Burlington Arcade
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Revision as of 10:56, 28 December 2011
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Renaissance to Modern
Italy of the 15th century, and the city of Florence in particular, was home to the Renaissance. It is in Florence that the new architectural style had its beginning, not slowly evolving in the way that Gothic grew out of Romanesque, but consciously brought to being by particular architects who sought to revive the order of a past "Golden Age". The scholarly approach to the architecture of the ancient coincided with the general revival of learning. A number of factors were influential in bringing this about.
Italian architects had always preferred forms that were clearly defined and structural members that expressed their purpose. Many Tuscan Romanesque buildings demonstrate these characteristics, as seen in the Florence Bapistry and Pisa Cathedral.
The presence, particularly in Rome, of ancient architectural remains showing the ordered Classical style provided an inspiration to artists at a time when philosophy was also turning towards the Classical.
Italy then became a main European centre for the baroque, with diverse baroque architectural styles emerging, especially in Sicily (see Sicilian baroque). In the 18th and 19th centuries neo-classical style buildings began to appear in Rome, Milan, Turin and all around Italy. The 19th century also saw the construction of several considerable works of Italian architecture, including the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, one of the world's oldest shopping galleries, which influenced others such as the Galleria Umberto I in Naples, the Burlington Arcade in London and the Passazh in Saint Petersburg.
In the 20th century, Italy too saw the construction of several significant edifices, starting in the Art Nouveau architectural style, which in Italy was called, Liberty architecture. Rationalist-Fascist architecture developed in Italy during the Fascist era, lasting until the 1940s. During that period Italy built the world's first motorway between Milan and Varese in 1921, and considerable architectural works of the era include Fiat's Lingotto, at the time the world's biggest automobile factory. In the 1950s and 60s several skyscrapers were built across the country, the Pirelli Tower and the Torre Velasca being the most notable. The 21st century most notable Italian buildings are at the FieraMilano exposition centre in Rho, just outside Milan, (one of Europe's biggest and most important exhibition centres) and the new plans for the Expo 2015 to be held in Milan too, where three new skyscapers called "lo storto", "il curvo" and "il diritto" will be constructed by foreign architects such as Zaha Hadid, Arata Isozaki and Daniel Libeskind. This will also be a project or urban re-development, called "City-Life", where new pedestrian areas, parks, green spaces, lakes and waterways will be constructed, in the North-Western part of Milan.
No authentic portrait of Sade, either painted or engraved, is known ; those lately issued in Brussels—the one, very badly engraved, in an oval frame, said to be " De la collection de M. De la Porte," the second fairly engraved, representing the Marquis surrounded by demons who are blowing into his ears, signed H. Biberstein, sc, and subscribed, " De la collection de Mr. H*** de Paris —are pure inventions.
- Most of these anecdotes are reproduced at length in the Bibliographie et Iconographie de tous les ouvrages de Restif de la Bretonne[1] to which excellent work the student should refer concerning Sade. Dictionnaire des Athées, Suppléments, p. 84.
- It cannot escape notice that both Uzanne and Lacroix, as also the Biberstein picture, delineate a markedly homosexual type, and there can be no doubt that at this period the Marquis de Sade was greatly addicted to passive homosexuality. --Essays in Petto (1977) by
Portrait Fantaisiste du Marquis de Sade par H. Biberstein (D'après le reproduction publieé en frontispiece de la Correspondance de Mme Gourdan, Edition 1866),' Reproduced in Guillaume Apollinaire, L 'Oeuvre du Marquis de Sade, Paris,
