Luigi Vanvitelli
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Luigi Vanvitelli (May 12, 1700 – March 1, 1773) was an Italian engineer and architect. The most prominent 18th-century architect of Italy, he practiced a sober classicizing academic Late Baroque style that made an easy transition to Neoclassicism.
[edit] Biography
Vanvitelli was born at Naples, the son of a Dutch painter, Caspar van Wittel.
He trained in Rome by the architect Niccolò Salvi, with whom he worked on realizing the Trevi Fountain. Following his notable successes in the competitions for the facade of the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano (1732) and the facade of Palazzo Poli behind the Trevi Fountain, Pope Clement XII sent him to the Marche to realize some papal projects. At Ancona in 1732, he devised the vast Lazzaretto, a pentagonal building covering more than 20,000 square meters, built to protect the military defensive authorities from the risk of contagious diseases eventually reaching the town with the ships. Later it was used also as a military hospital or as barracks.
In Rome, Vanvitelli knew how to stabilize the dome of St. Peter's Basilica when it developed cracks and found time to paint frescos in a chapel at Sant Cecilia in Trastevere.
His technical and engineering capabilities, together with Vanvitelli's sense of scenographic drama induced Charles VII of Naples to commission the great project of his Palace of Caserta, intended as a fresh start for administering the ungovernable Kingdom of Naples. Vanvitelli worked on the project for the rest of his life, for Charles and for his successor Ferdinand IV. In Naples he designed the city's Palazzo Reale (1753) and some aristocratic palaces, and churches. His engineering talents were exercised as well: for Caserta he devised the great aqueduct system that brought water to run the cascades and fountains.
He built a bridge over the Calore in Benevento.
Luigi Vanvitelli died at Caserta in 1773.
[edit] External link
- [1] Riccardo Cigola, brief biography of Vanvitelli
