Filippo Juvarra

Raised in a family of goldsmiths and engravers, Juvarra was brought up in Sicily as a craftsman. From 1703 he moved to Rome where he studied at the workshop of Carlo and Francesco Fontana and became a member of Accademia di San Luca.
Working as set designer and drawer of temporary structures for celebrations and ceremonies, he obtained the first important order of his career, the Antamori Chapel in the Church of San Gerolamo della Carità, the only work of architecture he made in Rome (1708).
His consecration as one of the greatest exponents of Italian Baroque art came with the meeting with Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, that Juvarra followed first to Messina and then to Turin.
After becoming “principal architect” of the court he worked on the urban expansion of the city to the west and created some of the best buildings of the Savoyard capital, in which the balance of classicism and the innovation of baroque blend in bright solutions, for example the Basilica of Superga (1715-18), the Church of Santa Cristina (1715-18), the Church of Carmine (1732-36) and the Hunting Residence of Stupinigi (1729-31).
After receiving international acclaim he was called to Spain by Philippe V (1735) who commissioned projects for the Royal Palace, the Granja di Sant’Ildefonso and the Palazzo di Aranjuez, built after his death by Giovan Battista Sacchetti and other disciples.