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Article

David Watkin

(b London, Sept 30, 1800; d London, Dec 14, 1881).

English architect. An extremely prolific classical architect and urban planner who continued the Picturesque tradition established by John Nash, he was trained by his father James Burton (1761–1837), the builder of Nash’s Regent’s Park terraces, and by George Maddox (1760–1843). Achieving early success through the joint patronage of his father and of Nash, he was responsible, under Nash, for the design of Clarence and Cornwall Terraces, Regent’s Park, London, at the age of 20. His other contributions to Regent’s Park were several elegant villas, including the Holme (1819) for his father, the Colosseum (1823–7; destr.) and buildings and gardens for the Zoological Society (1826–41) and the Royal Botanical Society (1840–59). The Colosseum, a Greek Doric version of the Pantheon in Rome with a dome slightly larger than that of St Paul’s Cathedral, was an ambitious construction for which Burton was much admired. The function of the building was to exhibit the popular panoramas and dioramas, the Picturesque precursors of modern ...

Article

Gabriella Ferri Piccaluga

(b Viggiù, nr Varese, 1704; d Viggiù, 1780).

Italian sculptor. He began his apprenticeship under Carlo Beretta (1716–64), and later worked with Carlo Francesco Mellone (d 1736), both of whom were protostatuari, or directors of sculpture, for the Fabbrica del Duomo in Milan. In 1728 Buzzi began working as a sculptor in the Camposanto sculpture yard, after producing a successful test-piece bozzetto in terracotta of Diana Awakened by Endymion (Milan, Mus. Duomo). The high professional quality of Buzzi’s work, and his marked sensitivity to the poetry of the Roman Baroque—introduced to Milan by Mellone—won him a series of commissions. At first Buzzi carried on his activity in the workshop of his brother Giuseppe Maria, who was also active in the cathedral as a marble mason. Elia Vincenzo did not open his own workshop until 1741, on the death of the sculptor F. Zarabatta. He was also active in other workshops, including those at the Milanese churches of S Maria alla Porta (...

Article

Gabriella Ferri Piccaluga

(fl 1791–1835).

Italian sculptor, nephew of Elia Vincenzo Buzzi. His mature production was marked by his ‘provincial’ training in the family workshops and in particular by his uncle’s Rococo style, as well as by his own later activity in Milan Cathedral. In 1791 he designed and executed the marble main altar in the church of S Maria di Campagna at Piacenza. From 1792 he was active at the Fabbrica del Duomo in Milan. The statues that he produced there were particularly numerous after a decree issued by the Emperor Napoleon in 1805 forced the administration to complete the cathedral’s façade and its sculptural decoration in a very short time. The stylistic heterogeneity that characterizes Buzzi’s whole production reflects his uncertainty at a time when Milanese sculpture was dominated by the conflicting styles of the Rococo and Neo-classicism. At times Buzzi followed a Neo-classical aesthetic, as in the statues of St John the Evangelist...

Article

Jeremy Howard and Sergei Kuznetsov

(Dorimedontovich)[Dormidontovich]

(b Moscow, Nov 10, 1801; d Moscow, Nov 21, 1885).

Russian architect. He studied under Domenico Gillardi from 1816 and in the 1820s worked as his assistant on the Golitsyn family estates of Grebnevo and Kus’minki and the Volkonsky family estate, Sukhanovo (all Moscow region). His first independent commissions were also mansion house and park ensembles, most notably for the Panin family, first (late 1820s, early 1830s) at Dugino (Smolensk prov.) and then (1831–46) at Marfino (Moscow prov.). Conceived in the spirit of Romanticism, these accorded with the local geography and the personality of the landowner. At Marfino, his masterpiece, Bykovsky redesigned and rebuilt the existing house, its wings, the winter and summer churches, and the bridge over the lake. The latter, with its complex interplay of Russian and Italian medieval forms, was a key element in the picturesque effect of the ensemble. He also built from new a landing-stage, with an ornate pair of monumental griffins, and a cattle-yard. The appearance of most of the buildings was transformed in the course of this synthesis of the existing, Neo-classical plans with Gothic Revival detailing, and the result rivalled Edward Blore’s Alupka Palace (...

Article

(b Filipstad, Värmland, Dec 18, 1783; d Rome, March 13, 1848).

