La obra sevillana de Benvenuto Tortello . Napoli Nobilissima XXIII, 1984, nº 5-6 (original) (raw)
IDA: Advanced Doctoral Research in Architecture, 2017
This doctoral thesis is based on 1700 barely known 16th century documents and surveys (books of written records of houses called 'apeos') which describe all kinds of buildings in the city of Seville belonging to the Cathedral and the charitable hospitals of Amor de Dios, Bubas, Cinco Llagas, El Cardenal and Espíritu Santo. After locating, identifying and evaluating the documentation, a special method of analysis has been developed to deal with the enormous amount of information provided by these sources. These texts describing the buildings have been transcribed and entered into a database and, from these, about 320 drawings have been made (including hypothetical distribution, elevation and volume plans) to facilitate the understanding of their original architecture. Then they have been grouped into four sections according to their use: houses, courtyard tenement housing (corrales), inns and shops. This has allowed us to deduce their main variants or typological features, based on the analyzed sources. In addition, almost all the studied properties have been identified and inserted in the current plans of the city to reconstruct a hypothetical plan of 16th century Seville that will facilitate an overall view of the time. Finally, a glossary of more than 600 specific terms of the alarifes (master builders) used in the analyzed surveys has been provided.
Gian Giacomo Azzolini (1723-1791): a Bolognese architect between Lisbon and Coimbra (2017)
Sabine Frommel, Micaela Antonucci (Eds.), Da Bologna all'Europa: artisti bolognesi in Portogallo (secoli XVI-XIX), Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2017
was one of the multitude of eighteenth century Italian architects who left their home country in search of better working conditions abroad. Demand for these qualified personnel was high all over Europe since Italy had been a major cultural production center throughout the entire Baroque and Late Baroque era, both in architecture and in theatre and opera scenography, two areas in which our artist would accomplish important work. Trained at the Accademia Clementina in Bologna, he belonged to a broad second rank of architects which, though not outstanding, well-achieved along an extensive professional career.
The engineer Tiburzio Spannocchi, Knight of the Order of Malta, owed his fame to a large extent to his ability to draw. The aim of this study is to highlight his versatility as a draughtsman in the context of the military engineering of the era. He described the feats of Marco Antonio Colonna and the Marquis of Santa Cruz, and drew fortifications and territories on the frontiers of the kingdoms of the Spanish monarchy for Phillip II and Phillip III. Before he died he desired to publish his writings and his drawings, which explains their presence in some of the collections in Florence and Rome. The secrecy with which the monarchy guarded these drawings to prevent them from being seen by its enemies in the end prevented their publication. Some of the unpublished drawings from his travel notebooks which explain the process of this engineer’s projects are also analyzed.
Besides Luigi Vanvitelli, the work of Mario Gioffredo, royal architect in the Kingdom of Naples, provides a meaningful example about the state of technical knowledges present in the South of Italy during the second half of the eighteenth century in relation to restoration and strengthening issues. In continuity with already published researches regarding the activity of Gioffredo as "builder" and "structural consolidator" in the Neapolitan complex of the Spirito Santo, the paper focuses the attention on unpublished or less known building yards where the capability to the royal architect has a confrontation, even though in still an empirical way, with strengthening issues, with topics concerning resistence to eathquakes or remaking and addition of new parts to existing architectures.