VANVITELLI, LUIGI. - Architect, b. in Naples on 26 May 1700, d. at Caserta on 1 March 1773. Son of the Dutch view painter Gaspare Van Vittel, he was set by him to the study of drawing; he was then a pupil of Filippo Juvara (v.), and first a fellow student, later a colleague, of Nicola Salvi.
Among V.'s works the following may usefully be recalled: Rome: extension of the facade of the Palazzo Olescalchi, a work by Bernini; Ancona: the Lazzaretto (1734), the Clementine arch, the church of the Gesù (1746), the chapel of the relics in S. Ciriaco; Siena: project for the rearrangement and transformation of the church of S. Domenico; Perugia: project for the church and convent of the Olivetans; Macerata: project for the church of the Misericordia; Loreto: completion of the bell tower of the Basilica, etc. But V. gave the full measure of himself in Rome and at Caserta. In Rome, in fact, he transformed with intelligence and a marvellous sense of space some of the great halls of the Baths of Diocletian into the grandiose basilica of S. Maria degli Angeli. The work had already been begun by Michelangelo, and he provided the designs and directed the construction of the convent of the Augustinians (1746); at Caserta he built the Royal Palace. This is one of the greatest Italian architectural undertakings of the 18th century; it was commissioned from V. by Charles III of Bourbon in 1751 and consists of a complex of buildings and gardens which, in the monarch's intentions, was to rival the famous Versailles. But from that French example V.'s work clearly differed through a quite different sense of architectural values and of scenographic taste, much contested in V., so much so that there has even been talk, though improperly, of forms that prelude to the neoclassical. Among V.'s other Neapolitan works are remembered the church of the S. Annunziata, the layout of the Foro Carolino, the Palazzo d'Angiò and the villa of the prince of Campolieto at Resina.
V., proceeding along the path marked out for him by Juvara but working with accents of his own, is one of the most significant exponents of that architectural taste typical of the mid-18th century which may be defined as neo-Cinquecento. A taste in which, reacting against the emphasis and the artists of the Baroque and Rococo, some of the most up-to-date and modern architects of the time showed that they wished to go back to the examples of Vignola and of the most austere Cinquecento masters, and this in harmony with the ideas that had long been expressed, in the footsteps of the Belloni, by theorists and philosophers. - See plate XCIII.
