Architectural and Perspective Designs (Dover Pictorial Archives)

Rating:
Summary: Filled with Fantastic Fantasy
Review: Baroque heaven comes to life with these fifty beautiful engravings in this Dover Archive volume. Truly inspired and imaginative, they provide a treasure trove of visions to anyone interested in art or architecture. The generously sized pages are over 10" x 13" to clearly reveal the profusion of minute details. This ingenius theatrical engineer and architect under the patronage of Charles VI's Viennese court masters an amazing array of projects. Reproduced from the rare volume of 50 expert engravings of Bibiena's scenic drawings that was financed by the infamous Hapsburg Dynasty in 1740. This remarkable visual reference easily wins my most enthusiastic recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: Baroque Theater Design at Its Most Fantastic
Review: I bought this book because the Bibiena family were such a profound influence on the spatial perceptions of Piranesi. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this single family, from Northern Italy, created a series of increasingly ingenious stage designs for, especially, the Hapsburgs. Much of what they created was deliberately perishable and is now lost, although the great theater in Mantua survives. This book gives the plates from Giuseppe's book on architectural designs. They are extraordinary, really the culmination of a great Baroque tradition. Particularly effective are the interior designs, which use elaborate perspective in order to suggest infinite space. The presentation of the plates in this book is not especially polished, but still pretty good.

Rating:
Summary: Baroque Theater Design at Its Most Fantastic
Review: I bought this book because the Bibiena family were such a profound influence on the spatial perceptions of Piranesi. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this single family, from Northern Italy, created a series of increasingly ingenious stage designs for, especially, the Hapsburgs. Much of what they created was deliberately perishable and is now lost, although the great theater in Mantua survives. This book gives the plates from Giuseppe's book on architectural designs. They are extraordinary, really the culmination of a great Baroque tradition. Particularly effective are the interior designs, which use elaborate perspective in order to suggest infinite space. The presentation of the plates in this book is not especially polished, but still pretty good.