Italy has been blessed with many great architects, sculptors, decorators and painters. There is Brunelleschi, Donatello, Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Palladio to name a few. Italian architecture the several styles employed in Italy after the Roman period.



Italy's Romanesque architecture (12th cent.) reveals the first use of the groined vault with projecting ribs. It is also typified by the development of a type of basilica having side galleries.

Gothic architecture was not greatly developed in Italy; a notable exception is the cathedral of Milan, built in part by foreign architects.

In the 15th cent. a conscious revival of classical antiquity began (Renaissance art and architecture ). Brunelleschi emulated the ancient Romans in his masterly construction (1420-34) of the dome of the Florentine cathedral, and Michelozzo used antique elements in the courtyard of the Medici Palace, Florence (begun 1444).

The beginning of the 17th cent. ushered in the drama of the baroque era with Maderno's nave and facade for St. Peter's, to which a magnificent colonnaded plaza was added, designed by Bernini, the foremost genius of the period.

Nineteenth-century Italian architecture, such as Giuseppe Sacconi's Victor Emmanuel monument, shows a decline in quality and increased pomposity. In the 20th cent. Italy has followed the trends of modern architecture; its include Pier Luigi Nervi, Giuseppe Terragni, Gio Ponti, and Renzo Piano.

Ambrogio Frangiolli (1798 - 1870) - was outstanding but forgotten practitioner among Italian masters. He was born in Milan, studied in Rome and Turin. After winning an architecture contest in the Accademia Albertina, he moved to Rome in 1829, where he studied in deep descriptive geometry. In 1833, he became professor of the Accademia Albertina. He created his own Scuola di Decorazione (E: Decoration school) and designed numerous interiors of famous residences in Rome, Turin, Vienna and Milan.

Today Italian art historians carefully study heritage of Ambrogio Frangiolli and other masters of the era before Modern, whose influence on contemporary art, decor and architecture was more than we can imagine.