Swedish sculptor. He studied under Johan Tobias Sergel at the Konstakademi in Stockholm from 1803 to 1809, and in 1810 moved to Rome where he lived thereafter when not working or teaching in Sweden. In Italy he owned a marble quarry at Carrara and thus executed most of his sculptures in this high-quality stone. In Rome he studied antique sculpture and made copies of works there, such as Head of Bacchus (Stockholm, Nmus.). In his own work he invariably used subjects derived from Classical mythology, executing them in a Neo-classical style influenced by Antonio Canova, as in Juno with the Baby Hercules (1818; Stockholm, Nmus.), of which various versions exist. In this large work Juno is shown asleep with the young Hercules playing by her side. The outstretched goddess is elegantly carved and the drapery is especially fine, though the overall composition is rather heavy and lifeless, a fault of much of Byström’s work....

Article

Mario Bencivenni

(b Florence, 1770; d Florence, Oct 6, 1828).

Italian architect and teacher. He studied architecture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence together with Pasquale Poccianti and Luigi de Cambray Digny; all three were pupils of the leading figure in Tuscan Neo-classicism, Gaspero Maria Paoletti. At barely 15 years of age Cacialli won the second prize for architecture with a measured drawing of the chapel of S Andrea Corsini in the Florentine church of S Maria del Carmine. Having completed his studies, in 1795 he was appointed first an assistant and then Accademico Professore di Prima Classe at the Accademia. During the period of French rule in Tuscany, Cacialli rose to a position of prominence in Tuscan architectural affairs; in March 1808 Elisa Bonaparte, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, appointed him Architetto delli Regie Fabbriche, and in 1813, together with the painter Pietro Benvenuti, the sculptor Giovanni Antonio Santarelli and his fellow architect Giuseppe Manetti (1762–1817), he was appointed to the commission to design a monument (unexecuted) to ...

Article

Maria Teresa Caracciolo

(b Rome, March 4, 1750; d Rome, Dec 8, 1799).

Italian painter and draughtsman. He was an important history painter and decorator, whose paintings and drawings vary in manner from the Baroque to Neo-classical, and who anticipated Romantic historicism. His subjects are taken from Greek and Roman literature, 16th- and 17th-century religious history and Italian literature of the early and High Renaissance; his many drawings include preparatory studies, caricatures, genre scenes and portraits. He trained under Domenico Corvi at the Accademia di S Luca, where he won prizes with drawings such as the mannered and brilliant Tobias Healing his Blind Father (1766; Rome, Accad. N. S Luca). However, Cades had to leave Corvi’s studio c. 1766, as Corvi apparently resented his pupil’s excessive independence (Lanzi).

In the early 1770s Cades started to receive important commissions. His first large canvases were the Martyrdom of St Benignus (1774; San Benigno Canavese, Fruttuaria Abbey), which continues the classical tradition of late 17th-century Italian painting, and the ...

Article

Gianni Mezzanotte

(b Milan, June 9, 1762; d Inverigo, Como, Aug 14, 1833).

Italian architect and diplomat. From 1776 he attended the Collegio Pio Clementino, Rome, and while there he developed an interest in architecture, studying ancient buildings and monuments. Following his return to Milan (c. 1780) his geometrical designs for Neo-classical buildings attracted attention. This interest in architecture was combined with his study of law at the University of Padua (1781–2) and the later holding of various public offices, in keeping with his noble birth, including that of commissioner to the Austrian armed forces (until 1796). He presented a design for a toll-gate for the Porta Orientale, Milan, in competition with Giuseppe Piermarini. He also contributed a series of measured drawings to the first volume of Angelo Fumagalli’s Delle antichità longobardico–milanesi (1792), which probably depict the remains of the Imperial Baths of Hercules. From an early date in his career it was clear that when working on historic buildings his guiding principle was to conform to the style of the original architecture, whatever its period. He followed this criterion in his designs for the façade of Milan Cathedral (...

Article

Charles R. Morscheck jr

(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.

Notizie sulla vita e sulle opere dei principali architetti, scultori e pittori che fiorirono in Milano durante il governo dei Visconti e degli Sforza...

Article

(b Florence, Sept 22, 1807; d Florence, April 7, 1895).

Italian sculptor. The son of the sculptor Pietro Cambi, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti e Liceo Artistico in Florence and in 1833, after winning a four-year stipendium, continued his training in Rome. While there he completed several works in gesso, including a Daphnis and Chloe (1834; Florence, Pitti; marble version, 1841) executed in an academic classical style. He returned to Florence about 1837 and for a time struggled to gain recognition, but by 1841, after having been nominated to, and given a professorship in, the Accademia, he began to obtain numerous important commissions. He gained esteem for his funerary monuments, among them one to the painter Luigi Sabatelli (1844; Florence, Santa Croce) that is noted for its unsparingly realistic depiction of the dying man’s wasted body. Commissions for other memorials followed: Benvenuto Cellini (1845; Florence, Uffizi) and the dramatist Carlo Goldoni (1873...

