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(Nikolayevich)

(b Moscow, Dec 17, 1880; d Gulf of Finland, nr Terrioki [St Petersburg region], June 14, 1912).

Russian painter and stage designer. From 1894 to 1904 he studied at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow under Konstantin Korovin and Vladimir Serov, and under Isaak Levitan, who had a formative influence on his early landscape studies. On a visit to Rome, Florence and Pisa in 1902 Sapunov was impressed by the painting of Adolphe Monticelli. In 1904 Sapunov participated in the exhibition of the Crimson Rose (Rus. Alaya roza) group of Symbolists in Saratov.

In 1905 Sapunov met the director Vsevolod Meyerhold at his theatre studio in Moscow and he later participated in Meyerhold’s attempts to create a ‘Symbolist theatre’ in the production of Aleksandr Blok’s Balaganchik (‘The little fairground booth’; designs in St Petersburg, Theat. Mus.) and Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at Vera Komissarzhevskaya’s theatre in St Petersburg in 1906. In attempting to polemicize against the detailed realism of the Moscow Arts Theatre, Sapunov and Meyerhold presented the sets for these productions as painted panels and bas-reliefs, and the figure of the actor was seen as an integral part of the overall pictorial schema. In ...

(b Neuruppin, Mark Brandenburg, March 13, 1781; d Berlin, Oct 9, 1841).

German architect, painter and stage designer. He was the greatest architect in 19th-century Germany, and his most important surviving buildings in Berlin (see Berlin, §I, 3) and Potsdam (see Potsdam, §1) show his sense of German idealism and technical mastery. He became Geheimer Oberlandesbaudirektor of the Prussian state and influenced many architects in Germany and abroad.

Schinkel’s father, a Lutheran pastor, died after attempting to save victims of a fire in 1787 that destroyed most of Neuruppin, a town 27 km north-west of Berlin. Much of Schinkel’s boyhood was spent in a town under reconstruction, a model of royal benevolence and rational planning. In 1794 his mother and her six children moved to Berlin to a home for the widows of Lutheran pastors. At the 1797 Akademie der Künste exhibition in Berlin the 16-year-old Schinkel was so fascinated by a project for a monument to Frederick II of Prussia...

[Jean-Jérome; Jean-Nicolas]

(b May 2, 1695; d Paris, Jan 19, 1766).

French architect, painter and stage designer. He was born either in Florence or Lyon, to an Italian mother and a French father, who was a coach driver between the two cities. He began his career as an artist c. 1715 in Rome, where he knew the vedute painter Giovanni Paolo Panini, and he was taught drawing and perspective by the architectural engraver Giuseppe Ignazio Rossi (d before 1739). In Rome Servandoni first experienced the elaborate theatre productions and festival architecture that became popular in the 18th century and upon which his own fame was later based. By 1724 Servandoni was in Paris, where he became a director of stage design at the Opéra, and in 1728 he became the principal painter and designer to the Académie Royale de Musique. In that year his staging of Louis de Lacoste’s tragic opera Orion with exotic settings evoking ancient Egypt initiated a success that continued for nearly two decades, and more than 60 productions. Servandoni’s scene painting used angled perspective techniques, in which the vanishing-point is placed to one side of the stage. This technique, which dramatizes the illusion of space, was introduced by the Galli-Bibiena family at the imperial court in Vienna, but it was Servandoni’s unique showmanship and imagination that intrigued an otherwise jaded Parisian public, including Denis Diderot, who praised him highly. In ...

(b Sassari, Sardinia, May 12, 1885; d Milan, Aug 13, 1961).

Italian painter, sculptor, architect, stage designer and illustrator. He was brought up in Rome where his family moved in 1886. In 1902 Sironi enrolled in the Engineering Faculty of the University of Rome, but after a long illness abandoned his studies to devote himself to painting. In 1903 he attended the Scuola Libera del Nudo at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and frequented the studio of Giacomo Balla. Following a short spell in Milan in 1905–6, he travelled to Paris in 1906 and shared a room with his close friend Umberto Boccioni. Several family and self-portraits painted in a divisionist technique (see Divisionism) date from this period. Sironi also visited Germany several times between 1908 and 1911, where he was exposed to contemporary Expressionist currents. He lived in Rome from 1909 until he moved to Milan in late 1914 or early 1915.

Sironi experimented with Futurism from ...

(Yur’yevich)

(b Smolensk, March 19, 1882; d Nyack, NY, Aug 12, 1946).

