pontine Marshes (1776–7), but caught malaria and resigned his appointment. Devoting himself to the study and practice of architecture, he became involved in the artistic controversies of the day, including the debate on the use of the Doric order (see Piranesi, Giovanni Battista) and the changing attitudes towards the restoration of ancient monuments, his own position becoming progressively more conservative. He published his first important archaeological work on the Temple of Hercules at Cori in 1785 and began his studies on the Temple of Minerva at Assisi. During this period he also produced schemes for palaces, chapels and other buildings for noble foreign clients, including a design for the façade of the palace and court chapel of the Duke of Courland at Mitau (now Jelgava, Latvia). During the French intervention in Italy (...

(b Quebec, c. Sept 29, 1826; d Quebec, c. May 10, 1906).

Canadian architect, civil engineer and writer, great-grandson of Jean Baillairgé and second cousin of Thomas Baillairgé. Precocious and restless as a child, he abandoned formal studies at the Séminaire de Québec at 16. Following an apprenticeship with Thomas Baillairgé and his own independent studies, Charles Baillairgé trained in three separate professions—architecture, land surveying and civil engineering—by the age of 22. Unlike the previous generations of his family, he broke clearly from the hybrid craftsman–architect role to become the designer who conceived but did not execute his own work, a development that had parallels in other North American cities in the mid-19th century. Intensely curious about developments in Europe, he also quickly distanced himself from the traditional Neo-classicism of his family to experiment with the latest styles and construction techniques, working in both Gothic Revival and Greek Revival styles. He persuaded the architecturally conservative Roman Catholic clergy to accept Gothic Revival for the majestic parish church of Ste Marie de la Beauce (...

(Iliev)

(b Sofia, Aug 11, 1891; d Poland, Oct 10, 1962).

Bulgarian architect, theorist and teacher. He graduated in architecture from the Technische Hochschule, Berlin, in 1920. On returning to Bulgaria he formed a practice with Ivan Danchov (1898–1972). Belkovski espoused the revival of Neo-classicism that was prevalent in much of Europe in the 1930s and actively resisted the modernist trends of Functionalism and Constructivism. Notable examples of his collaboration with Danchov in Sofia are the Bulgaria Hotel and Concert Hall (1934–7), originally with frescoes (destr. 1944), the Balkan Cinema and Hotel (1935–7; from 1944 Youth Theatre) and the Telephone Exchange (1942–7), with sculptures by Lyouben Dimitrov (b 1904). Belkovski and Danchov also designed Kuyumdzhiiski House (1931; now the French Embassy), Oborishte Street, Sofia. From 1943 Belkovski was a professor at the Higher Institute for Architecture and Building, Sofia, and Director of the Institute of Town Planning and Architecture of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where he published papers in the field of standardized designs and the industrialization of construction....

(b Hartland, CT, June 15, 1773; d Springfield, MA, July 26, 1845).

American architect and writer. Benjamin was one of the most influential architect–writers of the first half of the 19th century in the USA and was trained as a housewright in rural Connecticut between 1787 and 1794. Two of his earliest commissions, the carving of Ionic capitals (1794) for the Oliver Phelps House in Suffield, CT, and the construction of an elliptical staircase (1795) in Charles Bulfinch’s Connecticut State Capitol at Hartford, reveal an exceptional ability with architectural geometry that was to help to determine the direction of his career. Benjamin worked as a housewright in a succession of towns along the Connecticut River during the 1790s. In 1797, dissatisfied with the publications of William Pain, an English popularizer of the Neo-classical style of Robert Adam, Benjamin wrote The Country Builder’s Assistant, a modest handbook for carpenters that was the first such work by an American writer. In ...

(b Busto Arsizio, Nov 11, 1777; d Milan, Dec 15, 1815).

