SCAMOZZI, Vincenzo

The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza was commissioned from Palladio by the Accademia Olimpica, of which Palladio was a member. Palladio’s theater was in part inspired by the ruins of the ancient Roman theater in Vicenza and other Roman theaters he had visited, as well as by his study of Vitruvius’s comments on ancient theaters. The inauguration of the theater, in 1585, featured a performance of Oedipus rex by Sophocles, translated into Italian and complete with music composed for the chorus by the organist of San Marco in Venice.

The permanent stage setting was designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi. It is based on the ancient Roman ‘scenae frons’. But Scamozzi’s arrangement of columns, statues, tabernacles, and reliefs follows no exact ancient model. The three central openings lead into radiating streets that seemingly terminate at a vast distance from the stage; this illusion is created by a rising pavement and the rapidly diminishing height of the buildings that line these avenues. But these Renaissance palaces are only a few meters deep, and the streets rise up as the rooftops descend.

Palmanova was built on flat ground from 1593 to 1598 by the Republic of Venice to house a military garrison as a protection from Turkish attack on its north-eastern land frontier. Designed for a single purpose, with no conventional social substructure, Palmanova could be laid out as an ideal city according to an Italian urban-planning tradition that had hitherto been confined to theoretical treatises. A group of Venetian engineers including Vincenzo Scamozzi, authors of books on fortification and urban planning, were involved.

An original plan was for a nine-sided central piazza from which streets radiated to nine bastions, those from the three gates in the middle of curtains being blocked off for safety before they reached the piazza. The plan that was realized was similarly based on a regular geometrical figure, a nine-pointed star, forming a polygon of eighteen sides, with a central hexagonal piazza, a design that satisfied both humanists and generals.

Vincenzo Scamozzi, back from the construction of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, arrived in Sabbioneta in May 1588, and designed the Teatro all’Antica, a small court theatre for the Gonzaga family at Sabbioneta. Unlike the Teatro Olimpico, the stage here is a single architectural vista behind a shallow-raked open platform, after the manner of the stage illustrated by Sebastiano Serlio. The theater was built between 1588 and 1590.

Vincenzo Scamozzi, back from the construction of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, arrived in Sabbioneta in May 1588, and designed the Teatro all’Antica, a small court theatre for the Gonzaga family at Sabbioneta. Unlike the Teatro Olimpico, the stage here is a single architectural vista behind a shallow-raked open platform, after the manner of the stage illustrated by Sebastiano Serlio. The theater was built between 1588 and 1590.

The Procuratie are three connected buildings on St Mark’s Square in Venice. They are also connected to St Mark’s Clock Tower. They are historic buildings over arcades, the last of them completed, to finish off the square, under Napoleon’s occupation.

The oldest of the buildings is the Procuratie Vecchie on the north side of the Square, built as a two-storey structure in the twelfth century, to house the offices and apartments of the procurators of San Marco. They were rebuilt after a fire in the sixteenth century to a three-storey design which still betrays something of its Gothic roots.

This project is related to the designs for the Biblioteca Marciana.

The idea of rebuilding the wooden bridge in stone was first proposed in 1503. Several projects were considered over the following decades. In 1551, the authorities requested proposals for the renewal of the Rialto Bridge. Plans were offered by famous architects, such as Jacopo Sansovino, Palladio and Vignola, but all involved a Classical approach with several arches, which was judged inappropriate to the situation. The commission of surveyors selected the single-arched structure proposed by Antonio da Ponte.

Scamozzi’s project for the bridge shows a three-arch solution.

The Villa Pisani (called “La Rocca Pisana”) in Lonigo (Vicenza) was started in 1576 by Vincenzo Scamozzi. It stands alone on a gently rising hill like the Rotonda by Palladio by which the design was clearly influenced. It uses an octagonal drum and saucer-shaped dome and single central Venetian windows on the side elevations and chimneys in the shape of obelisks, the latter a later addition.

Scamozzi published his villa design along with an imaginary reconstruction of the Pliny’s Roman villa at Laurentinum. It would appear that the circular courtyard of the Roman structure also played a part in influencing Scamozzi’s design, just as the Villa Rotonda had done.