Review: Studio d’Architettura Civile: Gli atlanti di architettura moderna e la diffusione dei modelli romani nell’Europa del Settecento, by Aloisio Antinori, ed.

Abstract

Aloisio Antinori, ed. Studio d’Architettura Civile: Gli atlanti di architettura moderna e la diffusione dei modelli romani nell’Europa del Settecento Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2012, 312 pp., 55 color and 232 b/w illus. €40 (paper), €25 (e-book), ISBN 9788871405070 The Studio d’Architettura Civile , published in three volumes by Domenico de’ Rossi (Rome, 1702–21), is one of the most beautifully produced architecture books of its time. It also constituted an essential reference and source of inspiration for patrons, architects, and amateurs in eighteenth-century Europe as well as comprising a powerful instrument of the promotion of Roman baroque aesthetics and vocabulary. De’ Rossi’s Studio —a facsimile of which was published in 1972—contains 287 folio plates organized into three volumes according to three thematic areas: doors and windows; chapels, altars, and tombs; and plans, elevations, and cross sections of both sacred and secular buildings.1 Roman buildings largely dominate the plates of the Studio , but some Florentine and Neapolitan examples are also included. As for architects, Michelangelo, Borromini, and Bernini are the best represented, but much space is also dedicated to later generations, including Camillo Arcucci, Giovanni Antonio de’ Rossi, Matteo de’ Rossi, and Carlo Fontana. The plates, of excellent quality, were produced after drawings made by Alessandro Specchi, which were orthographic representations in line with the practice of the Accademia di San Luca. Engravers of the caliber of Specchi, Francesco Aquila, Vincenzo Franceschini, Antonio Barbey, and Filippo Vasconi executed these plates. Yet this extraordinary work of art has so far received little attention; although an abundant literature is available on the engravers involved in its making, the Studio itself and the workshop of de’ Rossi have remained long ignored by historians.2 The volume edited by Aloisio Antinori is dedicated to the production of the Studio d’Architettura and to its reception in eighteenth-century Europe, and it is the final output of an international collaborative research project carried out since 2008, the first results of which were presented as conference papers in Parma in 2012 (“Libri, incisioni e immagini di …