Making magnificence: architects, stuccatori and the eighteenth-century interior

Abstract

This book tells the remarkable story of the craftsmen of Ticino, in Italian-speaking Switzerland, who took their prodigious skills as specialist decorative plasterworkers throughout Northern Europe in the 18th century, adorning classical architecture with their rich and fluent decor. Their names are not widely known--Giuseppi Artari (c.1690-1771), Giovanni Battista Bagutti (1681-1755), and Francesco Vassalli (1701-1771) are a few--but their work transformed the interiors of magnificent buildings in Italy, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, and Ireland. Among the interiors highlighted in this deeply researched, beautifully illustrated volume are Palazzo Reale in Turin, Upper Belvedere in Vienna, St. Martin in the Fields in London, the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, Houghton Hall in Norfolk, and Carton House in Ireland.

Contents

Architecture and stucco decoration -- Maestri dei Laghi -- The stucco industry -- In partibus Germaniae -- England -- End game: the Lanfranchini brothers in England and Ireland.