Architecture and Perspective in the Set Drawings of the Galli Bibiena

At the end of the seventeenth century, a revolutionary process in themes and techniques involves painting. The perspective’s rationality becomes the pretext for subverting the foundations and illusive dynamics of the architectural representation. In those years, quadratura painting and stage design become for the artists a common field of experimentation and spatial research. In this context, the artistic production of the Galli Bibiena both in scenographic and architectural field, it seems to have played a key role. This paper, after examining the relations between perspective painting and theatre scenes, and between built architecture and architectural imagery, focuses on a perspective analysis of the scene “drawing” of the Galli Bibiena. The aim has been to use perspective drawings as real project prefigurations, giving back through strict photogrammetry procedures, a great practicality and virtual materiality to the spaces and architectures simulated on the two-dimensions of the flat surface.