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Purpose. Occasioned
by the complicated process of restoring Guarini's masterpiece,
the Chapel of the Holy Shroud in Turin, devastated by
fire in April 1997, the aim of the workshop is to shed
light on the ideological and technical aspects of Guarino
Guarini that are hitherto little understood; to understand
how Guarini's background as religious and philosopher
are expressed in his architecture, and the processes
of design and construction through which his concepts
are rendered concrete. Invited participants are a mix
of international and local scholars of various aspects
of Guarini.
Symposium on Guarino Guarini and
the Chapel of the Holy Shroud. In May 2004 Kim Williams
interviewed architect Mirella Macera, engineer Paolo
Napoli and architect Fernando Delmastro on the problems
and progress of restoring Guarino Guarini's masterpiece,
the Chapel of the Holy Shroud of Turin, which was heavily
damaged by a fire that broke out on the night of April
11, 1997. Originally the purpose of the interview, published
in the Nexus Network Journal's Autumn 2004 (vol.
6 no. 2) issue was to learn if the restoration project
will shed light on Guarini's blend of geometry and architecture.
However, it soon became clear that questions raised
by the restoration outnumbered the solutions.
Click
here to read the interview by Kim Williams with Mirella
Macera, Fernando Delmastro and Paolo Napoli in the NNJ
A restoration of this kind is unprecedented. What burned
was the scaffolding used during a cleaning and restoration
that had just been completed. Structural damage to the
Chapel was immediately tended to and collapse prevented;
the Chapel is now self-supporting and all its elements
are intact. However, all of the interior surfaces were
devastated by the heat of the fire and the variation
in temperature caused by the water used to put out the
fire. Effectively the Chapel is like a face that has
lost its features: the heat caused the stone to change
color, and the surface of the stone to pop and flake
off, and practically all of the sculpted decoration
of the surfaces has been lost.
So very little is known about how Guarini
designed the chapel, how he instructed the workers during
its execution, and precisely in what the structural
system consists, that the restoration itself has gone
forward at a snail's pace. For instance, all of the
elements in the Chapel that are apparently structural
are not, and the actual structure is hidden behind the
stone veneer so that it remains largely unknown. It
is not known how the stones of the surfaces are attached
either to the structure behind them or to one another,
so that it is unclear whether the removal of individual
stones will provoke a collapse.
While Guarini apparently used the science of stereotomy
to design and execute the individual blocks of stones
precisely cut to shape to form the curved surfaces,
the sculpted decoration of this surfaces then follows
an entirely different order, being itself carved according
to a perspective construction. There is no standardization
whatsoever of the blocks, in that each block has its
own curvature as well as its own bit of the sculpted
decoration in perspective, and yet all fit together
with a surprising precision. This is evidence of Guarini's
superb skill, but does not solve the mystery of exactly
how the construction was accomplished. If Guarini's
design and execution processes are not understood, the
restoration cannot proceed with any guarantee of respecting
his original intentions.
Guarini himself remains a little-studied figure. This
may be because Guarini himself was so multifaceted.
He was a theologian and religious (a Theatine), a mathematician,
a philosopher, and an architect. His treatises include
works on philosophy (Placita philosophica, 1665);
mathematics (Euclides adauctus et methodicus mathematicaeque
universalis, 1671); architecture (Modo di misurare
le fabriche, 1674; Trattato di fortificazione
che hora usa in Fiandra, Francia et Italia, 1676,
and Dissegni d'architettura civile ed ecclesiastica,
1686); cosmology (Compendio della sfera celeste,
1675; Leges temporum et planetarum, 1678; Coelestis
mathematicae, 1683). Hardly anything he wrote was
less than 500-600 pages, and most is in Latin and remains
untranslated into modern Italian or English.
Guarini in his own day was little understood. The complexity
of his architecture far exceeds that of those who came
after him, such as Juvarra and Vittolini. The focused
approach of the planned workshop will permit us to shed
light on the various aspects of his thinking, making
his written treatises more accessible and his built
work more comprehensible. If there is a silver lining
to the cloud of the fire of April 1997, it is that for
the first time scholars will be able examine Guarini's
architecture through its dissection, as it were, as
the restoration exposes the bare bones of the structure
for the first time, revealing hitherto unknown information
about both the creator and the creation.
Directors:
Kim WILLIAMS
Franco PASTRONE
Scientific Committee
Alberto CONTE
Franco PASTRONE
Clara Silvia ROERO
Kim WILLIAMS
Program
[Click here
to download the program in .pdf]
Lunedì 18 settembre 2006
9.00 Apertura dei lavori e saluti delle autorità
Introduzione al lavoro del restauro della Cappella
della Sindone
9.30 Mirella MACERA, coordinatrice dei restauri
della, Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici e per
il Paesaggio del Piemonte, Torino
10.00 Coffee break
Guarini e le strutture
10.30 Paolo NAPOLI, Politecnico di Torino
"Modellazione strutturale della Cappella della
Sindone"
11.00 Patricia RADELET DE GRAVE, Université
Catholique de Louvain
"Guarini et la structure de l'univers"
11.30 Santiago HUERTA, Escuela Técnica Superior
de Arquitectura de Madrid
"The structure of the dome of the Santa Sindone"
12.30 Discussione
13.30 Intervallo pranzo
Guarini e la matematica
15.00 Clara Silvia ROERO, Università di Torino
"Guarino Guarini e la matematica universale"
15.30 Michele SBACCHI, Università di Palermo
"Proiettare e progettare"
16.00 Paolo FREGUGLIA,
Università degli dell'Aquila
"Alcune considerazioni sul rapporto tra prospettiva
e geometria nel XVI e XVII secolo"
16.30 Coffee break
17.00 Joël SAKAROVITCH, Université Paris V
"Géométrie pratique / géométrie savante"
17.30 James MCQUILLAN, University of Botswana
"Guarino Guarini and his Grand Philosophy of Sapientia
and Mathematics"
18.00 Anastasia CAVAGNA e Michele MAORET,
Membri della Società Italiana di Storia delle Matematiche
"Le coniche nell'Euclides adauctus di Guarini"
Martedì 19 settembre 2006
Guarini e l'architettura
9.00 Elwin ROBISON, Kent State University
"Costruzione e Restauro nel mondo magico di Guarino
Guarini"
9.30 Pietro TOTARO, Università di Messina
"Guarinian factor(s) on Sicilian Baroque"
10.00 Nicoletta MARCONI, Università di Roma
Tor Vergata
"Le fabbriche guariniane e la pratica edilizia romana
in età barocca: convergenze e derivazioni"
10.30 Coffee break
11.00 Vasileios NTOVROS, Aristotle University
of Thessaloniki
"Unfolding San Lorenzo"
11.30 Ugo QUARELLO, Architetto, Torino
"Gli inediti disegni esecutivi dei restauri ottocenteschi
all doppia struttura della Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo
di Torino"
12.00 Discussione finale
13.00-14.00 Visione di disegni originali relativa alla
chiesa di San Lorenzo presso l'Archivio di Stato di
Torino
14.00 Intervallo pranzo
16.30 Guided tour of S. Lorenzo
This symposium is made possible through
the generous support of:
- Associazione Subalpina Mathesis, Torino
- Assessorato alla cultura del Comune di Vigliano
Biellese
- Dipartimento di matematica, Università di Torino
- Assessorato all Cultura della Regione Piemonte
- Kim Williams Books
Under the patronage of
Archivio di Stato di Torino
Direzione per i beni culturale e paesaggistici del Piemonte
For more information,
contact:
Kim
Williams
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