The Handprint, the Shower of Gold, and Thingness of Architecture

To grasp a beautiful thing or some difficult idea — the language clearly pronounces the hand–to–reason connection. In the world of things, this connection manifests itself in a HANDPRINT that a humble craftsman leaves on a handy mud brick, or a great artist in a perfect block of Carrara marble. In transition from essence towards presence, they leave traces thus uncovering the thingness of things: their purpose, shape and matter. The mythical lord of shadows and everything in earth lurks from the interior of a cave and comes into the light only briefly, to abduct the beautiful Proserpina. His strong grasp leaves the shadow on her white flesh, made known by the hand of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Taking a second look into whiteness through Sir Isaac Newton’s prism, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe found color exactly in this area of diffraction between shadow and light (cave and glade; twilight at dawn and morning shine). Hence, he grasped that color is produced from the light, as much as by the thing itself on which the light falls — a property of its material and a consequence of its shape.

Reconstructing the Illusion

This chapter describes and critically reviews all the phases of an enquiry supported by the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid on an almost unknown project of a monument for Felipe IV of Spain in the portico of the Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The process consists of analysis and re-drawing after the existing documents, of modeling of the solid-perspective sacellum and the bronze statue actually made by Girolamo Lucenti, and of presentation and dissemination of the results, in form of video in the exhibition in Madrid and in other visual product to illustrate scientific publications. This process has been didactically divided between digital heritage, the translation of tangible historical-testimonial documents into digital formats, and virtual heritage, the production of original digital contents aimed at visually recreating the unbuilt monument and its perspective deceptive effects.

Personality and destiny. Francesco Borromini: portrait of a tormented soul

Francesco Borromini, one of the great geniuses of Baroque architecture, was tormented and solitary, and was increasingly frustrated by the fame and success of his rival, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Borromini was an unhappy man, constantly dogged by disaster, quarrelling even with his best patrons and closest friends. In the culmination of one of the fits of depression that overcame the architect more and more frequently as his life progressed, Borromini literally fell on his own sword; he lingered in excruciating pain for 24 hours before dying. Largely forgotten, his architecture has again been recognized since the twentieth century as the creation of genius. We try to describe the personality and suicide of this pessimist giant of architecture.