The Architecture of Modern Italy (volume 1)

The Architecture of Modern Italy

Lombardy

Piedmont

Veneto

Tuscany Papal States

Liguria

TurinMilan

Florence

Genoa

Rome

Kingdom ofTwo Sicilies

Naples

Venice

AUSTRIASWITZERLAND

Trieste

T Y R R H E N I A N S E A

Palermo

Bologna

SARDINIA

Italy 1750

Livorno

A D R I AT I C S E A

Gallarate BergamoMonza

Brescia

PaduaVerona

Treviso

Mantua

Novara

ParmaModena

Pistoia

CarraraFaenza

San Marino

UrbinoAncona

PerugiaFollonica

Civitavecchia

Tivoli

TerracinaMinturno

GaetaCaserta

Belluno

Possagno

Simplon

Ferrara

Montalcino

Subiaco

Portici/Herculaneum

Amalfi

Paestum

Elba

The Architecture of Modern Italy

Volume I: The Challenge of Tradition, 1750–1900

Terry Kirk

Princeton Architectural PressNew York

Published byPrinceton Architectural Press37 East Seventh StreetNew York, New York 10003

For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657.Visit our web site at www.papress.com.

© 2005 Princeton Architectural PressAll rights reservedPrinted and bound in Hong Kong08 07 06 05 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permissionfrom the publisher, except in the context of reviews.

Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissionswill be corrected in subsequent editions.

Project Coordinator: Mark LamsterEditing: Elizabeth Johnson, Linda Lee, Megan CareyLayout: Jane Sheinman

Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Dorothy Ball, Nicola Bednarek, Janet Behning, Penny (YuenPik) Chu, Russell Fernandez, Clare Jacobson, John King, Nancy Eklund Later, KatharineMyers, Lauren Nelson, Scott Tennent, Jennifer Thompson, and Joseph Weston of PrincetonArchitectural Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataKirk,Terry.

The architecture of modern Italy / Terry Kirk.v. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.Contents: v. 1.The challenge of tradition, 1750–1900 — v. 2.Visions of Utopia,

1900–present.ISBN 1-56898-438-3 (set : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-56898-420-0 (v. 1 : alk. paper) —

ISBN 1-56898-436-7 (v. 2 : alk. paper)1.Architecture—Italy. 2.Architecture, Modern. I.Title.

NA1114.K574 2005720'.945—dc22

2004006479

for marcello

Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Chapter 1Architecture of the Italian Enlightenment, 1750–1800

The Pantheon Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14Rome of the Nolli Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20Alessandro Galilei and San Giovanni Laterano . . . . . . . .22Nicola Salvi and the Trevi Fountain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24Luigi Vanvitelli and the Reggia at Caserta . . . . . . . . . . .28Fernando Fuga and the Albergo dei Poveri . . . . . . . . . .40Giovanni Battista Piranesi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47Giacomo Quarenghi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59The Grand Tour and the Impact of Archeology . . . . . . .62Collecting and Cultural Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65The Patronage of Pope Pius VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73Giuseppe Piermarini and Milan in the Eighteenth

Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77Venice’s Teatro La Fenice and Conclusions on

Neoclassicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83

Chapter 2Napoleon in Italy, 1800–1815

Napoleon’s Italic Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86Milan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91Venice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98Turin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101Naples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105Trieste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107The Neoclassical Interior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112Napoleon’s Interest in Archeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120Political Restoration and Restitution of Artworks . . . . .123Napoleonic Neoclassicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125

Chapter 3Restoration and Romanticism, 1815–1860

Giuseppe Jappelli and the Romantic Ideal . . . . . . . . . .126Villa Rivalry:The Borghese and the Torlonia of Rome .136Italian Opera Stage Design and Theater Interiors . . . . .143Antonio Canova’s Temple in Possagno . . . . . . . . . . . . .147Pantheon Progeny and Carlo Barabino . . . . . . . . . . . .153Romanticism in Tuscany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156Alessandro Antonelli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .160Construction in Iron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166Architectural Restoration of Monuments . . . . . . . . . . .169Revivalism and Camillo Boito . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176

Chapter 4Unification and the Nation’s Capitals, 1860–1900

Turin, the First Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .186Florence, the Interim Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .190Naples Risanata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .196Milan, the Industrial Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .199Cathedral Facades and Town Halls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .204Palermo and National Unification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217The Last of Papal Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219Rome, the Capital of United Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .222Monumental Symbols of the New State . . . . . . . . . . .231A New Urban Infrastructure for Rome . . . . . . . . . . . .241A National Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246Rome, a World Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .252

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .260

Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .275

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .276

the context of its own rich historical endowment and against globaltrends in architecture.

