Giacomo Torelli  was an Italian stage designer, engineer, and architect. His work in stage design, particularly his designs of machinery for creating spectacular scenery changes and other special effects, was extensively engraved and hence survives as the most complete record of mid-to-late seventeenth century set design. Nothing is known of Torelli’s early life. In 1641 he was a military engineer at Venice. Already known as an architect, he built two churches there. Having erected the Teatro Novissimo at Venice, he furnished it with ingenious machines, including a revolving stage and the chariot-and-pole system for changing scenery. His inventions amazed 17th-century Europe and earned for him the title il gran stregone (“the great wizard”). He was called to France about 1645. There Torelli equipped the Théâtre du Petit-Bourbon in Paris with numerous devices such as the first effective machinery for rapid changes of heavy sets, which greatly encouraged the

development of elaborate stage effects. Among his triumphs in Paris was the operatic production of Andromède (1650) by Pierre Corneille. Torelli later returned to Italy (c. 1662) and built an elaborately equipped theatre at Fano. His successor at the Petit-Bourbon, Gaspare Vigarani, destroyed his sets, apparently out of jealousy, but the designs for them were reproduced in the Encyclopédie (1751–72) of French philosopher Denis Diderot.

Chariot-and-Pole System

Giacomo Torelli, known as the Great Sorcerer for his spectacular scenic innovations, to design for the Palais Royal. Working at a theatre in Venice in the early 1640s, Torelli had already put together the first "chariot-and-pole" system for changing scenery. In brief, this system involves flats mounted on long poles, which pass through slots in the flooring to small. 2-wheeled wagons, or "chariots," that run

on tracks under the stage. Through a series of ropes, pulleys,winches, and counterweights, all of the chariots under the stage perhaps as many as ten on both sides for each pair of five wings could be moved simultaneously. As one flat moved into view, the flat behind or in front of it, receded offstage. The counterweighted flats and drops were also linked to painted borders hanging from the flies. Turning the master winches to which they were all linked could effect a complete scenic transformation from one setting to another in an instant. Such machinery is still in use in Sweden's Drottingholm Theatre today , and such transformations are still astonishing. Productions also included special effects in perspectival miniature and the ascents and descents of deities supported by complex rigging.This method of changing wings and back shutters was developed by Torelli. When a series of wheels and pulleys below the level of the stage-attached on frameworks to the scenery above—were shifted, the scene changed automatically. Because the mechanisms were interconnected, scene shifts could be smooth and simultaneous.

Serlio, Sebastiano, 1475–1554, Italian Renaissance architect and theoretician, b. Bologna. He was in Rome from 1514 until the sack in 1527 and worked under Baldassare Peruzzi. Few traces exist of his buildings in Venice, where he lived from 1527 to 1540. Invited to France by Francis I, he appears to have served in an advisory capacity for the construction of the palace at Fontainebleau. He designed several châteaus in France; the only one that has survived, despite alterations, is that of Ancy-le-Franc (c.1546), near Tonnerre in Burgundy. Serlio's major contribution was his treatise on architecture (eight books, 1537–75). Intended as an illustrated handbook for architects, the volumes, separately published, were highly influential in France, the Netherlands, and England as a conveyor of the Italian Renaissance style; the treatise was

also an influence in theatrical scene design and stage lighting. An early manuscript of it is preserved in the Avery Architectural Library, Columbia.

Central Perspective

His Architettura, published around this time, was the first Renaissance work on architecture to devote a section to the theatre. It also incorporated his theories on perspective, the art of representing three-dimensional objects on a flat surface. His many treatises included illustrations of the tragic, comic and satyric stages, based on Vitruvius’s innovative ideas regarding the vanishing point. Serlio’s sets are constructed in function of this point, at which parallel lines drawn in perspective converge. He was also the first to employ the term “scenography,” and to make extensive use of the scenic space and lighting to give the impression of depth. He did not limit himself to the painted backdrop,

which was so popular at the time. With his technical innovations, Sebastiano Serlio had a profound impact on the theatrical architecture of his age.

