Filippo Juvarra - Biography

Biography

Filippo Juvarra was an Italian Baroque architect working in the early part of the eighteenth century. He was born in Messina, Sicily, to a family of goldsmiths and engravers. After spending his formative years with his family in Sicily where he designed Messina's festive settings for the coronation of Philip V of Spain and Sicily (1705), Juvarra moved to Rome in 1704. There he studied architecture with Carlo and Francesco Fontana.

The first phase of his independent career was occupied with designs for ceremonies and celebrations and especially with set designs for theatres. Juvarra's set designs incorporate the scena per angolo, literally 'scenes at an angle.' The exact origin of this style is unclear. Ferdinando Galli Bibiena claims to have invented it in his treatise Architettura Civile (1711), however, it was clearly in use before then, including in the works of Juvarra. This style differed from the one point perspective sets that had been developed in the sixteenth century, and had reached their apogee in the seventeenth century, see for example the work of Giacomo Torelli. A couple of early drawings dated 1706 are associated with the Teatro S. Bartolomeo, Naples (1706), though whether he actually completed set designs for the theatre is unknown. The majority of his work in theatre and set design was in Rome under the patronage of Cardinal Ottoboni. He assisted in the rebuilding of the Cardinal's private theatre in the Palazzo della Cancelleria and also designed sets for operas performed within the theatre. The first opera for which Juvarra designed all the sets was Costantino Pio. The libretto was by Cardinal Ottoboni and the music was by Carlo Francesco Pollarolli (c.1653–1723). It was premiered in 1709 and was one of the first operas to appear after the lifting of papal bans on secular theatre, it also inaugurated Ottoboni’s newly renovated private theatre. He also worked on set designs for performances sponsored by Ottoboni at the Teatro Capranica. His other main patron in Rome was Queen Maria Casimira, the widowed Queen of Poland, for whom Juvarra produced set designs for the operas held in her small domestic theatre in the Palazzo Zuccari. In 1713 a theatre project took him to Genoa.

In 1706 Juvarra won a contest for the new sacristy at the St. Peter's, organized by Pope Clement XI, and became a member of the prestigious Accademia di San Luca. In 1708 he created his first important non-theatrical architectural work, and the only one realized in Rome: the small but superbly executed Antamoro Chapel in the church of San Girolamo della Carità which he conceived in intimate cooperation with his close friend, the French sculptor Pierre Le Gros, who was responsible for carrying out the sculptural components.

Juvarra was also an engraver: his book of engravings of sculpted coats-of-arms appeared in 1711, Raccolta di varie targhe fatte da professori primarii di Roma .

After some time in Rome, Juvarra had a sojourn in his native Messina and he developed ambitious plans (never completed) for building along the harborside with a massive curved palace facade for housing and businesses. He was engaged in some projects in Lombardy, including a monumental altar for the Sanctuary Church of Caravaggio (never built, and substituted by a smaller work by architect Carlo Giuseppe Merlo), and altar for the Bergamo Cathedral. He also designed the decorative belltower (now leaning) for the cathedral of Belluno.