u/Express_Astronaut679

A very interesting example of one of the many ways in which the allegory of truth (Veritas) is interpreted during the baroque period. Here Bernini was asked to produce a mirror for Christine of Sweden, never realized in the end. She moved to Rome in 1654 after abdicating the throne and converting to catholicism.

The striking allegory of truth here is really interesting: not a portrait, a mirror, to which no lie can be told and mostly, onto which the passing of time is relentlessly giving the image of age. Time is in fact the other component in the Veritas allegories of the time, seen as the element that made the truth come out. Here in addition to these two Bernini also talk about the allegory of Vanitas (vanity) in a way. Genius once again is the way in which the Veritas literally unveils the truth, a common way of representing the truth of baroque era.

Other important projects by him in which he talks about veritas are the statue that was supposed to be part of his funerary monument (which also had, like here, an unveiling of truth with behind time represented as another figure) and also the funerary monument for pope Alexander the VII (the same one that welcomed Christine of Sweden in Rome). In this case however he had to censor the nudity of the Veritas as he was working on it, an act that he didn’t appreciate at all as we see in the testimonies of his son, Domenico Bernini.

The following picture is perhaps one of the most interesting stories of Venice renaissance paintings and certainly one of the most discussed around Paolo Veronese. He was very well known for depicting scenes with an iconography that would have a strong relation to the society of the times, with the clear iconographic liberty of drawing a parallel between the people of his time (in Venice of course) and the biblical depictions he would create. The huge telero was meant to be hosted in the Dominican convent of saint Giovanni e Paolo in Venice (the one neighboring the beautiful façade of the Ospedale di San Giovanni e Paolo with beautiful false perspectives made out of marble infills) and it was, in the initial intention, meant to depict a last supper.

The painting, completed in 1573, raised the attention of Santa Inquisizione which promptly decided to start a cause againt Veronese who had to defend himself publicly against their accusations. In general the accusations revolved around the fact that the artist included too many "bizarre" and "extravagant" elements such as animals, servants bleeding (see detail 1), a gnome holding a parrot (see detail 2). On top of that, being fully in the period of Controriforma, he depicted two soldiers on the side (see detail 3) that were dressed too much like "germans" (Maniera tedesca) which was definitely too Lutheran as a reference for the time.

The answers of Veronese were just crazy good: he shifted the attention of the iconographic "flaws" towards his stylistic freedoms, comparing the "license" (licentia) of painters to that of poets and of mad people (matti), eluding to the fact that he was a mere "artisan" trying to execute a work within his own style and inventions (I mean invention with the connotation that many writers would give it in the renaissance, Aretino, Vasari, Biagio da Cesena, Gilio da Fabriano, etc.). Furthermore he also mentioned how certain choices were done in order to signify the festive reality of a banquet (which was meant to display the reality of banquets of the society of the time), which could justify the presence of animals, gnomes and so on. Lastly for the presence of the soldiers he was so smart to find the excuse of composition in order to avoid leaving empty spaces in the whole image, still trying to enforce the idea of a festive reality and with a choice of fashion which was simply to his liking and had no intention of recalling the northern protestant reality.

At the end the sentence was that he had, on his expense and not that of the dominicans, to correct the painting in a more appropriate way. The genius of Paolo Veronese, instead of redoing parts of the painting, just decided that the painting needed to change iconography, and therefore decided that what was once depicting the last supper, could now the depict the Banquet of Levi (Matthew) narrated in the Vangel of Luke in which he invites everyone, including sinners and publicans (I think this is how it would translate, anyways it meant the people that collected taxes). This genius idea made for the painting to be kept the same with just a new addition that would clarify the new iconography, a phrase in latin explaining the choice of the scene as narrated in the Vangel of Luke "FECIT DOMINO CONVIVIUM MAGNUM LEVI" on the pillar on the ending of the stair railing on the left (see detail 2) and the reference of the holy writing in reference "LVCA CAP. V" on the one on the right one (see detail 4, for which I’m sorry I had to leave alamystock watermark :/)

I leave you to the comments on the venetian colourism and realism :)

This is my favourite painting from Pontormo, another mannerist who Vasari includes in the second edition of his Vite from 1568, who often points out his uneasy, worried, restless and solitary life. He even is said to have had a study on a first floor with a retractable stair in order not to be bothered. His work was highly intellectual and mental, a proof of this is certainly his position in the famous Disputa del paragone started by Benedetto Varchi in 1546, made public in 1547 (and published in 1549), in which for the debate on wether which shall be considered more noble between painting and sculpture, Pontormo pointed out how the mental act of putting on a plane the three dimensional scene is by all means the most difficult artifice to be done by an artist, thus making the painter a higher intellectual.

