Search Results

(b Paris, Nov 9, 1812; d Chatou, Aug 2, 1884).

French architect and restorer. He was the son of a Neo-classical architect of the same name (1783–1868), who was a pupil of Charles Percier and architect to the département of Charente. The younger Paul Abadie began studying architecture in 1832 by joining the atelier of Achille Leclère and then entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1835. While he was following this classical training, he participated in the rediscovery of the Middle Ages by going on archaeological trips and then, from 1844, in his capacity as attaché to the Commission des Monuments Historiques. He undertook his first restoration work at Notre-Dame de Paris, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc. Abadie was appointed deputy inspector at Notre-Dame in 1845, and in 1848, when the department responsible for diocesan buildings was created, he was appointed architect to the dioceses of Périgueux, Angoulême and Cahors. He subsequently completed about 40 restoration projects, mainly on Romanesque churches in Charente, in the Dordogne and the Gironde, and as a diocesan architect he was put in charge of two large cathedrals in his district: St Pierre d’Angoulême and St Front de Périgueux. In the former he undertook a huge programme of ‘completion’, returning to a stylistic unity that was in line with current episcopal policy (...

(b Copenhagen, Sept 11, 1743; d Frederiksdal, Copenhagen, June 4, 1809).

Danish painter, designer and architect. His paintings reveal both Neo-classical and Romantic interests and include history paintings as well as literary and mythological works. The variety of his subject-matter reflects his wide learning, a feature further evidenced by the broad range of his creative output. In addition to painting, he produced decorative work, sculpture and furniture designs, as well as being engaged as an architect. Successfully combining both intellectual and imaginative powers, he came to be fully appreciated only in the 1980s.

He studied at the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi in Copenhagen (1764–72), and in 1767 he assisted Johan Edvard Mandelberg (1730–86) in painting the domed hall of the Fredensborg Slot with scenes from the Homeric epic the Iliad. In 1772 he was granted a five-year travelling scholarship from the Kunstakademi to study in Rome. During his Roman sojourn he extensively copied works of art from the period of antiquity up to that of the Carracci family. His friendships with the Danish painter Jens Juel, the Swedish sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel and the Swiss painter Johann Heinrich Fuseli placed him among artists who were in the mainstream of a widespread upheaval in European art. In these years Abildgaard developed both Neo-classical and Romantic tastes; his masterpiece of the period is ...

(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 Braga, 1748; d Oporto, 1815).

Portuguese architect and military engineer. He was the most distinguished of the late 18th-century architects of northern Portugal, where he introduced the new spirit of Neo-classicism. He was the son of a musician at the episcopal court at Braga, whose protection and influence were valuable to him. Working in Braga during a period of transition, Amarante ended the architectural tradition inherited from André Ribeiro Soares da Silva, and, although he lacked Soares’s creativity, he made an important contribution to the city. Amarante’s later work in Oporto was in a more developed Neo-classical style and was an integral part of the new face of that city.

Though he trained as a military engineer, his first activity was designing rocaille ornament. His source for the new aesthetic forms may have been Jacques-François Blondel’s Cours d’architecture (Paris, 1773), lent to him by the royal archbishop, Dom Gaspar de Braganza (1716–89). His first contract, won in competition with João Bernardes de Silva, was for a design, submitted 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 Santa Giusta degli Abruzzi, Sept 22, 1760; d Naples, June 22, 1853).

Italian draughtsman and painter. He trained in Rome under Marco Caprinozzi and was a pupil of Domenico Corvi at the Accademia di San Luca. The greatest influence on his work, however, was the style of Jacques-Louis David. Angelini soon distinguished himself as a skilled draughtsman and collaborated with the engravers Giovanni Volpato and Raphael Morghen on Principi del disegno tratti delle più eccellenti statue antiche (Rome, 1786), a work that was of fundamental importance in disseminating the Neo-classical style, particularly through the teaching of the academies. About 1790 Angelini travelled to Naples at the request of William Hamilton (i), the British Consul, in order to draw the antique vases in his collection (published Naples, 1791–5). His work was admired by several other collectors in Naples and in 1799 he was commissioned to draw the antique vases of the Marchese Vivenzio (published c. 1900).

