Aesthetica Preprint

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Maurizio Ricci — 2024-10-22

La ‘copia’ architettonica. Un’introduzione storico-teorica

Maurizio Ricci — 2024-10-22

The concept of ‘copy’, which had such an importance in the history of the figurative arts and artistic academies, encounters many difficulties, especially of a theoretical nature, when one tries to apply it to architectural works. The greatest difficulty consists in the fact that a true and proper copy, in all respects, of an architectural work, therefore not in the ‘symbolic’ sense that the Middle Ages attributed to this term, almost always arises for reasons related to the desire to reconstruct, where it was and as it was, a building lost or seriously damaged due to natural events, war, or the neglect and vandalism of men. On the other hand, the case is different for those architectural works in which there is the ‘artistic will’ to compete with a historical exemplum which, although not imitated in all its components, therefore without the will to make a copy, nonetheless rises to a model of reference, as in the Renaissance, to which the most recent work alludes in a subtle game of cross-references, rather than being a simple replica.

The imitative basis of ancient architectural design

Mark Wilson Jones — 2024-10-22

Copying is a loaded term that is best avoided in favour of imitation, which has a basis in Greek philosophy and embraces transformation and invention. To understand the workings of imitation some distinctions are important, even if they overlap: between the aims of evocation and emulation, and between design based on exemplars as opposed to principles. Evidence from Greek and Roman antiquity shows that straightforward repetition was rare. Instead, flexible principles underpinned the classical ethos of sameness-but-difference, and the capacity to generate fresh variations of familiar forms, themes and types.

On the question of ‘architectural copy’ in the Middle Ages

Wolfgang Schenkluhn — 2024-10-22

The question of copying in medieval architecture only arises with the ability to complete a medieval building in the 19th century, which presupposes knowledge and mastery of the forms of past times. In the Middle Ages, the restoration of a building took place under the sign of its improvement or as a new construction in a more praiseworthy scheme, an adoption of older forms took place under the conditions of auctoritas, which led to the use of architectural quotations. Instead of copying, one should therefore speak of architectural appropriation or adoption. It characterizes a participatory relationship to the architectural model, as it builds on its significance and power and transfers it to the copy through formal adoption. A building located elsewhere and built at a different time will not be transferred in real terms, but rather made vivid in certain features through architecture. A building that can be physically experienced becomes an image of itself in reception, whereby the way it is shown is not external to the intention. The architectural quotation is the point of connection to the past and allows the power of authority to become visible. It is thus an essential factor of continuity.

“Modo et forma”: il lessico della copia in architettura tra la fine del Medioevo e la prima età moderna

Sara Bova — 2024-10-22

The paper aims to analyze ‘the language of the copy’, i.e. that series of locutions which, from the end of the Middle Ages to the early modern age, served as the intermediary of a mimetic relationship between the model and the novel artistic or architectural work. To this end, the study takes into particular account the terminology used in the contracts, which formally establish this link, and the various meanings of these expressions.

Copying, adaptation and invention in the Tempietto of the Volto Santo in Lucca

Paul Davies — 2024-10-22

This essay considers the role of copying in the architectural oeuvre of the Lucchese sculptor-architect Matteo Civitali (1436-1501), analysing his singular approach to the appropriation of elements from his chosen models. In doing so, it considers first the shrine of San Regolo and the tomb of Pietro Noceto in Lucca Cathedral, arguing that Civitali relied heavily on single – usually celebrated – works in designing his projects, often taking both composition and individual details from the same source, while at the same time managing to inject them with a degree of invention, so that high degrees of copying and invention can be found in the same design. It goes on to contend that he used the same procedure in the Tempietto del Volto Santo, a small octagonal structure also housed in the cathedral, identifying the source for its composition and detailing as being a portal in the Casa Porcari in Rome, which is partly antique and partly fifteenth-century in date. In discussing these works, the essay reflects on the problems involved in discussing copying in the context of classical architecture.

Belle e infedeli. Repliche e variazioni di modelli architettonici del barocco romano nel Settecento europeo

Claudio Varagnoli — 2024-10-22

Replicas, copies, variations more or less faithful to the original architectural ‘text’ have been common, as is well known, throughout Western culture since the classical age. Particular prominence is given to copies of architectural exempla that are above all places of worship, thus endowed with a symbolic charge that transcends the language used. With the 18th century, according to a trend dating back to humanistic philology, the phenomenon disengages itself from devotional presuppositions to take on the sense of a diffusion of courtly models, which may have political and ideological implications that are not secondary.
In this context, variations on Roman Baroque themes play an important role, focusing on two particular cases: Bernini’s Sant’Andrea al Quirinale, a Jesuit building, and Francesco Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. The first model knows a vast and transversal diffusion, from Italian examples to analogous cases in Poland, France, Spain Germany, thanks also to its assumption as a didactic model within the Accademia di San Luca: this is what the drawings of Filippo Juvarra and his school testify to, for example, deriving from the attention paid by Carlo Fontana. Borromini’s work knows an important replica in a 17th century church in Gubbio, but the only case in which the façade is replicated is in the “translation” made in the church of the abbey of Santo Spirito alla Maiella, near Sulmona.
There are obviously many examples that can be cited in a discussion in this area. What needs to be noted is that in the 18th century the architectural “copy” did not have a normative value, but tended to extract unpublished qualities from the model. From this point of view, it will be possible to speak of copies only from the 19th century and in parallel with what happens in the world of restoration.

Repeating and replicating Sinan throughout the ages: continuity, nostalgia, or aesthetic consensus?

Alper Metin — 2024-10-22

After his death in 1588, the architectural norms established during the time of Sinan largely persisted until the 1730s. The eighteenth century established its own aesthetic canons putting together local and Western forms. Throughout the nineteenth century, a long ‘interludium’ took place, while the Ottoman architects were experimenting with new forms deriving mostly from foreign (or intercultural) sources. With the emergence of a proto-nationalistic architectural Romanticism at the beginning of the twentieth century, the forms of the so-called Classical Age were included once again in the vocabulary of the late-Ottoman and early Republican architects. But it was only in 1945, more than two decades after the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 that the references to the age of Sinan gained a new momentum, and more importantly, a more precise direction. Over the last seven decades, an almost massive production of replicas has transformed Sinan into into a sort of national territory marker all over the country, permeating even the most remote contexts where he never set foot. What was different, then, between these historical phases, and what has been happening from 1945 to our day? For how long was Sinan’s direct influence active, and how did it dissipate? Are the replicas of the last decades copies with their own historicity? This essay will try to explore the multiple afterlives of Sinan’s forms focusing on the mosque architecture.

Croce e la questione dell’origine del linguaggio

Fabrizia Giuliani — 2024-10-22

The problem of the origin and evolution of language plays a crucial role in current research, which continues to regard it as “the most difficult problem,” if not a mystery. Throughout history, the centrality of this theme has remained undiminished, even if not always fully recognized. In this essay, we will explore Crocean philosophy, where this theme holds significant importance despite encountering misunderstandings. We will trace the evolution of the question of language’s origin from the Tesi to the latest developments in Hegelian philosophy, while also comparing Croce’s dialogues with authors from both the past and present—from Vico and Humboldt to De Martino. A framework emerges illustrating how interpretive misunderstandings often arise from perspectives associated with current research paradigms, particularly structuralism. In recent years, some of Croce’s assertions, starting with the alignment of the theme of origin with its essence, have regained a central position. This does not imply an improbable relevance of Croce’s thought, but rather underscores the necessity of directly observing how theoretical hypotheses take shape within their contexts to fortify the foundations of the emerging alternatives today.