"The greater the hall, the more nearly will the theatre assume its perfect form." -Sebastiano Serlio. 

The above is taken from the second book in Serlio's series entitled Architettura. He took what he was given in Vitruvius's De Architectura and created, in his eyes, the model for what a theatre should be. With his ideas and innovations, Serlio gave the Italian Renaissance the bridge it needed to start building its own theatres and expanding drama to the people of the period. He took Vitruvius and

blended the idea of the true classical theatre with the art if the Renaissance and birthed central perspective into theatre. With that, he is able to transcend centuries as we are still using conventions engineered by him in productions today.Serlio's contribution to theatre of his time has transcended the centuries and affects us today. He took what he was seeing in the visual art that had begun a few hundred years before. An artist of this period, Baldassare Peruzzi, had used the idea of perspective in his work. The image featured here is a work of Peruzzi (Absolutearts.com). If you look at this image and those we have of Serlio's designs, there are a lot of similarities. Take special notice of how the center of the image looks father away then the rest of the image, even though it is a flat piece. There is a point that is the farthest away is called the "vanishing point." The way that the scenery was set up, the eye of the audience is to be drawn to that point. In addition to the idea of the vanishing point, Serlio used a raked stage. The performance space was level with the eye-level of the person seated in the chair of honor. However, after the performance space, there was a sharp incline in the stage floor, called raking. This added to the visual effect of creating a centralized perspective. It made everything upstage look like it was farther away than it really was because it was getting smaller. If the use of these two things was not enough to create the image of distance, Serlio also used a series of wings to further draw the eye into the illusion. Usually, three sets of wings were used. Each pair was set in farther than the last. These began at the point on the stage where the actors did not perform. These wings not only added to the central perspective idea, they also allowed areas for the scenery and machines used for the spectacle in the intermezzi to be hidden. 

Vitruvius' De Architectura libri decem (De Architectura)[edit]

Roman house plan after VitruviusFurther information: Mathematics and architectureVitruvius is the author of De architectura, known today as The Ten Books on Architecture,[21] a treatise written in Latin on architecture, dedicated to the emperor Augustus. In the preface of Book I, Vitruvius dedicates his writings so as to give personal knowledge of the quality of buildings to the emperor. Likely Vitruvius is referring to Marcus Agrippa's campaign of public repairs and improvements. This work is the only surviving major book on architecture from classical antiquity. According to Petri Liukkonen, this text "influenced deeply from the Early Renaissance onwards artists, thinkers, and architects, among them Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), and Michelangelo (1475–1564)."[13] The next major book on architecture, Alberti's reformulation of Ten Books, was not written until 1452.Vitruvius is famous for asserting in his book De architectura that a structure must exhibit the three qualities of firmitas, utilitas, venustas – that is, it must be solid, useful, beautiful. These are sometimes termed the Vitruvian virtues or the Vitruvian Triad. According to Vitruvius, architecture is an imitation of nature. As birds and bees built their nests, so humans constructed housing from natural materials, that gave them shelter against the elements. When perfecting this art of building, the Greeks invented the architectural orders: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. It gave them a sense of proportion, culminating in understanding the proportions of the greatest work of art: the human body. This led Vitruvius in defining his Vitruvian Man, as drawn later by Leonardo da Vinci: the human body inscribed in the circle and the square (the fundamental geometric patterns of the cosmic order).Vitruvius is sometimes loosely referred to as the first architect, but it is more accurate to describe him as the first Roman architect to have written surviving records of his field. He himself cites older but less complete works. He was less an original thinker or creative intellect than a codifier of existing architectural practice. It should also be noted that Vitruvius had a much wider scope than modern architects. Roman architects practised a wide variety of disciplines; in modern terms, they could be described as being engineers, architects,

landscape architects, artists, and craftsmen combined. Etymologically the word architect derives from Greek words meaning 'master' and 'builder'. The first of the Ten Books deals with many subjects which now come within the scope of landscape architecture.