Understanding the works of modern Italy requires meticulousattention to cultural context. Political and social changes,technological advance within the realities of the Italian economy, thedevelopment of new building types, the influence of related arts andsciences (particularly the rise of classical archeology), and theories ofrestoration are all relevant concerns.The correlated cultures of musicproduction, scenography, and industrial design must be brought tobear. Each work is explored in terms of its specific historicalmoment, uncluttered by anachronistic polemical commentary.Primary source material, especially the architect’s own word, is givenprominence. Seminal latter-day scholarship, almost all written inItalian, is brought together here for the first time. Selectedbibliographies for each chapter subheading credit the originalthinkers and invite further research.

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the challenge of tradition, 1750–1900

1.1 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Pantheon, Rome. Engraving from Vedute di Roma, c. 1748

Chapter 1

architecture of the

italian enlightenment,

1750–1800

the pantheon revisited

The Pantheon is one of the most celebrated and most carefullystudied buildings of Western architecture. In the modern age, as ithad been in the Renaissance, the Pantheon is a crucible of criticalthinking. Preservation of the Pantheon had been undertaken in theseventeenth century and continued in the eighteenth during thepontificate of Clement XI. Floodwater stains had been removed andsome statues placed in the altars around the perimeter.AntoineDerizet, professor at Rome’s official academy of arts, the Accademiadi San Luca, praised Clement’s operation as having returned thePantheon “to its original beauty.”A view of the interior painted byGiovanni Paolo Panini recorded the recent restorations. From alateral niche, between two cleaned columns, Panini directs our visionaway from the Christianized altar out to the sweep of the ancientspace.The repeated circles of perimeter, marble paving stones, oculus,and the spot of sunlight that shines through it emphasize thegeometrical logic of the rotunda. Panini’s painted view reflects theeighteenth-century vision of the Pantheon as the locus of an idealgeometrical architectural beauty.

Not everything in Panini’s view satisfied the contemporarycritical eye, however.The attic, that intermediate level above thecolumns and below the coffers of the dome, seemed discordant—illproportioned, misaligned, not structurally relevant.A variety ofconstruction chronologies were invented to explain this “error.”Theincapacity of eighteenth-century critics to interpret the Pantheon’soriginal complexities led them to postulate a theory of its original

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the architecture of modern italy

1.2 Giovanni Paolo Panini, Pantheon, c. 1740

state and, continuing Clement XI’s work, formulate a program ofcorrective reconstruction.

In 1756, during the papacy of Benedict XIV, the doors of thePantheon were shut, and behind them dust rose as marble fragmentsfrom the attic were thrown down.What may have started as amaintenance project resulted in the elimination of the troublesomeattic altogether.The work was carried out in secret; even the pope’sclaim of authority over the Pantheon, traditionally the city’s domain,was not made public until after completion. Francesco Algarotti,intellectual gadfly of the enlightened age, happened upon the workin progress and wrote with surprise and irony that “they have daredto spoil that magnificent, august construction of the Pantheon. . . .They have even destroyed the old attic from which the cupolasprings and they’ve put up in its place some modern gentilities.”Aswith the twin bell towers erected on the temple’s exterior in theseventeenth century,Algarotti did not know who was behind thepresent work.

The new attic was complete by 1757. Plaster panels andpedimented windows replaced the old attic pilaster order,accentuating lines of horizontality.The new panels were madecommensurate in measure to the dome’s coffers and the fourteen“windows” were reshaped as statue niches with cutout figures ofstatues set up to test the effect.The architect responsible for the attic’sredesign, it was later revealed, was Paolo Posi who, as a functionaryonly recently hired to Benedict XIV’s Vatican architectural team, wasprobably brought in after the ancient attic was dismantled. Posi’straining in the baroque heritage guaranteed a certain facility of formalinvention. Francesco Milizia, the eighteenth century’s most widelyrespected architectural critic, described Posi as a decorative talent, notan architectural mind.Whatever one might think of the design, publicrancor arose over the wholesale liquidation of the materials from theold attic. Capitals, marble slabs, and ancient stamped bricks weredispersed on the international market for antiquities. Posi’s work atthe Pantheon was sharply criticized, often with libelous aspersion thatrevealed a prevailing sour attitude toward contemporary architecturein Rome and obfuscated Posi’s memory.They found the new atticsuddenly an affront to the venerated place.

