Wenceslas Hollar
engraver ; b. July 13, 1607 (at Prague in Bohemia); d. March 28, 1677.
The famous engraver Hollar was brought to England by the Earl of Arundel in 1637. His engravings of cathedrals and other important buildings are especially fine, and his views of cities are of extreme value.
André Le Nôtre (Le Nostre)
painter and landscape architect;.b. March 12, 1613; d. September 15, 1700.
Le Nôtre was born at the Tuileries, Paris, his father being superintendent of the garden of that palace. He was educated in the atelier of the painter Simon Vouet. In 1637 he was appointed by Louis XIV to succeed the elder Le Nôtre at the Tuileries. He was made, in 1658, contrôleur général des bâtiments et jardins. His first important work was the laying out of the park of Vaux-le-Vicomte. At Vaux the classic features of the formal garden and park, terraces, grottoes, labyrinths, and the like appear in France for the first time in their developed form. Louis XIV, pleased by the results obtained at Vaux, confided to Le Nôtre the direction of all the works of the park and gardens of Versailles, Trianon, and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. At Saint-Germain he made the famous terraces leading to the new château. He laid out also the gardens of the Tuileries, Clagny, and Fontainebleau. Le Nôtre designed the park of Chantilly for the Prince de Condé, the park of Saint-Cloud for the Duc d'Orléans, and the park of Sceaux for Colbert. In 1678 he visited Italy. The parks of the villas Pamphili and Ludovisi and the Vatican gardens in Rome are ascribed to him. He is credited with the parks of Saint James and Greenwich in London. Of all the artists employed by Louis XIV, Le Nôtre was the one to whom the king became personally most attached. He created the art of jardinage in France.
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"In the well know production of the Due Teatri, first given in 1637, Bernini developed a simulated amphitheater of a very elaborate kind. This is, of course, the best known of Bernini's theatrical works, but a recapitulation is in order.
According to Massimiliano Montecuculi, who witnessed the performance, the stage was prepared with "a flock of people partly real and partly feigned" so arranged that, when the curtain had fallen for the opening of the play, the audience saw on the stage another large audience who had come to see the comedy. Two braggarts, played by Bernini himself and his brother Luigi, then appeared on the stage, one facing the real audience and the other the fictitious; and recognizing each other in no time, they went on to claim, each in turn, that what the other saw as real was actually illusory, each firmly convinced that there was no more than one theater with its audience in that half he was facing. The confusions of realities in mirror image thus heightened, the two firmly decided "that they would pull the curtain across the scene and arrange a performance each for his own audience alone." Then the play was performed to the real audience, that is, the main act to which that preceded was only a pleasant prelude. But through the play another performance was supposed to be taking place simultaneously on the second stage introduced by Luigi; the play was, in fact, interrupted at times by the laughter from those on the other side, as if something very pleasant had been seen or heard.
At the end of the play, the two braggarts reappeared on the stage together to reaffirm the "reality" of the illusion. Having asked each other how they fared, the impresario of the fictitious performance answered nonchalantly that he had not really shown anything but the audience getting up to leave "with their carriages and horses accompanied by a great number of lights and torches." Then, drawing the curtain, he displayed the scene he had just said he had shown to his audience, thus rendering complete the incredible reversal of reality and illusion to the confused amazement of the real spectators, who were now finding themselves ready to leave and caught in the enchanting act of feigning the feigned spectators."
Timothy K. Kitao, Circle and Oval in the Square of St. Peter's: Bernini's Art of Planning (New York: New York University Press, 1974), pp.22-23.
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