Architecture, Theater, and Fantasy: Bibiena Drawings from the Jules Fisher Collection

This exhibition catalog explores the remarkable theatrical designs of Italy's influential Bibiena family in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

For nearly a century, members of three generations of the Bibiena family were the most highly sought theater designers in Europe. Their elaborate stage designs were used for operas, festivals, and courtly performances across Europe, from their native Italy to cities as far afield as Vienna, Prague, Stockholm, St. Petersburg, and Lisbon. Beyond these performances, the distinctive Bibiena style survives through their remarkable drawings.

Architecture, Theater, and Fantasy commemorates a group of Bibiena drawings from the collection of Jules Fisher, the Tony Award-winning lighting designer, gifted to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. Accompanying the first US exhibition of these works in more than thirty years, these drawings demonstrate the range of the Bibienas' output, from energetic sketches to detailed watercolors. Representations of imagined palace interiors and lavish illusionistic architecture illuminate the visual splendor of the Baroque period.

Author: Diane Kelder, John Marciari, Laurel Peterson
Publisher: Paul Holberton Publishing
Published: 07/02/2021
Pages: 96
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.20h x 8.20w x 0.40d
ISBN13: 9781913645045
ISBN10: 1913645045
BISAC Categories:
- Art | Techniques | Drawing
- Art | European
- Art | History | Baroque & Rococo

About the Author
Arnold Aronson is professor of theater in the MFA Theatre Program at the Columbia University School of the Arts. Diane Kelder is professor emerita of art history at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and consulting curator of the Jules Fisher Collection at the Morgan Library and Museum. John Marciari is the Charles W. Engelhard Curator of Drawings and Prints and curatorial chair at the Morgan Library and Museum. Laurel Peterson, formerly the Moore Curatorial Fellow at the Morgan Library and Museum, is an independent scholar.