Camillo Boito – Wikipedia

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Camillo Boito

Camillo Boito (Rome, 30 October 1836 – Milan, June 28, 1914) was an architect, restorer and theorist of Italian architecture.

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He was a prominent figure in the debate that animated the Italian artistic world in the aftermath of the national unity, focused on the search for “national style”, which should have characterized the architecture, painting and sculpture of the aforementioned kingdom of Italy. Indeed, it was the first to graft the question of the “national style” and identified its guidelines, in the context of eclecticism and neoclassicism, then kept in mind by the artists who operated in the period, stating that the study of the classics had to be the point of arrival and not the starting one in artistic research, aimed at giving face to the requests of the national unity [first] .

Furthermore, the dictates of the “philological restoration” expressed, still kept present in the theories of current restoration today: recognition of the intervention; respect for additions with artistic value, which over time have been made to the artifact; protection of the signs of the passage of time. If during the youth formation he adhered to the stylistic and reconstructive restoration, personified by Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc, over time he approached the “philological restoration”, to which he even joined the Ministry of Education Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle.

Son of the artist Silvestro Boito and older brother of the famous literate and musician Arrigo Boito, Camillo studies in Padua and at the Academy of Venice, where he was a pupil of Pietro Selvatico (1803-1880) and in 1856 he was appointed assistant professor of architecture. From 1860 to March 1908 he teaches architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brera and, since 1865, for 43 years, he has been a professor at the Higher Technical Institute of Milan. It also includes among the founders of the Professional Art School of Muraria of Milan in 1888 [2] . In 1862 he married his cousin Celestina, from which he will separate shortly after. In 1887 he joined the second wedding with the Countess Madonnina Malaspina of the Marquises of Portogruaro, who had nicknamed him “Casamatta”.

Green house in Milan

His main activity remains architecture: among his projects we remember the intervention in the medieval area of ​​the Palazzo della Ragione di Padova, with the design of the Palazzo delle Debite; the realization of a school-motor; the arrangement of the Antoniano convent at the seat of the Civic Museum; the expansion of the Camposanto and the interventions on the Basilica of Sant’Antonio in Padua, including a controversial restoration of the donatello altar; The restoration of the Pusterla di Porta Ticinese and the project for the retirement home for musicians “Giuseppe Verdi” in Milan; The project of the facade of the church of Santa Maria Assunta and the Gallarate hospital in the province of Varese.

Participates in the literary movement of scapigliatura, the Milanese equivalent of the Bohemia Parisian, debut with Vane stories (Milan 1876) and followed in 1883 by Sense. New Vane Stories (from the news Sense Luchino Visconti drew the screenplay for his very famous film of the same name, which however has little to do with the original plot, far from patriotic), the Master of secticlavio of 1891 and appeared in the magazine New anthology . In these stories there are fantastic and macabre themes that date back to E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe and Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, but instead of taking obsessive and hallucinated characters are exorcised by rational and aesthetic tendencies. He also wrote Trips of an artist It is Sculpture and painting today. Research by Camillo Boito . It was artistic reviewer of well -known magazines of the time including: The viewer , The Twilight , Italian illustration , The Polytechnic , the New anthology .

Constant of the narrative of Camillo Boito is in fact the theme of beauty in all its forms, especially the female one, but also the musical and artistic one. The clear and rigorous style, far from the excesses and smudges of so much late nineteenth -century scapigliata prose, made his works much loved above all by readers who appeared for the first time to literature: the last work he wrote was The master of Setticlavio , a collection of stories published in 1891.

Boito was also, since 1898, the second director of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum.

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In the first Congress of the architects and engineers of the Kingdom, held in Milan, he was part of the restricted commission responsible for drawing up the agenda, in which the creation of the “national style” hoped for and the three guidelines were dictated. In summary, they are:

  1. The organic and construction reasons must have pre -eminence on manners, rules and aesthetic relationships ;
  2. The style must be common to all Italian regions, but with those modifications required by the climate, by building materials and customs ;
  3. style It cannot be new to the plant, but rather, in order to have fully national nature, it must connect to one of the Italian architectures of the past, dissolving the elements from any convention rule, so that the modern way also be accommodated to the new materials and the rediscovers of science [3] .