Article

D. O. Shvidkovsky

(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...

Article

Carlos Cid Priego

(b Mataró, April 12, 1771; d Barcelona, July 7, 1855).

Spanish sculptor and teacher. He began studying at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de la Lonja in Barcelona at the age of 14, and he worked in the studio of Salvador Gurri (fl 1756–1819), a late Baroque sculptor with Neo-classical tendencies. Campeny left the studio after he was attacked by Gurri, who, as a teacher at the Escuela (1785), continued to persecute him and threw him out. Campeny then worked in Lérida, Cervera and Montserrat. He produced his first major work, St Bruno (1795; destr. 1831), in carved polychromed wood. He also trained with Nicolás Traver and José Cabañeras, both late Baroque artists. Stylistically, Campeny began with a moderate and personal naturalism, later assimilating some of the Baroque influences from his Catalan teachers. Readmitted to the Escuela, in 1795 he won a scholarship to complete his studies in Rome, where he went in 1796...

Article

Peter Fidler

[Marcell Armand]

(b Vincennes, 1730; d Vienna, Nov 2, 1786).

French architect and landscape designer, active in Austria. He trained in Paris under Giovanni Niccolò Servandoni, whom he followed to Vienna in 1760. There he worked for the Crown Prince (later Emperor Joseph II (reg 1765–90)), and in 1776 he became Court Architect with responsibility for work in the suburbs of Vienna. Besides numerous architectural monuments, including a triumphal arch (1765) in Innsbruck, Canevale was also commissioned by the Emperor to design several private buildings, as well as summer houses for him in the Prater district of Vienna (1781–4) and on the Laaerberg (1786). Canevale also redesigned the Allgemeines Krankenhaus (the ‘Narrenturm’; 1783), the Josephinum (1783–5), a military medical school founded by the Emperor, and the anatomical theatre in the old university, all in Vienna (see Austria, Federal Republic of §II 4.). Other works included the garden ‘castle’ known as ‘Josephstöckl’ (...

Article

Gianni Mezzanotte

(b Roveredo di Tesserete, nr Lugano, March 9, 1762; d Milan, Feb 7, 1844).

Italian architect and designer. He was a pupil of Giuseppe Piermarini at the Accademia di Brera, Milan, and later his assistant and collaborator. After the establishment of French rule in 1796, Canonica was appointed State Architect of Milan, replacing Piermarini who was too closely identified with the previous Habsburg regime. He was influenced by contemporary work in France and produced designs conforming closely to the directives of the French administration in Milan under Eugène de Beauharnais. He was not interested in the political and moral aspects of his work but designed formal and functional Neo-classical buildings.

In 1800 Canonica made a plan for a ‘Città Bonaparte’ to be built on an area to be made available by the demolition of parts of Milan’s Castello Sforzesco. This was the first idea for the ‘Foro Bonaparte’, a new administrative centre for the city, for which Giovanni Antonio Antolini also submitted a proposal that was initially accepted but subsequently rejected (...

Article

Giuseppe Pavanello

(b Possagno, nr Treviso, Nov 1, 1757; d Venice, Oct 13, 1822).

Italian sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and architect. He became the most innovative and widely acclaimed Neo-classical sculptor. His development during the 1780s of a new style of revolutionary severity and idealistic purity led many of his contemporaries to prefer his ideal sculptures to such previously universally admired antique statues as the Medici Venus and the Farnese Hercules, thus greatly increasing the prestige of ‘modern’ sculpture. He was also much in demand as a portraitist, often combining a classicizing format with a naturalistic presentation of features.

Antonio Canova was the son of Pietro Canova (1735–61), a stonecutter of Possagno. He was brought up by his grandfather, Pasino Canova (1714–94), a mediocre sculptor who specialized in altars with statues and low reliefs in late Baroque style (e.g. Angels; Crespano, S Marco). In 1770 or 1771 Antonio was apprenticed to the sculptor Giuseppe Bernardi (d 1774) in Pagnano, near Asolo, later following him to Venice. After Bernardi’s death he worked for a few months in the studio of the sculptor ...

Article

(b Mendrisio, Ticino, Sept 2, 1739; d Gorgonzola, March 18, 1818).

