Architect Drawings - A Selection of Sketches by World Famous Architects Through History

craftsmen up to the time of the revolution. Academies in the various arts were founded, preparing

guidelines for genuine French classicism (Trachtenberg and Hyman, 1986 ). French architecture

assumed a relatively conservative approach. The baroque had moved north from Italy, but French

architects were less invested in its ideals, transforming it to fit a ‘national style’ (Kaufmann, 1955 ;

Norberg-Schulz, 1971 ). Partaking in very little exaggeration, these architects advocated a unified, sym-

metrical, and restrained exterior articulation. In contrast, interior decoration reflected the appearance

of French rococo with mirrors and arabesque high relief.

The Germanic countries participated less in the Renaissance interest of antiquity because of their

gothic tradition. However, with the building of churches throughout Bavaria, rococo style flour-

ished across the Alps. Basically an architecture stemming from local expression, rather than royalty or

the Catholic Church, resulted in interiors flooded with light displaying visionary ceiling paintings

(Trachtenberg and Hyman, 1986 ; Briggs, 1967 ; Powell, 1959 ). The palaces of Austria also featured

these sculptural effects with the designs of such architects as Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt and

Johann Bernhardt Fischer von Erlach.

SKETCHES; INFLUENCES ON STYLE AND TECHNIQUE

Humanism extended literary scholarship into an age of reason. Music and theater thrived with

wealthy patrons in attendance. Architects easily crossed between theater and architecture, as they

had in the past with painting and sculpture. Juvarra was a baroque architect whose many drawings

for theater sets show the fluid motion and illusionary fantasy of temporary stage production. Of great

influence on these architects, the Bibiena family was producing imaginative scenery for musical

theater and festivals. Similarly, Juvarra and Giuseppe Galli da Bibiena were creating fantasies that

departed from contemporary experience, vedute ideate(Millon, 1999 ).

This interest in the theatre and its immediacy affected the sketching and drawing styles of

baroque architects. The illusion of stage sets and the movement inherent in the media of theater

encouraged a different attitude toward representation. Theater inherently had less structural signifi-

cance and required less construction time. Based on illusion, it was attractive because of the imme-

diate gratification in the display. It also secured the attention of the monarch, who had much leisure

time for spectacle. Theatrical pageantry required both quick conceptual sketches and limited con-

struction drawings. Unlike a static monumental structure, a theater set design was compelled to con-

vey the emotion of the music or narrative being performed. This required more emotional sketches.

These architects’ collaborations with playwrights necessitated a visual communication of inten-

tion. The spectacular illusions of the stage affected drawing style and encouraged a more expressive

sentiment, very different than descriptive exterior elevations.

During this period, baroque painting was experiencing techniques in archaeological illusion, dis-

played later in the work of Gian Battista Piranesi. Ruined landscapes and architectural fantasy found a

pinnacle in sixteenth century Rome and in seventeenth century Venice with artists such as Canaletto.

Veduta, the intentionally deformed views of real places, and capriccio, the mingling of real and imagin-

ary places, provided themes for a movement in painting (Millon, 1999 ). Rudolf Wittkower writes that,

in the Renaissance, drawing was a method of analysis and observation, and that (especially in painting)

it was a pretext to a finished work of art. But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries some artists

left their paintings in unfinished states resembling sketches (Wittkower, 1980 ).

Baroque architects continued to view sketching as a means to an end, for communication, evalu-

ation, or design. Giorgio Vasari writes that, at least in the case of painters, their first sketches exuded a

‘fire of inspiration’ that lost their freshness when fully rendered (Wittkower, 1980 , p. 367). For

baroque architects, there is no doubt that sketches were a generally accepted technique of the design

process. The baroque period throughout Europe saw the extensive use of models, in much the same

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