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

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This exhibition catalog explores the remarkable theatrical designs of Italy’s influential Bibiena family in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.\nFor 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.\nArchitecture, 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.
About the Author \nDiane 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.\nJohn Marciari is the Charles W. Engelhard Curator of Drawings and Prints and curatorial chair at the Morgan Library and Museum.\nLaurel Peterson, formerly the Moore Curatorial Fellow at the Morgan Library and Museum, is an independent scholar.\nArnold Aronson is professor of theater in the MFA Theatre Program at the Columbia University School of the Arts.