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Reconsidering Posi’s attic soon became an exercise in thedevelopment of eighteenth-century architects in Rome. GiovanniBattista Piranesi, the catalytic architectural mind who provided uswith the evocative engraving of the Pantheon’s exterior, drew upalternative ideas of a rich, three-dimensional attic of clusteredpilasters and a meandering frieze that knit the openings andelements together in a bold sculptural treatment. Piranesi, as we willsee in a review of this architect’s work, reveled in liberties promisedin the idiosyncrasies of the original attic and joyously contributedsome of his own. Piranesi had access to Posi’s work site and hadprepared engravings of the discovered brick stamps and theuncovered wall construction, but these were held from publicrelease. In his intuitive and profound understanding of theimplications of the Pantheon’s supposed “errors,” Piranesi may havebeen the only one to approach without prejudice the Pantheon inall its complexity and contradiction.

The polemical progress of contemporary architectural design inthe context of the Pantheon exemplifies the growing difficulties atthis moment of reconciling creativity and innovation with the pastand tradition. History takes on a weight and gains a life of its own.The polemic over adding to the Pantheon reveals a moment oftransition from an earlier period of an innate, more fluid sense ofcontinuity with the past to a period of shifting and uncertainrelationship in the present.The process of redefining the interactionof the present to the past, of contemporary creativity in an historicalcontext, is the core of the problem of modern architecture in Italyand the guiding theme of this study.

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1.3 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Pantheon, design for the attic, 1756

rome of the nolli plan

The complex layering found at the Pantheon was merely an exampleof the vast palimpsest that is Rome itself, and there is no betterdemonstration of this than the vivid portrait of the city engraved in1748.The celebrated cartographer Giovanni Battista Nolli and histeam measured the entire city in eleven months using exacttrigonometric methods.At a scale of 1 to 2,900, the two-square-meter map sacrifices no accuracy: interior spaces of major publicbuildings, churches, and palazzi are shown in detail; piazzafurnishings, garden parterre layouts, and scattered ruins outside thewalls are described with fidelity. Buildings under construction in the1740s were also included:Antoine Derizet’s Church of SantissimoNome di Maria at Trajan’s Column, the Trevi Fountain, PalazzoCorsini on Via della Lungara. In the city’s first perfectly ichnographicrepresentation Nolli privileges no element over another in the urbanfabric.All aspects are equally observed and equally important.Vignettes in the lower corners of the map, however, present selectedmonuments of ancient and contemporary Rome: columns, arches,and temples opposite churches, domes, and new piazzas. Roma anticaand Roma moderna face one another in a symbiotic union.

The Nolli plan captures Rome in all its richness, fixing in manyminds the date of its publication as the apex of the city’s architecturalsplendor. It is an illusory vision, however, as Rome, like all healthycities, has never been in stasis. Nolli’s inclusion of contemporaryarchitecture emphasizes its constant evolution. His plan is neither aculmination nor a conclusion but the starting point forcontemporary architecture.The architecture of modern Italy iswritten upon this already dense palimpsest.

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1.4 Giovanni Battista Nolli, La Nuova pianta di Roma, 1748

alessandro galilei and san giovanni laterano

One of the contemporary monuments featured in Nolli’s vignetteswas a new facade for the church of San Giovanni Laterano.Thebasilica, along with its baptistery, was erected by the EmperorConstantine in the year 315. It was, and still is, the pre-eminentliturgical seat in the Christian capital, where the relics of Saints Peterand Paul—specifically, their heads—are preserved.The popes residedat the Lateran through the Middle Ages and it remains today thecathedral of the city of Rome, though it does not enjoy a pre-eminent urban position or architectural stature; indeed its peripheralsite along the city’s western walls and eccentric orientation facingout across the open countryside make the maintenance of its rightfulstature, let alone its aging physical structure, extremely difficult.TheChurch of Saint Peter’s, on the other hand, also Constantinian inorigin, had been entirely reconceived under Pope Julius II in theRenaissance and became the preferred papal seat. Meanwhile, theLateran remained in constant need of repair, revision, and reform.Pope Sixtus V reconfigured the site by adding an obelisk, a newpalace and benediction loggia on the side and later Pope Innocent Xset Francesco Borromini to reintegrate the body of the church, itsnave, and its double aisles, but his plans for the facade and easternpiazza were left unexecuted. Dozens of projects to complete thefacade were proposed over the next seventy-five years until PopeClement XII announced in 1731 an architectural competition for it.

