Giuseppe Barberi

• Name — Giuseppe Barberi • Born — 14 January 1746 • Birthplace — Rome, Papal States • Died — 8 December 1809 • Place of death — Rome, Papal States • Occupation — Architect • Movement — Neoclassicism • Education — Luigi Valadier

Born and raised in Rome, Barberi was first trained as a silversmith under Luigi Valadier, father of the architect, Giuseppe Valadier (1762-1839). When he was only 17 he submitted a proposal for the rebuilding of the Basilica of Maxentius and was awarded the third prize in architecture at the Accademia di San Luca. In 1774, Barberi won the competition for the décor for the celebration of the exequies of Louis XV in the church of the French community in Rome, which gained him the patronage of the French Ambassador, Cardinal François-Joachim de Pierre de Bernis. He worked for the Altieri family from 1775, for whom, in 1783, he built the Church of San Giorgio in Oriolo Romano and the apartment for Prince Paluzzo in his Roman palace between 1787 and 1793. In 1787, he became a member of the Accademia di San Luca. His project for Palazzo Braschi, with forty-two shops at the ground level, was criticised as inappropriate by the press. Besides the four ceremonial apartments of the family, the palace also contained eight apartments for rent.

Barberi was acquainted with Piranesi, and by his own account, the two of them founded an academy of perspective and architecture. During the French intervention in Italy (1796–1815), Barberi, who sympathised with the revolutionary ideology, left Rome for Milan (1798). Following the French occupation of the Papal States, he returned to Rome, where he was appointed architect to the Roman Republic. In 1798, he designed an ephemeral triumphal arch for the Festa della Federazione in Rome, which was erected near the Ponte Sant'Angelo and is recorded in a painting by Felice Giani in the Palazzo Braschi. The round pedestal, decorated with a series of standing figures carved in relief on top of the arch, probably refers to Ennemond Alexandre Petitot's triumphal arch from the late 1740s. After the fall of the republic, Barberi fled to France. In 1800, he worked briefly in the Paris studio run by Piranesi's son Francesco. In 1806, he returned to Rome, where he died on 8 December 1809.

Although Barberi was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca as an architect, there are few buildings which can be associated with his name. His sketchbooks, however, show that he was constantly designing projects of every description. While the grandeur and ornamentation of his buildings and the large dimensions of his urban designs showed acquaintance with the work of Giovanni Antonio Antolini and of Felice Giani, he also reminded contemporaries of the work of Francesco Borromini. According to Ada Louise Huxtable:

• Illustration — Design for a Stage Set, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York • Illustration — Lamenting women in front of a sarcophagus, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen • Illustration — Design for a Doorcase, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York • Illustration — Ephemeral arch erected in Piazza di Ponte to celebrate the Roman Republic on March 20, 1798. Painting by Felice Giani