Storia, Costruzione, Design: due scale di edifici aristocratici nell’Europa del tardo Settecento

This paper focuses on the history and formal and constructional interpretation of two staircases designed to spectacularize the interiors of aristocratic buildings in late eighteenth-century Europe, but with different histories and models: the "Musicians' Staircase" of Palazzo Biscari in Catania (1772) and the "Imperial" Staircase of the Home House in London (1776). The two almost contemporary structures are located in distant places and reflect the coexistence of opposing but equally fashionable languages ​​in Europe. The Rococo of the Sicilian staircase and the Neoclassicism of the English one were interpreted in structures with a fascinating design and ascending dynamic that made them immediately famous. The originality of the two devices, which also exploits their daring construction, arises from a scenographic and playful approach to the design of the adjacent spaces dedicated to leisure and entertainment, and from the interpretation of models with European circulation. The involvement in the design process of imaginative clients with international aspirations, such as Ignazio Paternò Castello, Prince of Biscari, and Elizabeth Dowager, Countess of Home, is evident, alongside multi-talented architects such as Francesco Battaglia and the more famous Robert Adam. Although mentioned in the context of research into the sumptuous buildings that house them, these structures have not been studied in terms of their design genesis, the models selected, or the geometric and spatial "manipulation" employed. In this sense, the Central European printed sources reinterpreted in the design of the bizarre stucco spiral of the Catania palace, likened to a sea wave, the fruit of a momentary explosion of Rococo taste—a scheme virtually absent from Friedrich Mielke's catalogue—and the international typological series, constructed, designed, and even theorized of Italian origin, from which, conversely, the monumental English "three-branched" structure derives, broaden and intersect the comparative horizons explored in this research.