The Sopron Collection of Jesuit Stage Designs [antikvár]

Preface by Marcello Fagiolo Stage Design of the Jesuits and of the Empire I was delighted to be asked to present this collection of drawings of Jesuit origin, though, given the state of my knowledge at the time, it was perhaps a little imprudent of me to do so.' We now have the pilot studies by Terézia Bardi and Eva Knapp and, waiting to know their fuller account of this remarkable Sopron/Odenburg collection, I had better limit myself to commenting briefly on some of the more interesting themes contained in the drawings themselves. My comments follow the order in which the illustrations appear, but there will be some cross-referencing. Without wishing to raise once again the question of attribution, since most of the drawings in the Collection are clearly part and parcel of the great Italian tradition of stage design created by artists like Giovanni and Ludovico Burnacini, Andrea Pozzo and Francesco Galli-Bibiena,^ I would like to make an observation on the kind of theatrical space that seems to be common to many of these stage designs, both sacred and secular. Illustration 8, which is fairly straightforward, clearly shows the front of a stage with three funeral candelabra in the foreground and a tripartite structure to the rear involving three backdrops devoted to the ars bene moriendi (the art of dying well) and to Jesuit saints. The three painted backdrops, framed by arches supported by angels and allegorical figures are, in their turn, linked one to the next by the triumphant festoons borne aloft by archangels; the space between the candelabra and the triptych backdrop will be used for recitations and sermons. The space is, then, a confined one and one that could be successfully transferred even to the fairly small rooms that were used venues for performances based on preaching and academic declamation rather than crowd scenes. Obviously, in such cases as these, there was no question of employing the large-scale Baroque macchine (or stage machinery) that we do find frequently in the Jesuit theatre. A similar triptych format can be postulated for a number of designs that are either naturalistic in character (for example, no. 63, with its trefoil triptych of rustic arches framing fountains) or courtly (for example, no. 39, with its central allegorical scene framed by two wings to form a triptych, and decorated with portraits of kings and famous warriors).