Asprucci, Antonio

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Asprucci, Antonio (1723–1808). Important Neo-Classical architect working in Rome. His best-known works are the sumptuous interiors of the Villa Borghese, Rome (from 1782), and the enlivening of the Borghese Gardens with arches, pavilions, pools, ruins, and temples, including the Ionic Temple of Aesculapius (1787) and the Chiesetta di Piazza di Siena (c.1787), with its portico of unfluted Greek Doric columns. Antonio was the first Italian architect to revive the Greek Doric style. He used several Egyptianizing motifs in his Neo-Classical designs. His son, Mario Asprucci (1764–1804), also worked on the Villa Borghese Gardens in the 1780s and 1790s (the plan of which was by the Scots landscape-painter Jacob More (c.1740–93)), and was responsible for the original designs for Ickworth House, Suffolk (c.1795), executed, with some modifications, by Francis Sandys from 1796.

Bibliography

Lavagnino (1961);
Meeks (1966)