SCENOGRAPHY. — It is properly the art of painting stage scenery for theatrical performances, but since it is evident that the unity of a spectacle demands a coordination of all the elements that compose it, scenography cannot be conceived as something standing apart; rather, it is a more or less important element in the various historical epochs of representation.
It will not seem strange, then, that in recent times the term *scenotecnica* (stagecraft) has been used instead, as it is more suited to defining the complex interplay of a performance, ranging from scenography in the strictest sense to lighting, costumes, and even the very form of the stage or, indeed, of the hall in which the performance takes place.
It is clear, in fact, how important these latter elements are; and it is precisely to their form that one must turn to understand the spectacle in classical antiquity. The broad, semicircular steps descending along the natural slopes of a hill, down to the level where the orchestra lies and in the center of which stands the altar of Dionysus, make it perfectly clear how even in this ancient spectacle (as in the medieval one) the origin is to be traced back to religious manifestations, which implied a communion between actors and spectators far closer than can be conceived today. When, at a later stage, the stage was raised at the far end of the orchestra, that ideal bond was maintained by the chorus remaining around the altar and accompanying the unfolding of the performance. But with the stage, other elements also emerge that may be said to mark the birth of scenography proper: first in a canvas limiting the back of the stage, on which a perspective was eventually painted to set the scene (Vitruvius records the name of Agatharchus of Samos, who painted the one needed for the production of Aeschylus’s *Oresteia* in 458 B.C.), and then in a permanent stone or marble scene, like the pediment of a building, with three doors for the actors’ exits, while two smaller structures were built at the sides. Later, these were replaced by three-sided rotating prisms (*periaktoi*), allowing the realization of the three principal scenes (tragic, comic, satirical) that composed the ancient spectacle. With the Romans, the theater was no longer carved into a hillside but built in stone and thus raised above ground level; the seating area, reserved by the Greeks for the chorus, now served for the seats of the most distinguished spectators.
In the Middle Ages, theater revived to meet the needs of liturgical drama, again first within the church, around the altar, and then, as more complex dramaturgy took hold, on the churchyard, with the natural backdrop of the religious building’s façade. Characteristic of these performances, derived from liturgical texts and the more complex Mystery plays, is the simultaneous stage set composed of the so-called *luoghi deputati* (assigned places), i.e., the very rudimentary constructions (later revived in Elizabethan theater) of all the locations where the action was to unfold in succession. A scenography that can thus be defined as symbolic and that helps to understand well the choral nature of this essentially religious medieval spectacle.
Its evolution in a secular direction led to its prohibition by ecclesiastical authorities, but in this evolution we also find the origins of a form of spectacle that would continue, in more or less elaborate ways, into modern times; and it is enough to recall, to underscore its importance, that the earliest representation of a Mystery play in a closed hall—i.e., in a proper theater—dates perhaps to 1308 (the Passion at St-Maur-Les-Fossés).
The medieval type of spectacle continued even into the early Renaissance (one need only recall Brunelleschi’s ingenious devices), and it was only toward the end of the 15th century that the new scientific laws of rediscovered perspective intervened in its evolution, with the creation of true and proper stage sets, such as those that would soon become famous—those of Baldassarre Peruzzi, of Raphael (for Ariosto’s *I Suppositi* in Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome in 1519), of Giulio Romano, and others—while Sebastiano Serlio, in his *Trattato di Architettura* of 1553, codified the rules of this new Renaissance theater. A theater that, naturally, could not but also witness a more complex structural realization of the hall itself and of the stage; suffice it to recall the famous Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, designed by Palladio and built by Scamozzi, and that of Sabbioneta (also entirely in wood, like the first), the work of the same Scamozzi.
The Baroque period was one of great scenic revolutions, which accompanied the evolution of spectacle from commedia dell’arte to melodrama and, especially as intermezzi grew increasingly popular, pushed scenographers toward ever more complex and wondrous inventions, particularly for the purpose of stage transformations. It was a period in which Italians enjoyed the greatest prestige on stages throughout Europe, and the case of Torelli remains famous: in France, his mechanisms so amazed audiences that he was given the title and accusation of sorcerer.
It was the century of Burnacini (1636–1707), of the Bibiena family, inventors of *perspectiva d’angolo* (angled perspective), which made possible astonishing spatial illusions, of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (though he was more a stage machinist than a true scenographer), and of the Jesuit Andrea Pozzo, codifier of Baroque scenography, just as Serlio had been for the Renaissance. In the 18th century, we recall F. Juvara (1676–1736), V. Bigari, P. Aldrovandi, S. Orlandi, M. Tesi, G. and B. Galliari, as well as G. B. Piranesi, who, though he left no true scenographies, was nonetheless a master to many 19th-century Romantic scenographers through his engravings.
19th-century scenography ended up reflecting the taste of the dominant aesthetic theories, resulting in a “Neoclassical” scenography that slavishly adhered to historical styles and a pictorial, “illustrative” scenography tinged with Romanticism. Among the most representative were Antonio Basoli and Francesco Cocchi of Bologna, and the Milanese Carlo Ferrario.
Modern scenography asserts itself with the reaction against Romanticism in the overly realistic theories of the Théâtre Libre in Paris (1887) and with the reaction against realism by French Symbolism in the *Théâtre mixte* of P. Fort (later the *Théâtre d’art*).