Luigi Vanvitelli
Luigi Vanvitelli (Naples, 1700 - Caserta 1773), an engineer as well as the most prominent 18th-century Italian architect, practiced a sober classicizing academic Late Baroque style that made an easy transition to Neoclassicism.
He was the son of a Flemish painter, trained in Rome by the architect Niccolo Salvi, with whom he worked on realizing the Trevi Fountain. Following his notable successes in the competitions for the facade of St. John Lateran (1732) and the facade behind the Trevi Fountain, Pope Clement XII sent him to the Marche to realize some papal projects. At Ancona in 1732, he devised the vast Lazzaretto, a pentagonal building covering more than 20,000 square meters, built to protect the military defensive authorities from the risk of contagious diseases eventually reaching the town with the ships. Later it was used also as a military hospital or as barracks.
In Rome, Vanvitelli knew how to stabilize the dome of St. Peter's Basilica when it developed cracks and found time to paint frescos in a chapel at Sant Cecilia in Trastevere.
His technical and engineering capabilities, together with Vanvitelli's sense of scenographic drama induced Charles VII of Naples to commission the great project of his palace at Caserta, intended as a fresh start for administering ungovernable Kingdom of Naples. Vanvitelli worked on the project for the rest of his life, for Charles and for his successor Ferdinand IV. In Naples he designed the city's Palazzo Reale (1753) and some aristocratic palaces, and churches. His engineering talents were exercised as well: for Caserta he devised the great aqueduct system that brought water to run the cascades and fountains. He built a bridge over the Calore in Benevento.