Italian painter, collector and writer. He studied painting at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. Between 1785 and 1801 he lived in Rome, where he met such Neo-classical artists as Angelica Kauffman and Marianna Dionigi (1756–1826) as well as writers, scholars and archaeologists, notably Jean-Baptiste Séroux d’Agincourt, Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi (1754–1827) and Ennio Quirino Visconti. While in Rome he studied Antique and Renaissance works, making copies of the statues in the Museo Pio-Clementino and the frescoes by Raphael and Michelangelo in the Vatican, also furthering his studies of the nude in the Accademia di Domenico Conti and making anatomical drawings of corpses in the Ospedale della Consolazione. On his return to Milan in 1801 he became secretary to the Accademia di Brera, a post he held until 1807. During this period he devoted all his efforts to the restructuring of the Brera, providing it with new statutes and a major library and also founding the adjoining art gallery. He prevented numerous works from being smuggled abroad or dispersed and was responsible for their inclusion in the ...

(b Paris, Feb 12, 1728; d Feb 6, 1799).

French architect and writer. A gifted designer and admired teacher, Boullée became best known for the magnificent set of drawings he assembled for his treatise Architecture, essai sur l’art (Paris, Bib. N.). His father, Louis-Claude Boullée, was an architect, and his mother, Marie-Louise Boucher, may have been related to the painter François Boucher. Etienne-Louis studied painting with Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre until his father prevailed on him to pursue architectural studies with Jacques-François Blondel, a leading theorist of French classicism. Although he never went to Italy, Boullée was introduced by Jean-Laurent Legeay to the international Neo-classicism germinating in Rome during the 1740s. Legeay urged his students to complete their projects with a presentation drawing rendered in perspective that would be more intelligible to the client than the customary elevation. This encouraged pictorial effects of light and shadow and provided a link between the practice of architecture and the painting of architectural views. At the age of 19 Boullée began teaching at the Ecole des Ponts et Chausées; he was admitted to second-class membership in the Académie Royale d’Architecture in ...

(b Milan, 1791; d Milan, March 28, 1872).

Italian painter and art historian. He was trained as a painter in the Neo-classical school of Giuseppe Bossi, and by Vincenzo Camuccini and Pietro Benvenuti. He was the author of Notizie sulla vita…e degli Sforza, the first great history of Milanese art of the 14th to the 16th century, which largely established the canon of early Milanese artists. Calvi’s book was founded on his perceptive connoisseurship of painting and sculpture, and a good understanding of secondary literature. He made a thorough, intelligent use of primary sources including lapidary inscriptions, documents from the archives of Milan and Pavia, and also the then unpublished manuscript (compiled c. 1775) of Antonio Francesco Albuzzi. This work consisted of a collection of notes on the lives of Milanese artists, its author being the first secretary of the Accademia Braidense, where Giuseppe Bossi taught. Both Bossi and Calvi possessed copies of Albuzzi’s manuscript.

(b London, 1745; d St Petersburg, 1812).

English architect of Scottish descent, active also in Russia. One of the most interesting exponents of Neo-classicism in architecture, he was a fervent admirer of antiquity and at the same time a follower of Palladio. In England he was known as an authority on Roman baths, but in Russia he worked on buildings and landscape design. Although he belonged to the school of James Adam and Robert Adam (i), his work also shows the influence of earlier styles, especially the work of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, and William Kent.

In 1760 Cameron was apprenticed to his father, Walter Cameron, who was a member of the Carpenters’ Company in London and who also undertook the erection of new buildings. Charles Cameron’s skill as a draughtsman attracted the attention of Isaac Ware, who invited him to collaborate on a new edition of a book by Burlington, Fabbriche antiche disegnate da Andrea Palladio...

(b Galicia [probably the region of Noya], 1704–11; d Madrid, Aug 25, 1775).

Spanish sculptor, teacher, critic and scholar. He was seminal in introducing the Neo-classical style to Spain and has been justly called the prototype of the academic artist (Bédat). The 14 years he spent in Italy (1733–47) studying ancient art and the work of such artists as Alessandro Algardi and Gianlorenzo Bernini were central to his career. De Castro’s earliest training was under Diego de Sande and then Miguel de Romay in Santiago de Compostela (Galicia). From 1724 to 1726 he worked in Lisbon, afterwards moving to Seville, where he entered the workshop of Pedro Duque Cornejo. He went to Rome in 1733, but no sculpture by de Castro is known to have survived from his stay in the city. He first joined Giuseppe Rusconi’s workshop and later that of Filippo della Valle. He also made contact with influential artists such as Anton Raphael Mengs. In 1739 he won first prize for sculpture at the Accademia di S Luca in Rome and as a result was given an annual allowance by ...

