Giovanni Battista Aleotti

Giovanni Battista Aleotti (* 1546 in Argenta , † 1636 in Ferrara ), called d'Argenta , was an Italian architect and engineer. He served the popes of his time as a hydraulic engineer , fortress builder , architect of secular and sacred buildings, cartographer and geometer .

Aleotti's knowledge of ancient and contemporary Italian architecture led to the development of his own master builder ideal, which he called "architetto mathematico". He achieved a high degree of perfection in the field of stage and theater architecture . The only surviving work is the Teatro Farnese in Parma . It marks the transition from the ephemeral tournament theater to the baroque court theater . The stage set , which can be verified here for the first time , becomes a model for generations of Italian theater builders. Its architectural design language is shaped by the tension between the tradition of Mannerism and the ideas of the Baroque . In church construction , he also experimented with the hexagonal floor plan, which existed as an ancient model in the central building on Via Praenestina in Rome .

In addition to the Teatro Farnese in Parma, his most famous buildings include:

• Santa Maria del Quartiere in Bologna
• the University of Ferrara (1610)
• the Villa Rocca Scandiano of the Boiardo family

literature

• David R. Cofin: Some Architectural Drawings of Giovan Battista Aleotti In: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Vol. 21, No. 3, Oct. 1962, ISSN  0097-2010 , pp. 116-128.
• Gregor Scherf: Giovanni Battista Aleotti. (1546-1636). “Architetto mathematico” of the Estonians and the Popes in Ferrara. Tectum Verlag, Marburg 1997, ISBN 3-8288-9011-3 (also: Saarbrücken, Univ., Diss., 1996).