Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2007 - 37

tivities and performances was the entire scene
as it was depicted....Done by a painter who has
been in the service of the Duke, Signore Peregrino, it is a reduction and perspective of land
with houses, churches, bell towers, and gardens
with which one cannot satiate himself by viewing it..."5
Signor Peregrino was actually Pelligrino
da Udine.6 Nothing more is heard of him as a
theatre artist. He simply has the distinction of
having introduced perspective to the stage.
A badly preserved drawing, attributed
to Pelligrino, shows how the perspective was
used.7 A reconstruction of the drawing (fig. 6)
makes it clear; two houses are set apart facing
the audience, just as on a mansion stage, with
a perspective painting behind them.8 Details of
the drawing show the Ducal Palace (right of the
drawing) and the old bell tower on the corner
of the New Court (left of the drawing) and the
arch leading to the new extension of the city
built by Duke Ercole I.
The buildings flanking the perspective represent old Academia on Piazza San Crispino (now
Trente e Trieste) and a palazzo. The little shop
on the corner, with its canopy, stage-left, adds a
common touch. It will become a stock item of the
comic scene in the perspective stage.

audience was decorated with tapestries
representing Troy. A large cornice in relief
was above this and took up a whole half
of the hall. It had large white letters on a
blue background that said:
WAR OUTSIDE: SPECTACLES AT HOME
THUS DID CAESAR
THUS PROPER FOR A GREAT SOUL
THUS ARE BOTH ATTENDED9
Large balls of greenery were hung at the
top of the hall. There were so many that
they nearly covered the vault, from which
chandeliers were suspended by cables
that hung from rosettes set into the vault.
These cables held two sets of chandeliers
from one side of the hall to the other. They
consisted of thirteen letters: there were
just as many rosettes. They said:
DELIGHT OF THE PEOPLE
These letters were so large that above each
one there were seven to ten lights,10 so
many that they made a very great light.
The scene, then, was an imitation of

Urbino
The next appearance of perspective on the stage
is at Urbino in 1513. The occasion was Carnival
and the celebrations included Bernardo Dovizi
da Bibbiena La Calandria, a comedy, probably
Nicola Grassi's L'Eutichia, and a comedy written by the fourteen-year-old Guidobaldo Rugieri. A hall in the ducal palace was converted
into a theatre for the occasion. The famous
author of The Courtier, Bernardino Castiglione
of Ferrara, supervised the arrangements and Girolamo Genga designed the scenery. Castiglione
provides an elaborate description of them:
The scene was an imitation of a street
ending between a city wall and the last
houses. From the stage on the ground the
city wall with two towers was imitated
naturally. At the tops of the hall on one
there was the pipers and on the other the
horn players. In between, then, there was
another flank in a beautiful style. The
hall came to rest as if it were of the earth,
crossed by two walls like aqueducts. The
side of the hall with the seats for the

THEATRE

DESIGN

Figure 6. Reconstruction of Ariosto's La Cassaria

TECHNOLOGY
SUMMER

2007

a beautiful city with streets, palaces,
churches, towers, real streets, and every
thing [done] in relief, but also enhanced
by very beautiful painting with a wellexecuted perspective. Among other things,
there was a temple with eight faces in
half relief, so well detailed that, with all
the works in city of Urbino, it would not
be possible to believe that it was done in
four months. It was all worked in stucco
with most beautiful inscriptions. The
windows were of imitation alabaster; all
the architraves and cornices of fine gold
and ultramarine, and in some places,
glass that imitated jewels that looked
absolutely real, round figures of imitation
marble and colonnades all rendered. It
would take a long time to tell everything.
This was approximately in the middle.
From one of the heads there was a
triumphal arch, a good one canna11
from the wall, made as well as could be.
Between the architrave and the vault the

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