(b Göteborg, Sweden, Feb 23, 1723; d London, March 8, 1796).

English architect and writer, of Scottish descent.

The son of a Scottish merchant trading in Sweden, Chambers was educated in Ripon, Yorkshire, and returned to Sweden at the age of 16 to train as a merchant in that country’s East India Company. Between 1740 and 1749 he made three voyages to the East, passing away the tedium of the journeys by studying ‘modern languages, mathematics and the fine arts, but chiefly civil architecture’. This background placed Chambers in a unique situation as far as his future career in England was concerned. By inclination he was a continental, and in 1749 he went to Paris, as any Swedish architect would have done, and sought instruction in architecture. He entered Jacques-François Blondel’s influential Ecole des Arts, a progressive educational body that trained the finest Parisian architects of the first generation of Neo-classicists. Late in 1750 Chambers moved on to Rome, where he set himself up as a privately funded student. There he seems to have maintained contacts with the Académie de France, and for a while he lived in the same studio as Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who befriended those artists whose work was in the vanguard of Neo-classicism. Nevertheless, Chambers was too astute to ignore the visiting coteries of English travellers and ...

(b Lyon, March 4, 1787; d Lyon, Dec 29, 1883).

French architect and writer. He was taught in Lyon (c. 1802) by Claude-Pierre Durand and then went to Paris, where he joined the studio of the Lyon architect Bartelémy Vignon (1762–1846), for whom he worked intermittently in Paris between 1804 and 1816 and from whom he acquired a taste for Greek art. Chenavard was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 1809. In 1816 he travelled to Italy, and after a short stay in Rome (April 1817) he spent the rest of the year on extensive travels (to Naples, Paestum, Calabria and Sicily) in the company of his friend, the architect Augustin Nicolas Caristie (1783–1862). Afterwards he returned to Rome for two years and studied the monuments of antiquity, made surveys and frequented French artistic circles. In August 1819, having returned to Lyon, he was appointed departmental architect for the Rhône and architect of the commune of Croix-Rousse (Rhône) and of the dioceses of Lyon and Belley (Ain). In ...

(b Vicenza, ?Sept 18, 1730; d Vicenza, Oct 26, 1803).

Italian architect and writer. He was a pupil of Domenico Cerato, developing an extremely conservative trend of Neo-classicism based on Palladio but assimilating contemporary ideas of prismatic form and functional planning; he was heavily influenced by the contemporary publication of Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi’s Le fabbriche e i disegni di Andrea Palladio raccolti e illustrati (1776–83). Bertotti Scamozzi regarded him as having ‘appropriated’ rather then ‘imitated’ Palladio; Antoine Quatremère de Quincy called him a ‘rejuvenated Palladio’. He was a prolific architect, building numerous palazzi, villas and churches in the Veneto, and was elected a member of the Institut de France.

Calderari’s unexecuted design (1756) for the façade of the church of Padri Scalzi, Vicenza, exemplifies his manner. The composition followed closely that by Palladio for S Giorgio Maggiore (begun 1566), Venice, but the flat planes and the decoration of the frieze were resolutely Neo-classical. The chapels of the Casa Monza (...

[Nino]

(b Rome, Oct 15, 1826; d Pisa, Jan 31, 1903).

Italian painter and critic. He was taught by one of the leading Neo-classical painters in Rome, Vincenzo Camuccini, from 1843 to 1847. He also studied under Francesco Podesti and Francesco Coghetti at the Accademia di S Luca, Rome. These painters instilled in Costa the basic academic techniques, in particular that of painting a scene or figure in mezza macchia, or half-tones, which he was to apply to great effect in his landscape paintings. In 1848 Costa joined Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Legione Romane; after the fall of the Roman Republic in 1849 he took refuge from the papal police in the Campagna, outside Rome. Between 1849 and 1859 Costa lived and worked in this region and met several foreign artists, including the Swiss painter Emile François David (1824–91) and the English painter Charles Coleman (1807–74), who encouraged his interest in landscape painting; the latter introduced him to Frederic Leighton and George Heming Mason, and they became lifelong friends. Costa recalled these years and described his working practices in his memoirs, ...

