BIBIENA, FAMILY OF. - Theatrical architects and decorators, surnamed Galli, originally from Bibbiena. The founder of the family was GIOVANNI MARIA; apprenticed in Albani's workshop around 1642, he worked until 1665. His sons FRANCESCO and FERDINANDO were the most significant artists of the family. The former (1659-1739) built the Alibert theater in Rome (1720) and the Filarmonico in Verona, and worked at foreign courts where his stage sets were much sought after. The latter (1657-1743) worked for 28 years in the duchy of Parma, where he built and decorated civil and sacred buildings (the church of St. Anthony Abbot) and designed numerous stage sets. In 1708 he was summoned to Barcelona by King Charles III, whom he then followed to Vienna when the latter was elected emperor of Germany. The codification of F. B.'s perspectives is found in his treatises on perspectival theory; fundamental for 18th-century scenographic architecture is the Architettura civile preparata sulla geometria e ridotta alla prospettiva (1711), in which the method of the "corner view" ("veduta d'angolo"), devised by F., is extensively demonstrated.

Ferdinando's sons continued the family tradition: ANTONIO (1700-74) was in Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Belgrade (his funeral apparatuses in Vienna and Pressburg for the obsequies of Charles VI [1740] were famous). He was also intensely active in Italy: in Siena he worked in the church of St. Augustine (after 1753); he executed the pictorial decorations of the church of the Greeks in Livorno (c. 1763), those of the dome of St. Maria della Vita in Bologna, and in that same city he worked in the Fontana Muratori chapel in St. Maria dei Foscheroni. He painted stage sets and built theaters in Siena, Pistoia, Pavia, etc. Ferdinando's other son, GIUSEPPE (1696-1757), worked for a long time in Vienna, where he arranged wedding festivities, triumphs, stage sets, sacred representations (those of the Passion were famous), and funeral apparatuses. His son CARLO (1728-80), the last of the family, worked for a long time in Munich and was sought after in Holland, France, and England.

The B., endowed with lively decorative talent and rich in imagination, were the most skillful creators of perspectival illusions; through their work, of which only numerous drawings scattered through the cities of Europe remain, they expressed the most spontaneous manifestation of scenography and of Baroque taste.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: O. Pollak, s. v. in Thieme-Becker, III, pp. 596-604 (with bibl.); C. Ricci, I B., Milan 1915 (with bibl.); G. Rouchès, Les Dessins des B. au Musée du Louvre, offprint from Etudes italiennes 1928-29; V. Mariani, Storia della scenografia italiana, Florence 1930, pp. 57-61; N. Pelicelli, Artisti parmigiani all'estero. I Galli B. di Parma, in Crisopoli, 3 (1935), pp. 29-40; I B. scenografi, Mostra dei loro disegni, schizzi e bozzetti, Florence 1940 (with bibl.). For B. Ferdinando, cf. also: D. Cavaliere, Due disegni inediti di F. B., in Aurea Parma, 20 (1936), pp. 131-33. Some original drawings by B. are held by the library of the Istituto di archeologia e storia dell'arte in Rome.

Elsa Gerlini

@incollection{ec2_bibiena_famiglia, author = {Gerlini, Elsa}, title = {Bibiena, famiglia}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {II}, pages = {1588}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/bibiena-famiglia} }

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Bibiena, Family of

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