SELVA, Giovanni Antonio

(b. 1751 Venezia, d. 1819 Venezia)

Italian architect, garden designer, teacher and writer. After studying mathematics, he became the pupil of the architect Tommaso Temanza. From 1778 to 1781, he undertook a study trip to Italy, France, England, Belgium and the Netherlands. In Italy, he remained in Rome for over a year, forming a lasting friendship with Antonio Canova and Giacomo Quarenghi. He also visited Pompeii, Paestum and Caserta. In England, he was one of the first Italians to visit such famous landscape gardens as Stowe, The Leasowes and Blenheim; he admired the work of Inigo Jones while remaining unimpressed by contemporary English architecture. In France, however, he expressed admiration for some buildings and the gardens of André Le Nôtre.

Numerous families from Venice and the mainland commissioned him either to restructure or create their townhouses and villas. In these designs, he excelled in combining comfort with elegance. Among these schemes were the Palazzo Erizzo (1783-84), the Palazzo Manin (1794) and the Palazzo Mangilli (1794), all in Venice; the Villa Manfrin (c. 1790) at Sant’Artemio, near Treviso; the Palazzo Pisani de Lazzara (1783) and the Palazzo Dotti Vigodarzere (1796) in Padua.

Selva rose to fame, however, principally through his design for the Teatro La Fenice, Venice. The theatre was virtually destroyed by a fire in 1836.

Selva also built numerous churches, including the superb Neo-classical San Maurizio (1806; with Antonio Diedo) and the SS Nome di Gesù (completed 1834), both in Venice, and the cathedral in the small town of Cologna Veneta, which he rebuilt (1807-10) in a Neo-classical style. For Napoleon, he built a triumphal arch on the Grand Canal, and he also obtained prestigious commissions for the construction of the public gardens at Castello and the Giudecca and the cemetery of San Michele. The gardens were only partially completed to Selva’s design, however, and have since been altered for use as the venue of the Venice Biennale exhibition.

As a lecturer at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Selva was responsible for choosing the academy’s headquarters in the former convent of Charity. He also supervised the adaptation of this Palladian complex to its modern role as the home of the Galleria dell’Accademia.

Exterior view

San Maurizio is a Neoclassical-style, deconsecrated church located in the Campo San Maurizio in the sestiere of San Marco in Venice. A church was present at the site before the first reconstruction in the 16th century. A further reconstruction took place in 1806 by the Neoclassical architect Giovanni Antonio Selva. It once housed a studio of a young Antonio Canova. Near the church was built the scuola degli Albanesi. The present structure is mainly a design of Selva.

The church now houses the Museo della Musica, the museum of Baroque instruments, composers, and the music of Venice. It features period instruments, and documents, including exhibits on Antonio Vivaldi, but also documents on Amati, Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, and Francesco and Matteo Goffriller.

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General view

The early 19th century had a predilection for the Roman Pantheon as a model for church building. The combination of a rotunda and a temple fa�ade managed to satisfy the desire for both stereometric clarity and classical grandeur. Moreover, with its monumental look it was excellent for including in showpiece public urban planning settings. Such pantheons occur in several cities of Italy, for example in Milan, Brescia, Bergamo. Special mention must also be made of the Tempio Canoviano in Possagno in the Veneto, built in his native town by the sculptor Antonio Canova, presumably in conjunction with Giovanni Antonio Selva.

The effect of grandeur is reinforced here by the extreme reduction of forms. The almost wholly unarticulated rotunda has an octastyle Doric portico placed directly in front of it without the usual attic, its baseless fluted columns being derived from the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens.

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