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Luigi Vanvitelli (May 12, 1700, Naples
Naples

Naples is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old....
 – March 1 1773, Caserta
Caserta

Caserta is the capital of the province of Caserta in the Campania region of Italy. It is an important agricultural, commercial and industrial comune and city....
) was an Italian engineer and architect. The most prominent eighteenth-century architect of Italy, he practiced a sober classicizing academic
Academy

An academy is an institution of higher learning, research, or honorary membership.The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, north of Ancient Athens, Greece....
 Late Baroque
Baroque

In the the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural Epoch , starting roughly at the beginning of the 17th century in Rome, Italy. It was exemplified by drama and grandeur in Baroque sculpture, Baroque painting, literature, Baroque dance, and Baroque music....
 style that made an easy transition to Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to quite distinct Cultural movement in the Decorative art and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw upon Western classical art and culture ....
.

itelli was born at Naples, the son of a Dutch painter of land and cityscpapes (veduta
Veduta

A veduta is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting of a cityscape or some other vista.This genre of landscape art originated in Flanders, where artists such as Paul Brill painted vedute as early as the 16th century....
), Caspar van Wittel
Caspar van Wittel

Gaspar van Wittel was a Dutch landscape painter.Van Wittel learned painting in his hometown of Amersfoort. His first extant works were made in Hoorn in 1672, but he relocated to Rome with his family ca....
, who also goes by the name Vanvitelli.

He was trained in Rome by the architect Nicola Salvi
Nicola Salvi

Nicola Salvi or Niccol? Salvi was an Italy architect most famous for the Trevi Fountain in Rome, where he was born and died. His work is in the late Roman Baroque architecture style....
, with whom he worked on construction of the Trevi Fountain
Trevi Fountain

The Trevi Fountain is a fountain in the Trevi in Rome, Italy. Standing at 25.9 meters high and 19.8 meters wide, it is the largest Baroque fountain in the city....
.






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Luigi Vanvitelli (May 12, 1700, Naples
Naples

Naples is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old....
 – March 1 1773, Caserta
Caserta

Caserta is the capital of the province of Caserta in the Campania region of Italy. It is an important agricultural, commercial and industrial comune and city....
) was an Italian engineer and architect. The most prominent eighteenth-century architect of Italy, he practiced a sober classicizing academic
Academy

An academy is an institution of higher learning, research, or honorary membership.The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, north of Ancient Athens, Greece....
 Late Baroque
Baroque

In the the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural Epoch , starting roughly at the beginning of the 17th century in Rome, Italy. It was exemplified by drama and grandeur in Baroque sculpture, Baroque painting, literature, Baroque dance, and Baroque music....
 style that made an easy transition to Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to quite distinct Cultural movement in the Decorative art and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw upon Western classical art and culture ....
.

Biography

Vanvitelli was born at Naples, the son of a Dutch painter of land and cityscpapes (veduta
Veduta

A veduta is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting of a cityscape or some other vista.This genre of landscape art originated in Flanders, where artists such as Paul Brill painted vedute as early as the 16th century....
), Caspar van Wittel
Caspar van Wittel

Gaspar van Wittel was a Dutch landscape painter.Van Wittel learned painting in his hometown of Amersfoort. His first extant works were made in Hoorn in 1672, but he relocated to Rome with his family ca....
, who also goes by the name Vanvitelli.

He was trained in Rome by the architect Nicola Salvi
Nicola Salvi

Nicola Salvi or Niccol? Salvi was an Italy architect most famous for the Trevi Fountain in Rome, where he was born and died. His work is in the late Roman Baroque architecture style....
, with whom he worked on construction of the Trevi Fountain
Trevi Fountain

The Trevi Fountain is a fountain in the Trevi in Rome, Italy. Standing at 25.9 meters high and 19.8 meters wide, it is the largest Baroque fountain in the city....
. Following his notable successes in the competitions for the facade of the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano (1732) and the facade of Palazzo Poli
Palazzo Poli

The Palazzo Poli is a palace in Rome, Italy, forming the backdrop to the Trevi Fountain. Luigi Vanvitelli gave it a monumental facade as a setting for the fountain....
 behind the Trevi Fountain
Trevi Fountain

The Trevi Fountain is a fountain in the Trevi in Rome, Italy. Standing at 25.9 meters high and 19.8 meters wide, it is the largest Baroque fountain in the city....
, Pope Clement XII
Pope Clement XII