With the introduction of French Neo-classicism in Naples, Angelini became the artist best able to respond to the demands of the new taste. In ...

(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 Ghemme, Novara, July 14, 1798; d Maggiora, Novara, Aug 18, 1888).

Italian architect and urban planner. He was the most prominent Neo-classical 19th-century architect in Piedmont, with a long and prolific career that included designs for houses, churches and major urban planning schemes. He trained at the Accademia di Brera, Milan, and the Politecnico, Turin, qualifying in 1824. Shortly afterwards he won a scholarship to Rome, where he remained until 1831. This long period of Classical studies profoundly influenced his career. One of his first commissions on his return to Piedmont was the completion of the church of S Agapito, Maggiora. Begun in 1817 by Giuseppe Zanoia (1752–1817), the church was completed in 1838; Antonelli’s work included the portico and the complex Neo-classical interior, with richly coffered, decorated vaults and a dome on pendentives. His next work was the Santuario del Crocefisso at Boca, near Maggiora. Begun in 1830, the design underwent many revisions and was not completed until ...

(b Lobositz [now Lovosice], May 27, 1793; d Kremsier [now Kroměříž], Nov 7, 1851).

Bohemian architect, active in Moravia. He studied at the Royal Professional Polytechnical Institute in Prague under Georg Fischer (1768–1828), in whose office he subsequently worked. During the 1820s he worked on two Bohemian estates of the Chotek family, becoming involved in the final stages of building their country house at Kačina (1802–22), by Christian Friedrich Schuricht (1753–1832) and building some of the many follies in the park at Veltrusy. From 1832 until his death Arche worked in the office of works of the archdiocese of Olmütz (now Olomouc) at Kremsier, in Moravia, becoming director (1833) and later counsellor (1838). Arche worked in two styles, the Neo-classical, for which he derived his ideas from contemporary engravings and particularly the Leipzig Ideenmagazin, and the Gothic Revival, which he used in some of his remodellings. Soon after his arrival at Kremsier, he remodelled (...

(b Hamburg, Oct 2, 1757; d Pisa, Aug 18, 1806).

German architect, draughtsman, landscape designer and painter. He studied from 1778 to 1783 at the University of Göttingen and the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, where he was awarded four prizes. His early designs included drawings for the hothouse of the botanic gardens in Copenhagen and a lecture room at Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. While visiting Paris in 1784–5 he devoted himself to the study of Revolutionary architecture, and in England and Italy (1786) he studied landscape design and ancient sites. In Rome in 1787 he met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who later summoned him to Weimar to rebuild the prince’s Schloss. In addition to a number of designs for the palace at Weimar he produced drawings for various summer-houses. In 1790 he moved to Hamburg, his plans for the Schloss at Weimar still largely unexecuted. By the end of his life he had designed numerous public buildings and private houses in Hamburg, including the house for Bürgermeister ...

(b Florence, June 6, 1792; d Florence, July 12, 1867).

Italian architect . He studied under Giuseppe Cacialli at the school of architecture of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, which was directed by Gasparo Maria Paoletti, the leader of the Neo-classical architectural movement in Tuscany. In 1812 Baccani was awarded first prize for architecture in the Accademia’s prestigious triennial competition with a design for a prison, a project that already demonstrated the principal characteristic of Baccani’s work, his alternation between a Neo-classical vocabulary and a medieval, Romantic one. Indeed, his earliest executed works in Florence were the Gothic Revival tower (1817–21) in the garden of the Marchesi Torrigiani in the Via dei Serragli, and the Neo-classical Palazzo Borghese (1821) in the Via Ghibellina. In 1824 he succeeded Cacialli as architect to Florence Cathedral, and in 1826, when the cathedral square was extended to the south, he designed the adaptation and new façade of the Canonica di S Maria del Fiore. He also directed the remodelling of numerous houses in Florence, including the Palazzo Brignole-Durazzo (...

