Luigi Manini

(b Crema, 8 March 1848; d Brescia, 1936). Italian architect and stage designer, active in Portugal. He studied at the Accademia di Brera (now Accademia di Belle Arti), Milan, under Carlo Ferrario (1833-1907), stage designer at La Scala, Milan. Manini was appointed stage designer of the Teatro S Carlos, Lisbon, in 1879, at a time when the theatre received the most important European operatic productions. In this position he succeeded his compatriot Giuseppe Cinatti and, like his predecessor, in addition to his work in the theatre he designed houses for middle-class clients with a taste for his late Romantic fa?ades, influenced by scenery design. He carried over into his architectural designs his passion for painting and for trompe l'oeil landscapes, and his principal achievements were decorative: the interior decoration of the Teatro do Funchal, Madeira; the ceiling of the Teatro S Jo?o, Oporto; and the winter garden (1893) of the Teatro Dona Am?lia, Lisbon. His contributions to the layout of the terrace of the Pal?cio da Cidadela, Cascais, and the Portuguese Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle, Paris (1900), were similar. In his best-known buildings Manini evolved a highly wrought version of the Late Gothic Manueline style, saturating fa?ades with superimposed ornament as if he was a goldsmith. For royal patrons he designed a country house (1887-1907; now the Palace Hotel) in this style, set in the Bu?aco forest. At Sintra, a town full of Manueline associations, he designed his most elaborate and celebrated homage to that era in the house (begun 1904) for the wealthy Ant?nio Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro. At the beginning of a century that saw the triumph of Functionalist architecture, Manini was formally and aesthetically an architect who belonged to the past. He returned to Italy in 1913.

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