Morganmobile: Inside/Outside

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The Galli-Bibiena family revolutionized theater design in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the theaters they built across Europe, their set designs made use of plunging perspectives and sometimes, as in this example, opened the interior architecture of the theater to long vistas onto distant gardens. In this design, perhaps for the Opera House at Beyreuth, an inscription identifies the scene as a “temple enclosure that leads to a lovely place.”

Carlo Galli Bibiena (1721–1787), An Open Circular Hall Looking onto a Garden. Pen and brown ink, gray wash, and watercolor, over graphite. Gift of Mrs. Donald M. Oenslager, 1982.75:104