In this work done between 1528 and 1530, originally for the Pinadori chapel inside the church of San Michele e San Francesco in Prato, he works tremendously with colour and, mostly, with a false perspective which breaks the scale of the scenery behind the figures that are in fact way oversized and prominent in the scene. The light in the front is also completely different from that of the back, but I would say not in a chiaroscuro manner, rather in a way of creating a foreground and a background, both with their own, flattened, lightning. As a matter of fact Vasari points out the flattening of his lightning also in another painting, the Deposizione for the Capponi Chapel inside Santa Felicita which also has very little depth of scene.

Another big problem for Vasari was the way that Pontormo references a northern european master, Albrecht Dürer, whose incisions were circulation all around Europe. A model which he took is that of the 4 witches which, not only then signified a problem for the origin of the model, but also for the kind of figure that they would depict: he turned 4 witches into 4 biblical figures. (see list image)

These are “divided” into two poses, the two looking at each other who are Mary on the left and St. Elizabeth on the right and the other two staring at the spectator, who it is said to be representative of the younger alter egos of the two holy figures, hence young Mary to the left and young Elizabeth to the right. This wants most likely to create a psichological bridge between alter egos of personality, a theme probably dear to a complicated mind like that of Pontormo.

The background also includes other “grotesque” or let’s say misterious figures (see third image), both represented in a “sketchy” way, without details leaving a lot of perplexity as to their role in the scene and, probably, to their relation with the other two “couples” in the painting.

Hello everybody, I’ve been putting quite some effort in the posts for this community, hoping they’d be looked at as an act of collaboration and as of being part of a community. Unfortunately however for some reason they’ve been taken down twice by the moderator. Sure that there’s a reasonable motivation behind this, I’ve promptly texted the moderator after the removal of the first post, asking if there was something wrong with my content and/or if there were something to change in order to best comply with the rules of the community.

I haven’t received an answer and today, the day after the first post and the chats, I’ve tried to post again, this time another painting as I thought that maybe the first one (Xanti Schawinsky) was too different as too modern compared to the ones proposed by the page. For this reason I chose my favourite Rosso Fiorentino…

Nothing happened until… also this one got deleted by the moderator who still hasn’t answered… Bot alert?

I would love to able to share thoughts on art freely, I’m sorry if my posts don’t comply with the rules but I’ve followed all the community rules in the description so if there’s something I’m missing please somebody let me know. I left the two previous posts attached for reference.

Thank you all in advance!

This painting by Rosso Fiorentino is one of the most interesting pieces by the Florence painter. Today it’s in the Pinacoteca Civica di Volterra but it was initially meant to be in a chapel (Cappella della Croce di Giorno) inside the church of San Francesco in Volterra. What always strikes me in this painting, as in general in his oevres, is the striking use of colour. Mind for instance how jesus’ skin colour is green, an iperrealism meant to signify death. At the same time also the reflections on the clothing is stunning, especially on the top left.

Even Vasari points out the quality of his colours in his second version of the Vite (1568, in the first edition of 1550 he still includes this artist but the paragraph in which his stylistic traits, such as colour and invention, are cited is missing). Another striking characteristic of Rosso Fiorentino is his “devil like” figures, which generated a very interesting anecdote on his hence most famous painting, Pala dello Spedalingo (1518), which might need a separate post.

Rosso Fiorentino is also known for the traumas of his life. An interesting trauma is the Sack of Rome of 1927 (André Chastel wrote a very interesting book on this traumatic event and its impact on renaissance art and artists), with which see how the deposition of 1928 that he made for San Sepolcro, clearly differs in style: much darker, many more devil like figures and, if you look closely in the back, a figure that looks like a monkey. It is said that he used to live with a monkey. This painting is full of traits that go outside the norm of painting and this also deserves a separate post to point them out.

