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Baldassare Peruzzi and Theatrical Scenery in Accelerated Perspective

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Abstract

From the early sixteenth century, stage sets in the Italian theatre were constructed in accelerated perspective. The stage and scenery were shallow, but the sets give illusions of much deeper spaces—typically piazzas and receding streets surrounded by buildings. The best-known example is Sebastiano Serlio’s temporary theatre of 1539 described in his second book on Architecture. This paper argues that the accelerated perspective scene was first introduced by Serlio’s master Baldassare Peruzzi for productions of the comedy La Calandria in 1514 and 1520, and then for Le Bacchidi by Plautus in Rome in 1531. Detailed working drawings survive for the set of Le Bacchidi and are used here for the first time to explain Peruzzi’s method by constructing a scale model, giving a vivid sense of how the illusion worked and would have appeared to the audience. It is suggested that Peruzzi was inspired in part by the architectural backgrounds of a number of fifteenth-century paintings. His invention had a profound influence on stage design for the next two centuries, as shown by surviving sets and handbooks of stagecraft.

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Fig. 1

Image: Serlio (1545: facing p. 64 and p. 66)

Fig. 2

Image: Serlio (1545: facing p.68)

Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Image: Engraving by Antonio Mugnani of drawing by Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi in Le Fabbriche e i Disegni di Andrea Palladio, Vicenza 1796

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Fig. 7

Image: Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence 191A

Fig. 8

Image: Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence, A 268 recto

Fig. 9

Image: Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence, A 269 recto

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Image: (Sinisgalli 1998: 74)

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Fig. 18

Image: (Sinisgalli 1998: 74)

Fig. 19

Copyright The National Gallery, London. Presented by Lord Taunton, 1864. Reproduced by kind permission

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Notes

  1. The terms solid or relief perspective are also used. I prefer accelerated, since the adjective better conveys the nature of the construction.

  2. A more rigorously constructed model would require a reconstruction of the ‘real’ undistorted architecture of the Comic Scene by a method of ‘reverse perspective’, as used by Sinisgalli (1998) for Peruzzi’s Le Bacchidi (see below). Guidarelli et al. (2018) have done this for Serlio’s closely related Tragic Scene—although their analysis is not without its problems. The ‘real’ architecture would then have to be projected onto the scenic flats of the Vicenza stage. The basic discrepancies would nevertheless still exist.

  3. Serlio implies this in his recommendation to use miniature figures. The stage and theatre designer Fabrizio Carini Motta (1676) is more explicit; he says that when in front of the smallest wings at the back of the stage, “…the actor appears much larger than the setting, especially when he emerges through a doorway or an arch” (Larson 1987: 41).

  4. Larson (1961: 122) speculates that Serlio might have worked at the Urbino court with Girolamo Genga, but with no definite evidence. Once he moved to France, Serlio does not seem to have been involved in any theatrical productions as such, only painting work and designing triumphal arches.

  5. For opinions about the nature of this design and the play to which it relates see Cruciani (1974: 159).

  6. Appropriately, the rear façade of the Villa Chigi itself served as a backdrop for open-air garden performances (Huppert 2015: 96).

References

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Gregorio Astengo for his skill, care and enthusiasm in building the models of Serlio’s and Peruzzi’s sets, and taking photographs of the models. I am also grateful to Kim Williams for her extremely rigorous and thorough editing. The work was supported financially by the ever-generous Steadman Foundation.

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    Philip Steadman

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Steadman, P. Baldassare Peruzzi and Theatrical Scenery in Accelerated Perspective. Nexus Netw J 22, 553–576 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-020-00479-z

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