Pietro Nobile 1776–1854

Pietro Nobile (1776–1854), originally from Ticino in Switzerland, Director of the School of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, architect working for the imperial court and protégé of the Austrian Chancellor of State Clemens Lothar Metternich, attempted to combine science, mechanics, and aesthetics in architecture. An architect trained both as an engineer and academically, he reformed teaching at the School of Architecture at the Academy in Vienna by reacting to the design methods introduced at the Polytechnic by J-N-L. Durand in Paris, and by making academic drawing compulsory for engineers. The publication presents the results of Italian-Austrian-Czech cooperation on research into the architect’s death estate in Trieste and Bellinzona, Switzerland, and other materials scattered throughout Europe. This publication in English is the second main result of the grant project after the exhibition in Pilsen in 2019 entitled Pietro Nobile in the Czech Lands (and the publication in Czech of the same name ISBN 9-788088-027362).

This publication was generously supported by the Czech Sciences Foundation in the grant project 17-19952S “Neoclassicism between Technique and Beauty. Pietro Nobile (1776–1854)”, carried out in the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Authors of the book are Taťána Petrasová, Rossella Fabiani and Richard Kurdiovsky. The projet benefited of the collaboration with the Ministero della cultura, Soprintendenza Archeologia, belle arti e paesaggio del Friuli Venezia Giulia in Trieste and the Institute für die Erforschung der Habsburgermonarchie und des Balkanraumes der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaft in Vienna.

Taťána Petrasová (ed.)

Berlin and Boston, De Gruyter 2021, 271 pp., 91 figs. and LXXVII pls.

ISBN 978-3-11-069145-0

The sale of the book is provided by De Gruyter.