Another trauma is the conjure towards his collaborator and friend once he was working in the gallery of Fontainebleau for which he had designed the walls and the juxtaposition between painted surface and the rest. For this accusation, which lead to the torturing of his friend, in the end released for lack of evidence by the judges in Paris, he committed suicide, not being able to take the shock.

This painting belongs to Xanti Schawinsky’s part of career in the U.S.A.,

During this period, he teaches at Black Mountain and at the same time works along Laszlo Moholy Nagy on camouflage for US army vestuary (interesting as camouflage is also a theme of investigation in his idea of theater). In addition he starts to experiment with the concept of composing faces with war machines, cannons and tanks - the series is called Faces of war and can be paralleled to Arcimboldo in the way the totality of face lineaments are rendered through the juxtaposition of different elements distinguishable on their own. (see the second picture for comparison).

In this period, which evolves around 1942, it is interesting to see this special work that Xanti Schawinsky produced: if one hand the Faces of war series has Arcimboldean traits, here the result is more political and has little in common - in terms of style - with the compositions of the series. The other faces of war as a matter of fact reflect more on the term of the machinery that originates this new kind of war, even more dehumanizing due to the new technologies of war \\\[Curzio Malaparte in his book Kaputt describes an interesting parallel between the “smells of the old war” (blood, carcasses and corpses) and the “smells of the new war” (steel, coal, metal ruins)\\\].

Even if this is a painting I think it still embodies the graphical qualities of Schawinsky in being a great communicator through his imagery: a clear political stance on the three ideological faces of the war, putting them all on the same level: Adolf Hitler, Josip Stalin and Benito Mussolini, all sharing the same grin above the swords of the war. Propaganda through visual language, through art.

In 2022 during a course at USI Mendrisio we had the pleasure of visiting an ongoing restoration of Casa Balmelli in Rovio by Richter Tobler Architekten. The original project is by Tita Carloni and Peppo Brivio, the latter being present with intermittency in the project phase (the ticinese architects were mostly friends who often talked about their projects together, a bit like design studios in uni, also important to mention is how Peppo Brivio was always an important mentor and intellectual figure in this circle of architects: another important example of mentorship is the case of Franco Ponti who gained a clear architectonic language thanks to the ideas of clarity of language in architecture grammar of Brivio).

The project is of a summer home with a very peculiar way of relating the ground. The plan is also stunning in its economy: one stair on the side connecting all spaces from the kitchen and living above to all the rooms below, the one of the bottom being the master bedroom of the parents.

The restoration work has very well tried to fit new standards of insulation into the very thin walls and at the same time gave way for the recoloration of the interiors into the original colours. Also the flooring has been redone. The wood - chestnut - has been retreated and renovated.

The first image is upon completion in summer 2025. The last image is the pubblished drawings of the project in Das Werk, n. 47, 1960. In between are the pictures of the construction site.

The Thomaskirche im Gut in the Zürich-Wiedikon district, designed by Swiss modernist architect Hans Hofmann. It is a striking post-war example of tent-like sacred architecture, showing a beautiful structural clarity and an interesting handling of communal space.

The project's construction began in 1959, but Hofmann unexpectedly passed away before its completion. The work was carried out and finalized in 1961 by architects Oskar Bitterli and Ernst Rohrer, who strictly followed Hofmann’s visionary blueprints.

Just to give some context, the "sheltering tent" typology was a massive theological and architectural trend in post-war Europe, symbolizing a community on a journey. Hofmann translates this beautifully by pulling the dramatic wooden gabled roof almost all the way to the ground, creating a highly protective, intimate envelope. What strikes me is the spatial layout: a perfectly symmetrical master plan where the main church sits at the center, flanked diagonally by parish buildings. The courtyard paving itself traces a giant cross that drives your eye directly toward the entrance.

Instead of a traditional steeple, Hofmann opts for a 53-meter freestanding concrete tower shaped like a sharp pyramid, acting as a raw, sculptural landmark for the neighborhood. Another peculiar detail is the five-bell setup by the Rüetschi foundry—it is the only church in Zürich tuned to play the exact melody of London’s Westminster Chime.

I unfortunately couldn’t enter inside so sorry for no pictures of the inside.

Today the church is a protected historical monument and still operates as a lively community hub, hosting open-air cinema nights on the plaza during summer.

I was walking in Arezzo I stumbled upon this beautiful structure right in front of the house of Pietro Aretino in Via Cesalpino.

Left you the street view as I only took this one frontal picture.

