Thursday Seminar: Vincenzo Brenna's "Translatio Romae"
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This seminar will examine the traveling architect Vincenzo Brenna (1741–1820). Born in Rome and having voyaged around Italy he moved to Poland, then to Russia, and died in Dresden. His archive is scattered since his work does not belong to any national art history. One sees the beginnings of Romanticism in his buildings while others consider them to be just an expression of the taste of his patrons. However through his collaboration with Piranesi and Pacetti, his studies of the Domus Aurea and his work on the decoration of Roman festive and funereal events, Brenna was able to formulate his understanding of the ‘entirety’ of the Roman antiquity and to transfer it to other countries. He formulated the image of St Petersburg as a new Rome and designed the major state mourning ceremonies there in a Roman way.