Giovanni Battista Trevano

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Giovanni Battista Trevano was an Italian architect from Lombardy who worked in Poland as royal architect for King Sigismund III Vasa, of the Swedish dynasty of Vasa, who was ruling Poland at the time.

He was one of the team of architects and craftsmen who rebuilt the royal Wawel Castle of Warsaw, the old Gothic castle of the Mazovian princes, which had already been completely remodelled by Italian architects in the early sixteenth century. New works were undertaken in the years 1589-1619 for Sigismund III Vasa. Following a fire in 1592, Trevano rebuilt the state apartments. He was not alone in this project: Giacomo Rodondo, Paolo del Corte and Mateo Castelli were all involved in remaking as a new Baroque structure, on its imposing site along the bank of the river Vistula. The castle, much altered over the years, was bombed and dynamited by the Nazis as a symbol of Polish culture and was rebuilt in the years 1971–1988 as a national monument.

Also on Wawel, at the Cathedral Church of St Wenceslas, which has been repeatedly reconstructed around the 11th-century shrine of St Stanislaw, Trevano built the crossing dome, supported on four piers (1626–29).

The first Baroque church in Poland is that of St. Peter and Paul in Ulica Grodzka, erected by order of Sigismund III Vasa for the Jesuits in the years 1597—1619. It was designed by Giovanni de Rossi as a cruciform basilica with a domed crossing and completed by Trevano. As with Jesuit churches throughout Catholic Europe, its façade is a close variant of that provided by Giacomo Della Porta for the Church of the Gesù, the Jesuit Mother Church in Rome.

In Kraków, St Martin's Church (Kosciol sw.Marcina), was built by Trevano, 1638–44. It has been used for Lutheran worship since 1816. In Ulica sw.Jana, no.12, the Krauze House (Kamienica Krauzowska, now housing the Kraków History Museum) was originally a Gothic building but was remodelled by Giovanni Petrini and Trevano in 1611. The house has a doorway with a segmental pediment.

In Kielce the bishop's palace, built 1637–41 for Jakub Zadzik (1582–1642) as a personal monument, is undocumented but is attributed to Trevano, though Tomasso Poncino, another Italian working in Poland but mainly as a building contractor, is credited with carrying out the construction and working out some of the architectural detail. The palace stands out in Poland in retaining its original features virtually unchanged.

[edit] Further reading

• Dmochowski, Zbigniew, The Architecture of Poland (London, 1956)