(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 (...

(b 1753; d Dublin, 1836).

Irish architect. He was a pupil of Thomas Ivory and worked in the office of James Gandon whose commission at the King’s Inns, Dublin, he inherited. He succeeded Ivory as Master of the Dublin Society’s School of Architectural Drawing and held the post from 1787 to his death. His reputation has in the past been obscured by mis-attributions and, on the basis of his small known oeuvre, it is not possible to assign to him an individual style.

Baker was placed first in the competition of 1803 for designs for converting the Parliament House in Dublin into a bank, though the commission went to Francis Johnston. Although Baker’s unexecuted design paid homage to Gandon, it dealt less sensitively with Edward Lovett Pearce’s building than had Gandon in his own late 18th-century additions to the building. Baker’s plan has grand processional spaces but is rambling. His most impressive designs were those he produced for the Wide Streets Commissioners in Dublin ...

(b Gochenée, May 15, 1818; d Ixelles, Brussels, Sept 16, 1895).

Belgian architect. He studied in Namur and at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he won a medal (1838) for architectural composition. After further studies in Paris in 1840 he settled in Namur, where he taught for six years. In 1852 he became architect to the Duke of Brabant (later Leopold II, King of Belgium), an important future patron. Balat’s work in the Neo-classical style appealed to the Walloon nobility, who commissioned him to modernize or redecorate many châteaux in the current taste, including Seilles (1850), Mirwart (c. 1855), Dave (1858) and Presles (1885). Balat undertook a wide range of commissions, mostly in Brussels, ranging from simple buildings to grand town houses, for example the hôtel (1856–8) for the Marquis d’Assche in Place Frère-Orban (see Belgium, Kingdom of, §II, 4). The numerous commissions for interior decoration or remodelling included the covered market of La Madeleine (...

Art school in Bansko, south-east Bulgaria, that flourished from the late 18th century to the end of the 19th. The Bansko school artists worked on the decorative painting of houses and churches, and produced architectural designs, frescoes and icons. The first well-known artist in Bansko, and the founder of the school, was Toma Vishanov (b c. 1750), called Molera, who studied painting in Vienna in the second half of the 18th century. There are strong Baroque and Rococo elements in his icons and church frescoes, which also show traditional orthodox scenery and the influence of Western Catholic art. Vishanov’s successors—his son, Dimitar Vishanov Molerov (d 1868), his grandson, Simeon Dimitrov Molerov (1816–1903), and his great-grandson, Georgi Simeonov Molerov (1844–78)—did not adopt his artistic views. Instead, as masters of line and colour, they followed the Creto-Athonite style of 18th- and 19th-century Bulgaria, working in the south-east of the country, in ...

(b Genoa, Feb 11, 1768; d Genoa, Sept 3, 1835).

Italian architect . He was a major architect in Genoa during the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic eras. He first studied in Genoa, from 1785, at the Accademia Ligustica and then in Rome, from 1788, under Giuseppe Barberi (1746–1809); he received prizes in the competitions of the Accademia di S Luca (1789) and the Accademia Parmense (1792). His drawings (Genoa, Pal. Rosso) show that he was strongly influenced on the one hand by Giovanni Battista Piranesi and the architecture of antiquity, and on the other by the architecture parlante of the French Enlightenment and in particular the more decorative tendencies of Charles de Wailly. Barabino was able to use these disparate influences in the period of renewed civic confidence in Genoa after the departure of the French in 1815 and the subsequent cession of the city to the House of Savoy.

Although Barabino returned to Genoa in ...

