Editing Proscenium (section)

==Renaissance==
[[Image:Interior of Teatro Olimpico (Vicenza) - Gradinata.jpg|thumb|250px|View of the seating area and part of the stage at the [[Teatro Olimpico]] (1585) in [[Vicenza]], Italy. No proscenium arch divides the seating area from the "proscenium" (stage), and the space between the two has been made as open as possible, without endangering the structural integrity of the building.]] 
[[File:Vicenza false street.JPG|thumb|250px|The "proscenium" (stage) at the [[Teatro Olimpico]]. The central archway in the ''[[scaenae frons]]'' (or ''proscenium'') was too small to serve as a proscenium arch in the modern sense, and was in practice always part of the backdrop to the action on-stage.]]
The oldest surviving indoor theatre of the modern era, the [[Teatro Olimpico]] in [[Vicenza]] (1585), is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the first example of a proscenium theatre. The Teatro Olimpico was an academic reconstruction of a Roman theatre. It has a plain ''proscaenium'' at the front of the stage, dropping to the ''orchestra'' level, now usually containing "stalls" seating, but no proscenium arch.

However, the Teatro Olimpico's exact replication of the open and accessible Roman stage was the exception rather than the rule in sixteenth-century theatre design. Engravings suggest that the proscenium arch was already in use as early as 1560 at a production in [[Siena]].<ref>Licisco Magagnato, "The Genesis of the ''Teatro Olimpico'', in ''Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes'', Vol. XIV (1951), p. 215.</ref>

The earliest true proscenium arch to survive in a permanent theatre is the [[Teatro Farnese]] in [[Parma]] (1618), many earlier such theatres having been lost. Parma has a clearly defined "[[:it: Boccascena|boccascena]]", or scene mouth, as Italians call it, more like a picture frame than an arch but serving the same purpose: to deineate the stage and separate the audience from its action.{{citation needed|date=June 2015}}