Russian stage designer and painter. He attended the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow from 1897 to 1909, studying mainly under Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov, but although he painted a few Impressionist landscapes, his first major artistic concern was with Symbolism, as in his paintings of the first decade of the 20th century such as Pastorale (1905; Moscow, I. A. Myasnikova priv. col., see Kogan, no. 2) and Love (1907; Moscow, E. A. Gunst priv. col.). After taking part in the exhibition Crimson Rose in Saratov in 1904, he became a founder-member of the Blue Rose group of Symbolist painters, who paid homage to the painting of Viktor Borisov-Musatov, and he developed their mystical motifs and contributed to their exhibition in 1907. Sudeykin was also in contact with the World of Art group, and, on the invitation of Serge Diaghilev, he travelled to Paris in ...

(b Florence, Nov 2, 1727; d Milan, Nov 14, 1812).

Italian painter and engraver. He trained in Florence with Agostino Veracini (1689–1762) and Francesco Conti (1681–1760), and studied architecture and stage design under Antonio Galli-Bibiena. His earliest known painting is a fresco of 1758: Heavenly Father in Glory in the Dominican church in Livorno. He enriched his art by the study of Correggio’s works in Parma, and also those of Bolognese painters, making engravings (1764–7) after paintings by Guido Reni, Agostino Carracci, Annibale Carracci, Guercino and others. These were praised in 1765 by Pierre-Jean Mariette and were later collected in an album entitled Venticinque quadri ai maestri eccellenti incisi da Giuliano Traballesi (Milan, 1796).

In 1764 he won a competition at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Parma with the painting Furius Camillus Liberating Rome from the Gallic Senones, a work that is deeply influenced by the Bolognese tradition and by the Roman classicism of Nicolas Poussin. The success of this painting won Traballesi major commissions in his native Tuscany, where the transition from Rococo to Neo-classicism had been encouraged by the reforms initiated by Leopoldo II Habsburg-Lorraine when he became Grand Duke of Tuscany in ...

(b Eleusis, Aug 19, 1914; d Athens, Jan 26, 1965).

Greek painter, stage designer and architect. He studied architecture at the National Technical University in Athens (1931–6). From 1937 to 1939 he worked as an architect. During the second world war he joined the Greek army, serving first in Greece and later in the Middle East. He was imprisoned and sentenced to death for his participation in the Middle East coup, but was pardoned in 1945–6. He moved to Brazil in 1947, where he worked with the architects Oscar Niemeyer, Lúcio Costa and Palumbo on the plans of Brasília; in the same year he worked in Paris on the development of St Cloud. From 1948 to 1961 he lived in Paris, where he painted and made stage designs and costumes (1948–55) for the theatre founded by him and his wife Christine, a leading actress of the avant-garde. In 1953 he had his first one-man show at the Studio Facchetti in Paris; this was followed by others, notably at the Galerie Iris Clert (...

( Bogdanovich )

(b Tiflis [now Tbilisi], Jan 2, 1884; d Erevan, Dec 28, 1928).

Georgian stage designer and painter of Armenian origin, active in Russia . He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1901–3) but was expelled after a disagreement over the teaching methods. Posted to the Far East during military service, he became acquainted with Far Eastern decorative art, which inspired the works he exhibited with the Blue Rose group after his return to Moscow in 1907 (e.g. The Races, 1905; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.). His work of this time refers to traditional Chinese and medieval European art refracted through Art Nouveau, in an attempt to create a new decorative style in easel painting. In Moscow he often designed the décor for artistic soirées and balls, creating architecturally decorative compositions whose basic components were painted panels. In 1910 he travelled to Italy and in 1912–13 he worked in Paris, where he became acquainted with Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay. In ...

(b Regensburg, Feb 7, 1800; d Munich, July 24, 1873).

Bavarian architect and painter. After working with the stage designer Domenico Quaglio II he studied at the Königliche Akademie der bildenden Künste in Munich under the Neo-classical architect Karl von Fischer. Following Fischer’s death, Ziebland completed many of his projects, including the Hof- und Nationaltheater (1811–18) in Munich. An exhibition of Ziebland’s paintings brought him to the attention of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria ( see Wittelsbach, House of family §III, (3) ). In his quest to transform Munich into a museum of architecture, Ludwig sent Ziebland to Italy to study Early Christian basilicas, so that he could design one for Munich. After two years in Italy (1827–9) Ziebland was commissioned to design an Early Christian-style basilica with an adjacent Benedictine monastery. The Bonifaziusbasilika (1835–40), Munich, is the best known of Ziebland’s works. A brick, five-aisled basilica with a sumptuous interior, St Boniface was hailed as one of Ludwig’s greatest building projects. Its monastery is attached to his exhibition building, the ...