Pope Clement XII , born Lorenzo Corsini, was Pope from July 12 1730 to 6 February 1740.Born in Florence, the son of Bartolomeo Corsini, Marquis of Casigliano and his wife Isabella Strozzi, sister of the Duke of Bagnuolo, Corsini had been an aristocratic lawyer and financial manager under preceding pontiffs....
 sent him to the Marche to buildsome papal projects. At Ancona
Ancona

Ancona is a city and a seaport in the Marche, a region of central Italy, population 101,909 . Ancona is situated on the Adriatic Sea and is the center of the province of Ancona and the capital of the region....
 in 1732, he devised the vast Lazzaretto, a pentagonal building covering more than 20,000 square meters, built to protect the military defensive authorities from the risk of contagious diseases potentially reaching the town with the ships. Later it was used also as a military hospital or as barracks.

In Rome, Vanvitelli stabilized the dome of St. Peter's Basilica
St. Peter's Basilica

The Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian language as the Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano and commonly known as St. Peter's Basilica, is located within the Vatican City....
 when it developed cracks and found time to paint frescos in a chapel at Sant Cecilia
Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere is a 5th century Churches of Rome Rome, located in the Trastevere rioni of Rome and devoted to Saint Cecilia....
 in Trastevere
Trastevere

Trastevere is Rioni of Rome XIII of Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber, south of Vatican City. Its name comes from the Latin trans Tiberim, meaning literally "beyond the Tiber"....
.

Beginning in 1742 Vanvitelli designed (along with Nicola Salvi
Nicola Salvi

Nicola Salvi or Niccol? Salvi was an Italy architect most famous for the Trevi Fountain in Rome, where he was born and died. His work is in the late Roman Baroque architecture style....
) the Chapel of St. John the Baptist
John the Baptist

John the Baptist was a mission preacher and a major religious figure who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River in expectation of a divine apocalypse that would restore occupied Israel....
 for King John V of Portugal
John V of Portugal

|Fidel?ssimus John V the Magnanimous , 24th Portuguese monarchs of Portugal and the Algarves, was born John-Francis-Anthony in Lisbon and succeeded his father Peter II of Portugal in December 1706, and was proclaimed on January 1, 1707....
. It was built in Rome, disassembed in 1747, and shipped to Lisbon, where it was reassembled in the Church of St. Roch (Igreja de São Roque
Igreja de São Roque (Lisbon)

The Igreja de S?o Roque in Lisbon was the earliest Society of Jesus church in the Portuguese world, and one of the first Jesuit churches anywhere....
). It was completed in 1750, although the mosaics in it were not finished until 1752. Built of many precious marbles and other costly stones, as well as gilt bronze, it was held to be the most expensive chapel in Europe up to that time.

Vanvitelli's technical and engineering capabilities, together with his sense of scenographic drama led Charles VII of Naples
Charles III of Spain

Charles III was list of Spanish monarchs 1759?88 , King of Kingdom of Naples and Kingdom of Sicily 1735?59 , and Duchy of Parma 1732?35 . He was a proponent of enlightened absolutism....
 to commission the great Palace of Caserta, intended as a fresh start for administering the ungovernable Kingdom of Naples
Kingdom of Naples

The Kingdom of Naples is the modern day name for a polity which existed on the southern part of the Italian peninsula. Also known contemporaneously, and somewhat confusingly, as the Kingdom of Sicily, this kingdom was founded after the secession of the island of Sicily from the old Kingdom of Sicily as a result of the Sicilian Vespers...
. Vanvitelli worked on the project for the rest of his life, for Charles and for his successor Ferdinand IV. In Naples he designed the city's Palazzo Reale (1753) and some aristocratic palaces, and churches. His engineering talents were exercised as well: for Caserta he devised the great aqueduct system
Aqueduct of Vanvitelli

The Aqueduct of Vanvitelli or Caroline Aqueduct is an aqueduct built to supply the Caserta Palace and the San Leucio complex, supplied by water arising at the foot of Taburno, from the springs of the Fizzo, in the territory of Bucciano , which it carries along a winding 38km route ....
 that brought water to run the cascades and fountains.

He built a bridge over the Calore Irpino in Benevento
Benevento

Benevento is a town and comune of Campania, Italy, capital of the province of Benevento, 50 km northeast of Naples. It is situated on a hill 130 m above sea-level at the confluence of the Calore Irpino and Sabato....
.

Luigi Vanvitelli died at Caserta in 1773.

External links

  • Riccardo Cigola, brief biography of Vanvitelli