Clement XII’s idea of a competition was a novelty for Rome,with a published program and projects presented anonymously beforean expert jury. It would indeed provide an opportunity for exposureof new ideas and for stimulating discussion. In 1732, nearly two dozenproposals were put on display in a gallery of the papal summer palaceon the Quirinal Hill.All the prominent architects of Romeparticipated, as well as architects from Florence, Bologna, and Venice.Participants drew up a variety of alternatives ranging, as tastes ran,between a stern classicism to fulsome baroque images after Borromini.Jury members from the Accademia di San Luca found the projectsthat followed Borrominian inspiration excessively exuberant andpreferred the sobriety of the classical inheritance, and Alessandro

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Galilei emerged the winner.These expressed opinions delineated apolemical moment dividing the baroque from a new classicism.

Galilei was a remote relation of the famous astronomer andfollowed the papal court from Florence to Rome. Galilei had beenactive in the rediscovery of classic achievements in the arts and lettersin the eighteenth century re-examining Giotto, Dante, andBrunelleschi with renewed appreciation. For example, when asked in1723 for his opinion on a new baroque-style altar for the Florentinebaptistry, Galilei favored preserving the original Romanesqueambience of the interior despite the tastes of his day.A renewedclassical sense stigmatized the frivolities of the rococo as uncultivated,arbitrary, and irrational. Clement XII’s competition for San Giovannimay merely have been a means to secure the project less flagrantlyfor Galilei and to introduce a rigorous cultural policy to Rome.

Roman architects petitioned the pope, livid that their talentwent unrewarded, and Clement responded with, in effect, consolationprizes to some of them with commissions for other papal works.Construction on the Lateran facade was begun in 1733.

Galilei’s facade of San Giovanni Laterano is a tall and broadstructure in white travertine limestone.The structure is entirely opento the deep shadowed spaces of a loggia set within a colossalCorinthian order. In a manuscript attributed to Galilei, the architectarticulates his guiding principles of clear composition and reasonedornament, functional analysis and economy. Professional architects,Galilei insists, trained in mathematics and science and a study ofantiquity, namely the Pantheon and Vitruvius, can assure goodbuilding. Galilei’s handling of the composition has the rectilinearrigor and interlocking precision one might expect from amathematician.The ponderous form is monumental merely by themeans of its harmonious proportions of large canonical elements. It isa strong-boned, broad-shouldered architecture, a match for SaintPeter’s. It demonstrates in its skeletal sparseness and subordination ofornamentation the rational architectural logic attributed to Vitruvius.Galilei’s images are derived primarily from sources in Rome: the twomasterpieces of his Florentine forefather Michelangelo, Saint Peter’sand the Palazzo dei Conservatori at the Capitoline. Galilei’s classicismis a constant strain among architects in Rome who built their

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monumental church facades among the vestiges of the ancienttemples. Galilei refocused that tradition upon Vitruvius and in hismeasured austerity contributed a renewed objectivity to Romanarchitecture of the eighteenth century.

Galilei’s austere classicism is emblematic of a search for atimeless and stately official idiom at a point in time where thesequalities were found lacking in contemporary architecture. Reason,simplicity, order, clarity—the essential motifs of this moderndiscussion—set into motion a reasoned disengagement from thebaroque.With Galilei’s monumental facade, guided in many ways bythe pressures of Saint Peter’s, the Cathedral of Rome takes itsrightful position, as Nolli’s vignette suggests, a triumphal arch overenthroned Roma moderna.

nicola salvi and the trevi fountain

Alongside serious official architectural works on major ecclesiasticalsites, eighteenth-century Rome also sustained a flourishing activity inmore lighthearted but no less meaningful works.The Trevi Fountainranks perhaps as the most joyous site in Rome. Built from 1732 to1762 under the patronage of popes Clement XII, Benedict XIV, andClement XIII, the great scenographic water display is often describedas the glorious capstone of the baroque era.This is indeed wheremost architectural histories (and tourist itineraries) of Italianarchitecture end. It is one of those places, like the Pantheon, wherethe entire sweep of Rome’s culture can be read.

The history of the Trevi Fountain reaches back to antiquity.Thewaters that feed the fountain today flow through the Aqua Virgoaqueduct originally constructed by Agrippa in 19 B.C.The aqueductpasses mostly underground and was obstructed in the Middle Ages toprevent barbarian infiltration, so it was easily repaired in theRenaissance.The water inspired a succession of baroque designerswith ideas for a fountain.As at San Giovanni, a similar architecturalcompetition was opened by Clement XII.With Clement’s ownfavored Florentine architect, Galilei, already loaded up with projects,

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1.5 Alessandro Galilei, San Giovanni Laterano facade, Rome, 1732–35

1.6 Nicola Salvi with Luigi Vanvitelli, then Giuseppe Panini,Trevi Fountain, Rome,

1732–62. Engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, from Vedute di Roma, c. 1748

The Architecture of Modern Italy (volume 1)

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