In 1929 architect Sigurd Lewerentz designed the Philips of Sweden building in Stocklholm. The design also called for interiors to be thought of.

Apart from the beauty of the design (and the very much loved by S.L. silver foil materiality), I would like to point out the graphical simplicity of using gouache and pencil in order to render the materiality of his proposal. Pencil is rough, ideal to represent surfaces that react with certain contrasts and shadows to light. Gouache is flat, and it renders very well materiality able to convey plasticity.

This is to me a beautiful personal reminder of how, in a more and more digital world, the analog reality of materiality (and the rendering of it not only to the eye, but also to the sensations a mind can grasp whilst seeing) must be at some point be experienced before whilst working on representation, being it promotional, being it social, being it purely experimental.

This shot of the drawing is from the amazing “Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life” exhibition at ArkDes in Stockholm in 2021. Exhibition was curated by Kieran Long (then Director of ArkDes) and Johan Örn (Curator of the Collections at ArkDes). The exhibition design, truly stunning room after room, was designed by Caruso st. John architects. I point out the pattern of the wallpaper (barely visible in this picture), the same in the drawing, was carried out all over most parts of the exhibition by the architects together with other examples like the upstated silver foil. This choice made it possible for a new perspective of architect S.L. to be perceived, one of a purely playful graphic creative, apart from being a very interesting figure in architecture.

If interested I recommend you guys take a look at the graphical works done for the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition.

After the war, Franco Albini worked on many museums in Genova signing many projects in collaboration with art historian Caterina Marcenaro. This great collaboration gave way to many acclaimed projects in the museographical world in which the art piece and the container are all serving the visitor’s experience as the main focus.

The architecture wasn’t only studied in order to best host the art pieces, it was studied as a rightful actor in which structure, light, supports and objects stands play the same role. Such designs had the supervision of an expert in art history and curation (Marcenaro) in order to have a rightful linearity between design intention, museal experience and artistic certainty of the oevres displayed and their juxtapositions.

This project is inserted in this season of museograohical experimentation of Italy. Apart from this project, started in 1952 and finished in 1956, this same collaboration was able to give way to ligurian projects such as Palazzo Rosso and Palazzo Bianco. Other great designers to mention from this period are surely BBPR (memorable for the reconfiguration of the Castello Sforzesco) and Carlo Scarpa (of whom we would require an entire community to talk about his museographical abilities combined with exhibition/display techniques).

These drawings and pictures are exposed at MAXXI today.

Every now and then I walk up to Giliarey from Torgnon, a village in Valtournenche (Valle d’Aosta, Italy). At the end of the hike, 2150m circa, you can find the Giliarey Chapel, “cappella d’Alpeggio” built and financed by the Gorret family in 1866. What strikes me everytime is, apart from the object and its modest details per sé, the perfect positioning of it, almost as the gem on a ring, completing the slope. This choice, surely also a matter of protection from avalanches due to the “protuberance” that would make the “rock stampede” go past its sides, generates a space that gravitates around the chapel. Once arrived at the “gem” you’re in fact welcomed in a flat space with the almost octagonal volume in the middle and thin rock sheets (Lose in local dialect, the same ones used for roofing) stuck vertically in the ground to enforce the flat perimeter around the chapel.

It’s very simple and purely vernacular (I had to put “unknown architect as it’s in the requirement of the community), yet it is more architectural than many well designed mountain buildings I’ve seen. I find so much to learn from the modest perfection of examples like these. The terrain gesture was always there, yet such a small object placed in the right spot, made it stand out. I come from a school in which the relation with territory and landscape is vital, and yet there they always told me “there’s architects that STAY in the landscape, and there’s architects that BUILD the landscape”, examples like these make me understand what the second part of this phrase means.

Really interesting graphical work from 1909. Spotted at “Diagrams” Exhibition at Fondazione Prada in Venice, curated by AMO. (second picture is the exhibition text of the piece)

If anybody knows anything more on the author and the context, I’d be glad to learn about it in the comments!

Whilst walking in Sevilla this courtyard captured my attention. It is a “Corral de vecinos” a housing configuration, popular in Sevilla, which literally translates into “courtyard of the neighbors”. The individual families had rooms revolving around the center patio, an open flowered space which, in public occasions, would even host Flamenco events. If any local knows more and would like to contribute with a better explanation I’d be very very grateful!

