Bibiena family (Galli da) Italian painters, architects, and designers. Three generations of Galli da Bibienas were active throughout Europe from the Counter- Reformation to the Enlightenment, a period spanning approximately 1680 to 1780. Students of the baroque, an age that loved illusion, they adopted an exuberant style that made use of new architectural forms, ornate columns, trompe l’œil, overstatement, and exaggerated modelling. Their patrons were emperors and kings, and members of the nobility, as well as the Catholic Church and wealthy merchants in major towns throughout the Italian peninsula, Europe, and Russia; and they spent many years away from the family home in Bologna designing, building, and decorating gardens, palaces, villas, churches; planning and organizing spectacular royal coronations, weddings, and funerals; constructing horseshoe-shaped, many-tiered court playhouses and modern public or community theatres; designing theatre interiors; creating innovative scenery; and engineering stage machinery for operas and ballets by Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Antonio Caldara, and Carl Heinrich Graun.

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