Is it possible today to write about the architecture of southern Italy and its islands, in an age rich in echoes and studies about Italian history, while trying to avoid any justification, the circularity of common places or an excessive insistence on identity? Are there new paradigms that can to some extent, lead us to a different idea of the South and make us understand that the architecture of that part of Italy that is often belittled is not devoid of progress, that it had its own masters, personal experimentation efforts, and debates, and that it is not the place (or only the place) of inertia, tradition, improvisation, fatalistic acceptance and backwardness? Perhaps this is now possible today, with the available materials and sources, if we renounce building the narration on language, understood as style, and on representation, by embedding alleged messages and allegories for contemporaries and for posterity in the architectural choices and arguments that have long had a central place in traditional historiography. This study presents the final results of the Cosmed Project. Its four chapters examine the special ties that bind the construction of the vaults and domes of southern Italy and its islands with a broader and more articulated network especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The study reveals the existence of a transcultural Mediterranean crossed by masters with diverse skill sets who imported their experience, blending it with other building traditions and achieving results that transcend boundaries imposed by the historiography of individual countries. In particular, it addresses the topic of funeral mausoleums placed in the choir of churches, the debate on dome claddings with particular reference to the city of Palermo, the search for vault solutions without ribs and finally a survey of some apparently isolated and marginal cases in southern Italy showing the ties and experiments that actually inspired them.

La ricerca presentata in questo volume intende tenere a qualche distanza il paradigma centro-periferia, o quello speculare della lingua e dei dialetti, che, con altri termini e pur dando dignità agli “sconfitti”, riconfermano e sclerotizzano la distanza tra centri egemonici e luoghi della ricezione e della traduzione. In che misura la produzione artistica del Meridione (di certo Meridione, naturalmente) nel Cinquecento è ascrivibile ad una categoria fissata una volta per tutte? Vale ancora questo parametro per le ricerche di natura costruttiva o per la pratica della stereotomia? Forse la permeabilità o l’indifferenza a determinate conquiste (quelle che oggi, dopo Vasari e dopo un secolo di studi sovente caratterizzati da un’intransigenza superiore a quella di Vasari, consideriamo tali) partono da ragioni diverse da quelle che suppongono una differenza strutturale. La distanza è soprattutto misurabile a partire dalle esiguità delle ricerche, dalla differenza quantitativa di fonti e di documentazione reperibile, non ultimo, è drasticamente condizionata dallo stato attuale delle architetture. In Sicilia, come a Napoli o in Puglia, quasi sempre i monumenti del Cinquecento sono complicati palinsesti da decifrare. Forse va tenuta in considerazione l’esistenza di un costante e larvato scetticismo per l’armonia e l’assenza di fedeltà a disegni duraturi; si tratta spesso di opere dove la sacralità del progetto iniziale, dell’istante in cui sono state concepite non ha inibito le modifiche, le aggiunte, le mutazioni

Nobile, R. (2016). ARCHITETTURA E COSTRUZIONE IN ITALIA MERIDIONALE (XVI-XVII SEC.). Palermo : Edizioni Caracol [10.17401/ARCHITETTURA-COSTRUZIONE-NOBILE].

ARCHITETTURA E COSTRUZIONE IN ITALIA MERIDIONALE (XVI-XVII SEC.)

NOBILE, Rosario
2016-01-01

Abstract

Is it possible today to write about the architecture of southern Italy and its islands, in an age rich in echoes and studies about Italian history, while trying to avoid any justification, the circularity of common places or an excessive insistence on identity? Are there new paradigms that can to some extent, lead us to a different idea of the South and make us understand that the architecture of that part of Italy that is often belittled is not devoid of progress, that it had its own masters, personal experimentation efforts, and debates, and that it is not the place (or only the place) of inertia, tradition, improvisation, fatalistic acceptance and backwardness? Perhaps this is now possible today, with the available materials and sources, if we renounce building the narration on language, understood as style, and on representation, by embedding alleged messages and allegories for contemporaries and for posterity in the architectural choices and arguments that have long had a central place in traditional historiography. This study presents the final results of the Cosmed Project. Its four chapters examine the special ties that bind the construction of the vaults and domes of southern Italy and its islands with a broader and more articulated network especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The study reveals the existence of a transcultural Mediterranean crossed by masters with diverse skill sets who imported their experience, blending it with other building traditions and achieving results that transcend boundaries imposed by the historiography of individual countries. In particular, it addresses the topic of funeral mausoleums placed in the choir of churches, the debate on dome claddings with particular reference to the city of Palermo, the search for vault solutions without ribs and finally a survey of some apparently isolated and marginal cases in southern Italy showing the ties and experiments that actually inspired them.
2016
Settore ICAR/18 - Storia Dell'Architettura
978-88-98546-64-0
Nobile, R. (2016). ARCHITETTURA E COSTRUZIONE IN ITALIA MERIDIONALE (XVI-XVII SEC.). Palermo : Edizioni Caracol [10.17401/ARCHITETTURA-COSTRUZIONE-NOBILE].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10447/222520
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