This specific case is named Corral Herrera and was built initially in 1909. In 1995 the refurbishment by Altozano Arquitectos was finished. What I found to be very interesting, apart from the communal life revolving around a flowered patio, is the “before and after” tiled visualization of the project just by the entrance. It’s very interesting that the past is preserved in place physically with this, not only in the documents. Very inspiring!

For more information I leave the link to the architects website with the project (I couldn’t unfortunately enter the gate at the entrance, I could only slide my phone between the bars for a pic of the ground floor): https://www.altozanoarquitectos.com/inicio/proyectos/rehabilitacion-de-corral-de-vecinos-en-triana/

In 1933, Xanti Schawinsky had to flee Berlin towards Milan due to his polish-jew ancestors (in which he moved in 1931) and quit his job at Dorland International (graphic design company led by his friend, graphic pioneer, Herbert Bayer). In Milan he started collaborating with Studio Boggeri with which he made this beautiful graphical work for Illy Caffè in 1934. In this period, which precedes his later american parentheses at Black Mountain College (where he reconnects with his former master Josef Albers), he also produces interesting graphical work for Amaro Cinzano (more photographical and less painted compared to this), together with campaigns for Olivetti. This period was also important for the connections Xanti made by frequenting the Milan gallery Il Milione.

Villa K2 built initially for the Cattaneo family in 1953 by Carlo Mollino. A beautiful symbiosis of vernacular techtonics and the use of concrete, with the usual refined details of Mollino.

The project design began in 1952 when Luigi Cattaneo, a milanese entrepreneur, commissioned Mollino with this weekend home.

Just to give some context, Mollino already had shown the capacity of merging concrete with traditional materials and techtonics already in 1947 when he designed the Casa del Sole hotel in Cervinia (Valle d’Aosta), which was finalized in 1955. Still in Valle d’Aosta he takes on the more famous project of the Rascard Garelli, a project that kept him busy from 1962 till 1965. In that case he moved an existing Rascard (traditional Valser like, Strichbau construction) from a neighboring valley into Champoluc. The reassembly of the building was done with also a new plinth element with both stone and concrete materials. This to say that his work (also) revolved around traditional techtonics and new materials.

Sasso Corbaro Castle in Bellinzona. In order this was built the third and last of the castle forming the defensive system. The Sforza family ordered its construction in order to consolidate Bellinzona as the northern outpost in the Milan Granducate in 1479. The design started under florence architect Ferrini who died of the plague in same year. Engineer Ghiringhelli completed the construction under the same design. Bellinzona always had been contented and the castles testimony how this land of passage has been vital for the territorial control of the way north. In fact the other two castles in the system (Montebello and Castelgrande) had fallen under the rule of the primitive cantons in the 1419-1422 period in which the cantons of Uri, Unterwalden and Schwyz regained possession of the territory, then controlled by the Visconti family. After the battle of Arbedo the Visconti family regained control and lead the territory until 1450 in which the continuity of the family passed under the Sforza name.

In addition the architecture shows a very different language compared to the Castle in Montebello and the well known Castelgrande, both constructed in earlier periods; the first under the Rusca family (a client family of the Visconti feud) and the second having the first signs of fortifications dating even to the romans.

Apart from personal pictures I included the description and drawings done by Johann Rudolph Rahn in 1894 after his mapping and recognition of swiss monuments. Unfortunately I couldn’t find an english version.

Inside the walls of two old industrial buildings the architects placed this single home. Project finished in 2023, the “nose” protruding from the ceiling is a rooftop pool. The house has all openings towards courtyards which are confined between the pre-existing walls and the addition.

Do not diffuse/spread the pictures for commercial/pubblication uses. Thanks.

Tbh my position toward this project is highly critical both for the final outcome and for the context in which it is immersed (see last pictures). I’m very curious to hear your thoughts on this though.

Cover design for the famous french surrealist magazine Minotaure. Issue in question in or June 1935, n. 7.

The magazine revolved around artistic and literary themes investigated by the surrealist movement.

Picture taken at ArkDes in Stockholm.

For more information on the magazine: https://www.guggenheim.org/articles/findings/minotaure-surrealist-magazine-1930s

A typical vernacular structure of Slovenia usually named Kozolec. These structures are usually used to dry hay by putting it on the horizontal elements in the façade.