Giuseppe Samonà historian of architecture: his relationship with Gustavo Giovannoni

Abstract

The essay is intended to highlight the links between Samonà and the "Roman School", in part already analyzed in previous studies. In particular, we contextualize the six letters addressed to Gustavo Giovannoni between late 1929 and mid-1930, preserved in the Giovannoni Archive (Rome, Centro di Studi per la Storia dell’Architettura) and listed in full in the appendix. The letters are mainly related to the studies of Samonà on late Renaissance architecture in Sicily, conducted in 1927 at the suggestion of Ernesto Calandra, which would then be gathered into four essays published between 1932 and 1935, profoundly influenced by the historical-critical ‘giovannoniano’ method. The epistolary contacts with Giovannoni, as well as promoting cultural growth and the rise of the career of teaching, not well structured at the time, show his attempt to get closer to Rome. This is evidenced by repeated references in the letters to Alberto Calza Bini, who was to assist him in obtaining a position at the University of Naples and who, together with Giovannoni and Piacentini, ruled in favor of Samonà in design competitions in the thirties, especially for the Post Office building in the Appio neighborhood in Rome.