Italian architect. He came from a family of artists and architects who worked in Genoa. He first studied with his father, an engineer, but in 1763 he moved to Rome, where he worked under Luigi Vanvitelli and surveyed ancient Roman remains with Francesco Lavega. He completed his studies in 1768 at the new academy at Parma under Ennemond-Alexandre Petitot. He built extensively in Lombardy and contributed to the introduction of French-inspired classicism into Milan. Cantoni chose to establish himself in Milan in 1768, rather than in Genoa like his family, but he was faced with strong competition from Giuseppe Piermarini, who eventually took over all the official commissions of the period. Cantoni found patronage among the Milanese nobility, for whom he built numerous palazzi and villas in and around Milan in the fashionable Neo-classical style. His first commission in Milan was for the renovation of the Palazzo Mellerio (1772–4...

Article

John Turpin

(b Tramore, Co. Waterford, c. 1782; d London, Nov 30, 1868).

British sculptor. Possibly the son of an Irish sculptor, he may have received some instruction in Dublin before going to London, where he assisted Sir Richard Westmacott from 1809 to 1823 and set up his own studio in 1821. His marble Arethusa (Petworth House, W. Sussex, NT) was bought by George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, in 1823. This led to a close association with Egremont; Petworth House has a superb collection of Carew’s work in marble, including Adonis and the Bear (1826), The Falconer (1831) and Prometheus and Pandora (1838), all examples of his Neo-classical mythologies, and a series of busts, one of which is a portrait of Egremont (1831).

Carew also made commemorative marble statues of public figures, including William Huskisson (1833; Chichester Cathedral), Edmund Kean (1835; London, Drury Lane Theat.) and his best-known, Sir Richard Whittington Listening to the London Bells...

Article

Ivan Hall

(b Horbury, W. Yorks, May 15, 1723; d Askham Richard, N. Yorks, Feb 22, 1807).

English architect. He was the son of Robert Carr, a mason and county surveyor, with whom he trained and later collaborated; together they surveyed the county bridges of West Riding, Yorks, from around 1752. Carr built mostly in the north of England, where his contacts with the county magistrates in Yorkshire and his support for the Whig Party brought him to the notice of influential patrons, who furthered his professional career. This proved to be prolific and wide-ranging. Though it was based on Burlingtonian principles his style was eclectic enough to accommodate Baroque, Rococo or Neo-classical motifs, and he was influenced by his rivals William Kent, James Paine, William Chambers and Robert Adam, although his work is readily distinguishable from theirs. Early houses such as Huthwaite Hall (1748), N. Yorks, or Arncliffe Hall (c. 1750–54), N. Yorks, owed much to contemporary pattern books, but at Harewood House (...

Article

Peter Walch

(b Sanct Gürgen, nr Schleswig, Denmark [now Germany], May 10, 1754; d Rome, May 2, 1798).

Danish–German painter and draughtsman. Both Denmark and Germany claim him as their own in their national histories of art, but his greatest impact was on the international group of artists gathered in the last decade of the 18th century in Rome, where Carstens spent his last and most productive years. His severe Neo-classical drawing style and, to an even greater extent, his romantically charged commitment to art influenced such younger artists as Bertel Thorvaldsen and Joseph Anton Koch. Carstens’s life is excellently documented by Karl Ludwig Fernow, who knew the artist as a young man in Germany and was his closest friend during his mature years in Rome.

According to Fernow, Carstens spurned as too stifling an offered apprenticeship with Johann Heinrich Tischbein (i); instead he trained for five years as a cooper. In 1776 he began his fine arts studies at the Copenhagen Academy, where his masters included ...

Article

Gérard Hubert

(b Paris, Dec 22, 1757; d Paris, June 12, 1831).

French sculptor. He was the son of a locksmith and studied at the Ecole Gratuite de Dessin, Paris, and then in the studio of Charles-Antoine Bridan and at the Académie Royale. He failed to win the Prix de Rome and began to earn his living modelling decorative motifs for bronze founders. He also worked as an assistant to Joseph Deschamps (1743–88) on decorative sculpture for Queen Marie-Antoinette at the châteaux of Trianon and Saint-Cloud, near Versailles, taking over from Deschamps on his death. During the French Revolution he was one of a number of sculptors who collaborated on Antoine Quatremère de Quincy’s scheme to turn the church of Ste Geneviève, Paris, into a mausoleum, the Panthéon, to which he contributed a stone relief representing Force and Prudence (1792–3; destr.). He exhibited a terracotta statuette of Friendship (priv. col., see Hubert, 1980, p. 7, fig.) in the 1796...