Paolo Belardi

First published under the title A Scientific Autobiography [Rossi 1981a], as part of the Oppositions Books series by the prestigious editors, Peter Eisenman and Kenneth Frampton, translated with great lyrical sensitivity by Lawrence Venuti and commented upon with extraordinary critical acuity by Vincent Scully (author of a memorable afterword entitled Ideology in Form), Aldo Rossi's A Scientific Autobiography (a story in a personal key to the relationship with architecture and the profession of architect) is an absolutely atypical book, because it manifests itself as a diary, a notebook and a memoir, all at once (read more).

The essay reconstructs the initiatives promoted in the field of art copies from the Fine Arts Academy "Pietro Vannucci" of Perugia: an artistic cenacle founded in 1573 that, even today, boasts a plaster cast gallery in which hundreds of plaster casts of author statues are exhibited –from Michelangelo Buonarroti to Antonio Canova. In recent years these initiatives were sealed by the idea of designing the concept of a multimedia replica of its own plaster cast gallery and, moreover, by the idea of placing at the entrance to the headquarters, between the façade of the Oratory of San Bernardino and the façade of the church of San Francesco al Prato, a one-to-one scale copy of the plaster cast of the Ercole Farnese –one of the most famous statues of antiquity– made by 3D printing with polylactic acid filaments: a bold hypothesis, not only from an environmental point of view, because it has an undoubted visual impact, but also and above all from a cultural perspective, because m...

Although proleptic abstraction is a distinctive characteristic of literary art (and of rhetorical art in particular), it also had profound effects on the history of the figurative arts. This is especially relevant with regard to the classical and medieval ages when it rises to the rank of a consolidated representative technique. The term prolepsis (from the Greek prólepsis, derived from prolambánõ: "I take first"), signifies a specific instrument of descriptive manipulation which, by subverting the actual space-time distances, permits the anticipation of what in reality, according to an orthodox logical/syntactical scheme, should follow or which, in any case, could not be reasonably perceived because it is otherwise located. It is no coincidence that the artists of the past seem to have employed prolepsis on the occasions when they intended to subordinate the naturalistic exigencies to the content and/or didactic objectives. That is, whenever they sought a more dynamic and...

Created a few years after the Urbino Studiolo (1473–1476), the Gubbio Studiolo (1479–1482), also commissioned by Duke Federico da Montefeltro and now at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, differs from its predecessor in many ways, with a less public, more intimate choice of iconography, but the rooms also share a key similarity in their efforts to blur the boundaries between real and illusory spaces. In the Gubbio Studiolo, as in the Urbino Studiolo (as well as in the northern sacristy of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence or in the choir of the church of Santa Maria in Organo in Verona), the wooden panels are inlaid with half–open cabinets from which symbolic objects are spilling (lectern, mazzocchio, armillary sphere, etc.) designed to break the boundaries between science and art. This iconography perfectly suited Duke Federico, a renowned expert on humanistic mathematics: it is no coincidence that the studiolo’s upper frieze, a continuum of carved and gilded let...

Il «Concorso per la Decorazione della facciata, e ristauro della Torre», bandito nel febbraio del 1834 dal Comune di Foligno, inaugura la stagione umbra delle “facciate addossate”: vere e proprie maschere di pietra e stucco che non si sostituiscono alla facciate preesistenti, ma si giustappongono ad esse in guisa di contrafforte. In questo modo, nelle zone ad alto rischio sismico, l’esigenza di rinforzo strutturale si connette strettamente alle istanze di aggiornamento di gusto nell’ornato urbano. Antonio Mollari, autore del progetto prescelto dalla commissione deputata dalla Pontificia Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, e un pioniere di tale strategia. Il suo progetto di concorso per la nuova facciata del Palazzo Comunale di Foligno lo inserisce a buon diritto nel novero degli architetti e degli ingegneri che, nella prima meta dell’Ottocento, cambiano radicalmente il volto delle citta umbre con un lungo elenco di edifici pubblici di grande qualita: Pietro e Vincenzo Ghinelli, Luig...

The Rocca Paolina of Perugia. From a fortress of inaccessibility to a landmark of accessibilityBuilt in the Perugia acropolis in the mid-sixteenth century as a physical expression of the oppressive reprisal of Pope Paul III against the city’s seigniory of the Baglioni family, the Rocca Paolina has always been hated by the Perugia people who, on several occasions during the nineteenth century, did not hesitate to demolish it. The historical events of this fortified architecture are ambiguously linked with its iconographic value, oscillating around a balance in continuous evolution that sees it on the one hand as a fortress of inaccessibility and on the other hand as a flywheel of accessibility.