[Mathias; Matthew]

(fl c. 1740–early 1770s).

English engraver, draughtsman and drawing-master. In 1748 his premises faced Old Slaughter’s Coffee House in St Martin’s Lane, London, a favourite meeting-place for adherents of the new Rococo style. His earliest known satirical print, the Cricket Players of Europe, is dated 1741.

In 1751 he issued A New-book of Chinese, Gothic & Modern Chairs, a slight publication on eight leaves. Twelve examples with bizarre backs were described as ‘Hall Chairs’ in a reissue of 1766, but it is more likely they were intended for gardens and summer-houses. A shell-back chair (Stratford-on-Avon, Nash’s House) corresponding to one of the designs was made for the Chinese temple erected at Stratford for the Shakespeare jubilee organized by David Garrick in 1769. Five plates from a second book of chairs (c. 1751), of which no copy survives, were apparently reprinted in Robert Manwaring’s The Chair-maker’s Guide (1766). Described as ‘Parlour Chairs’, they incorporate extravagant C-scroll motifs in the backs....

(b Siena, March 1, 1817; d Florence, Jan 10, 1882).

Italian sculptor and writer. He was among the foremost sculptors in Tuscany in the generation after Lorenzo Bartolini. His early experiments in naturalism attracted such hostile criticism that he was forced to abandon this style in favour of a sensual neo-Greek manner. His later works are marked by a richly expressive eclecticism.

He trained with his father, a wood-carver, and briefly attended the Istituto di Belle Arti in Siena. By 1826 or 1827 he was in Florence, where he joined the workshop of the wood-carver Paolo Sani. Dupré alternated this work with practical attempts at teaching himself, particularly drawing, as part of his ambition to become a sculptor. His first proper sculpture, a wooden figure of St Philomena, was shown in 1838 at the annual exhibition of the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, where it attracted the praise of Lorenzo Bartolini, among others. In 1840 he made a jewel casket, inspired by the interior architecture of the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence, which was acquired by ...

(b Paris, Sept 18, 1760; d Thiais, Dec 31, 1834).

French architect, teacher and writer. He was one of the most influential teachers of his time, and his radically rationalist approach, which emphasized priority of function and economy of means, was expressed in analytical writings that remained popular into the 20th century. He studied under Pierre Panseron (fl 1736) and from 1776 in the office of Etienne-Louis Boullée. He also took courses with Julien-David Le Roy at the Académie d’Architecture and participated in competitions under the guidance of Jean-Rodolphe Perronet. He twice came second in the Prix de Rome: in 1779 for a museum and in 1780 for a school. During the 1780s he worked as a draughtsman for Boullée and for the engraver Jean-François Janinet. In 1788 construction began in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, Paris, of his Maison Lathuille, a building with Néo-Grec decoration but with a layout characterized by its extreme simplicity. About 1790 he executed a series of drawings entitled ...

(b Stockholm, May 5, 1745; d Örebrö, May 21, 1800).

Swedish naval officer, draughtsman and writer. His father was founder and commanding officer of the Sveaborg Fort in Finland, which belonged at that time to Sweden. There Ehrensvärd grew up and as part of his education was instructed by the most eminent Swedish watercolour painter, Elias Martin (ii). His naval career was broken off by a trip of decisive importance to Italy (1780–82), which resulted in his producing a series of watercolours and writing Resa til Italien, 1780, 1781, 1782 (‘Journey to Italy, 1780, 1781, 1782’) and De fria konsters philosophi (‘Philosophy of the liberal arts’). These were both published in 1786 and are among 18th-century Sweden’s most remarkable books on art. They reflected the author’s contacts with Neo-classicism throughout Europe, contemporary theories on climate and physiognomy and, not least, ideas that constitute an early manifestation of Functionalism.

Under the influence of a visit to Paestum, Ehrensvärd executed studies of Classical buildings in a Nordic landscape and designs for dockyard buildings at Karlskrona that employ a Greek Doric order of extraordinarily squat proportions. Other works included a series of drawings influenced by English caricature art, parodying the political and moral atrocities of his time, and he frequently collaborated with the draughtsman and sculptor ...