In 1911 he participated in the Turin International Exhibition, held on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Italy and launched an appeal for the definition of a national style: We are about today, but our art of art, where is our language, where is our art? What will be the artistic imprint that should make us distinguish from the other eras in the great review of the centuries? [first]

Since 1880 he was a member of the Royal Commission established to evaluate the projects of the competition for the Victorian and to choose the one to be carried out; He won that of Giuseppe Sacconi, who most distinguished himself by his adherence to the ideas of Boito relating to the “national style”. The Boito also fits into the debate focused on the place where to build the monument. The location chosen by the Royal Commission, namely the Capitol, gave rise to harsh controversies, due to the necessary demolitions of the ancient urban fabric. He expresses his approval for demolitions, expressing himself as follows: .. When, between twenty or thirty years [the Victorian] will be finished, the greatest monumental work in modern Rome will appear [4] .

Giuseppe Sacconi, over the twenty years of his direction of the enormous Vittoriano construction site, always kept in mind the requests on the “national style” expressed by Boito; Given the symbolic importance of the monument and its location, the monument would have been a model to be followed in architectural design in the decades to follow [first] .

Boito will also become an important exponent of the restoration at national and international level. Central points of his theory, defined as “philological restoration”, are briefly:

Elementary schools at the Carrarese Reggia di Padova, photo of 1883
  • The refusal of the stylistic restoration – in the version proposed by Viollet -Le -Duc – considered as a deception for contemporaries, but even more for posterity and a falsification of the monument, making it impossible to distinguish the original parts from the subsequent modifications.
  • The need to respect and protect the artistic and historical values ​​of the monument. Boito also asserts the importance of the conservation of the signs left by the passage of time on the architectural surfaces, or of the patina, defined as “splendid south of time”.
  • The existence of a hierarchy among the possible interventions on the monuments: “They must be rather consolidated than repaired, rather repaired than restored”.
  • When the restoration works are indispensable for the maintenance of the building, then these must be made so that the additions cannot be confused with the original parts. The additions must therefore be made distinguishable by reducing only essential volumes by eliminating or stylizing the decorative elements, without however stabbing with the complex of the building.

He was a promoter, during the IV Congress of Engineers and Architects held in Rome in January 1883, of the Italian Restoration Charters: most of his positions will flow into it. The card will help to concretely define an Italian way to the restoration that will be halfway between the English positions (the anti-international moovement) and French (stylistic restoration).

  1. ^ a b c Fabio Mariano, The age of eclecticism , Nerbini, 2004, ISBN 978-886-2520-1.
  2. ^ BDL BookReader . are www.bdl.servizirl.it . URL consulted on January 3, 2023 .
  3. ^ First Congress of Italian engineers and architects in Milan – Acts , Tipog. and Litog. of the engineers, 1873, p. 88.
  4. ^ Maria Vitello, Rome, an elevator for the Vittoriano , in NEED , New series, January 2009.
  • C. Formenti, The honors at the arch. Prof. Camillo Boito , in Modern construction , Year XVIII, fasc. IV, Milan, April 1909.
  • Giovanni giachi, Camillo Boito ( PDF ), in Chronicle of Fine Arts , Rome, E. Calzone, July 1914.
  • Gustavo Giovannoni, Boito, Camillo , in Italian Encyclopedia , vol. 7, Rome, Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia, 1930. URL consulted on July 16, 2014 .
  • Giuseppe Miano, Boito, Camillo , in Biographical Dictionary of Italians , vol. 11, Rome, Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia, 1969. URL consulted on July 16, 2014 .
  • Alberto Grimoldi (edited by), Tribute to Camillo Boito , Milan, FrancoAngeli, 1991, ISBN 88-204-6706-2.
  • Guido Zucconi, The invention of the past. Camillo Boito and neutieval architecture 1855-1890 , Marsilio, Venice, 1997.
  • Guido Zucconi and Tiziana Serena (edited by), Camillo Boito. A protagonist of the Italian nineteenth century , Venice, Veneto Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts, 2002, ISBN 88-88143-17-3.
  • Camillo Boito, Sense. New Vane Stories , edited by Chiara Cretella, Laides, Ravenna, 2005.
  • Camillo Boito, Vane stories , edited by Chiara Cretella, Pendragon, Bologna, 2007, ISBN 88-8342-519-7.
  • Chiara Cretella, Ephemeral architectures. Camillo Boito between art and literature , Dakota Press, Cameran, 2013, ISBN 88-97074-03-0
  • Camillo Boito, sanctuary , edited by Dafne Munro, Urban Apnea, 2015

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