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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
The seven drawings shown below are designs for baroque stage machines identified as machines “for Venus and Mars” and are reproduced from MS Majie, V, 4, 1–38, The Archivio di Stato, Parma. These designs are particularly interesting since they are at the same time characteristic of baroque stage machines which performed similar functions, found in other sources, and yet unique for their simplicity, rendering them easy to interpret and understand. Although several of these designs have been published individually in various places, the group of seven is published here in its entirety for the first time. Together, these designs illustrate the use of sliding winches in the grid to produce spectacular effects on the stage as well as the “Mars machines.”
1 Sometimes called the “Archivio di Stato Collection,” MS Majie, V, 4, 1–38, is an eclectic collection of drawings and prints which includes thirteen designs for baroque stage machines, a front elevation of an unidentified stage, and miscellaneous plans and elevations of the Teatro Farnese and another unidentified theatre. Although it has received some attention over the years, it has not been edited nor have sources or dates been assigned to the various drawings. See Horn-Monval, M.. “La grande machinerie et ses origines.” Revue d' histoire du Théâtre, 4 (1955), 291–308Google Scholar; Larson, O.K., “Italian Stage Machinery, 1500–1700,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1956Google Scholar; Mohler, F.C., “Spectacular Effects on the Seventeenth Century Continental Stage,” Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1976Google Scholar.
2 See Ault, C. Thomas, “Design, Operation and Organization of Stage Machines at the Paris Opera, 1770–1873,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1983Google Scholar.
3 E.g. Parma, The Bibliothèca Palatina, MS 3708, and Paris, Bibliotèque de l'Opéra, The San Salvatore Folio.
4 Molinari, Cesare, Le Nozze degli Dei (Rome: Bulzone Editore), pl. 157Google Scholar.
5 Molinari, , “Disegni a Parma per uno Spettacolo Veneziano,” Critica d' Arte (1965), pp. 47–64Google Scholar.
6 In addition to the similarities of the designs for a machine using an articulated bridge in the Palatina Collection to the design given here, there is also a design for an extremely complicated and unidentified machine in the Palatina Collection which is nearly identical to one in the collection at the Archivio di Stato, except that the latter drawing appears to be unfinished, strongly suggesting that it was copied from the former.
7 Italian: “Parte inferiore della machina diviene prima secata e poi aperta.” The construction, diviene, is curious and may even be a mistake. Consistent with the label in figure 1, machina diviene has been translated as “Venus machine” (machina di Venere).
8 Parma, The Biblioteca Palatina, MS 3708.
9 Nicola Sabbattini, MS 312, Biblioteca Oliveriana, Pesaro, and Inigo Jones, Designs in the Duke of Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth.
10 Ault, pp. 223–242.
11 Ault, p. 37.
12 Per Bjurström, Unveröffentlichtes von Nicodemus Tessin d. J., Reisenotizien über Baroktheater in Venedig and Piazzola,” Kleine Schriften der Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte 21 (1966), 31Google Scholar.
13 Boullet, C., Essay on the Art of Constructing Theatres, their Machines and their Operations, Paris, 1801Google Scholar. Translation by author in Ault, C. Thomas, Scenes and Machines from the Eighteenth Century: The Stagecraft of Jacopo Fabris and Citoyen Boullet, Performing Arts Resources No. 11, Stratyner, Barbara ed. (New York: Theatre Library Association, 1986), p. 98Google Scholar.
14 Parma, The Biblioteca Palatina, MS 3708.
15 In a description of a spectacular effect he saw at the Teatro San Giovanni Chrisostomo in Venice, 1687, Tessin comments on the use of live horses on the stage. The effect he describes is very similar to the one shown in the plate for “The Coronation of Germanico,” The San Salvatore Folio (q.v.). See Bjurström, , Kleine Schriften, p. 21Google Scholar.
16 The immediate source for anconini was probably Vitruvius who uses αγκων to refer to the arm of a carpenter's square and the knobbed bars of a hydraulic engine. See Vitruvius, , De Architectura, III, 3 and X, 13Google Scholar.
17 See Larson, Orville K., “Giacomo Torelli, Sir Phillip Skippon, and Stage Machinery for the Venetian Opera,” Theatre Journal 32 (12, 1980), 448–458CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Cf. Moynet, Georges, La machinerie théâtrale, trucs et décors, Paris, 1893Google Scholar.