(b Savignano, nr Prato, Jan 7, 1777; d Florence, Jan 20, 1850).

Italian sculptor and draughtsman. He was one of the most independent-minded sculptors in Italy in the generation after Antonio Canova. His early work is in the Neo-classical style predominant throughout Europe around the turn of the century. While in the Paris studio of Jacques-Louis David he became interested in the art of the Quattrocento, an interest confirmed when he settled in Florence after 1815. His later works combine Neo-classical and neo-Renaissance elements with, particularly in his portraits, a strong taste for naturalism. In 1812 he held a series of classes at the Florentine Accademia di Belle Arti, astonishing his colleagues by instructing his model to take up a series of instantaneous and casual poses, instead of the customary carefully contrived stance taken from a famous work of art. In 1839 he was made a professor at the Accademia, and again overturned traditional academic notions, this time by presenting the pupils in the life class with a hunchbacked model. (For a detailed discussion of Bartolini’s unusual views on the imitation of nature see ...

(b Kingsessing, PA, Feb 9, 1739; d Kingsessing, July 22, 1823).

American Naturalist and draughtsman. The son of the Pennsylvania naturalist John Bartram (1699–1777), he executed his first drawings in the 1750s as illustrations to his father’s observations on the flora and fauna of North America. Bartram accompanied his father on numerous collecting trips in the north-eastern colonies and on an expedition to Florida in 1765. His drawings were disseminated to European naturalists by his father’s friend and colleague Peter Collinson (1694–1768), an English merchant who was an important promoter of natural science in the 18th century. Compositionally, Bartram’s early works were structured after etchings by the English naturalists Mark Catesby and George Edwards (1694–1773). These artists were among the first to present organisms as part of their larger physical habitats—a practice that Bartram carried forward in his own work, challenging the traditional notion that organisms can be defined solely according to their own physical attributes. Through his drawings Bartram explored the complex interchange that occurs between animals and plants and their environmental contexts, defying the notion that individual organisms fall naturally into an abstract, hierarchical chain of being. He characteristically employed an undulating line that imparts energy to all the elements of a scene, suggesting that the whole of organic creation is united by a single, animated spirit....

(b London, April 1, 1794; d Ely, Oct 16, 1845).

English architect. He was born into a wealthy and cultured family related to the Disraelis and the Ricardos, and he trained in John Soane’s office (1810–16), receiving what was then probably the best architectural education available in England, as in his watercolour of the staircase of Gower House, London (1813; London, Soane Mus.; see Chambers, william, fig.). In 1816 he began a tour of Italy and Greece, which was recorded in letters to his family (untraced; typescript London, Soane Mus.) and in drawings and sketches (London, Soane Mus.; see Jordan). After travelling via Paris to Turin, Florence, Rome, Venice and Vicenza, a meeting with C. R. Cockerell in Rome (1817) persuaded him to visit Greece; during 1818 he went via Naples to Thessaly, Constantinople and Athens, returning to Rome via Sicily.

In June 1819 Basevi was back in London at a moment when building activity was expanding after the depressed years immediately following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. His earliest commissions were minor alteration works for family friends or business acquaintances. In ...

English family of engravers. Isaac Basire (1704–68) worked as an engraver in London. His son (John) James Basire (i) (b ?London, 6 Oct 1730; d London, 6 Sept 1802) became known as an engraver of architecture and was employed on the first volume of James Stuart’s and Nicholas Revett’s The Antiquities of Athens (1762). In 1763 he travelled in Italy; around that time he succeeded George Vertue as Engraver to the Society of Antiquaries, and he became Engraver to the Royal Society in 1770. He contributed fine prints to Vetusta monumenta, produced for the Antiquaries, and other publications; he also engraved many individually issued prints, notably one after Benjamin West’s Pylades and Orestes (1766), one of the first prints of a contemporary painting published by John Boydell. This was shown in London in 1770 at the Free Society of Artists exhibition; between ...