Domenico Lo Faso Pietrasanta, Duke of Serradifalco and Eugéne Viollet-le-Duc: medieval apprenticeship and initiation to the “arte regia”

Abstract

Viollet-le-Duc’s journey in Italy is marked not only by the maturation of his critical principles – that lead him to abandon his studies on ancient times and the Renaissance in favour of a problematic reflection on the Middle Ages – but also by the encounter with important interlocutors, who were crucial for his education. Among these, Domenico Lo Faso Pietrasanta, Duke of Serradifalco, whom he met in Sicily, probably represents the intellectual voice closest to Viollet’s revision process of architecture. The duke was transforming the approach to the study of local culture, definitively overcoming the tendency to encyclopaedism, adopting philological criteria and methodologies of research which were very close to the positivist historiography approach. When Viollet arrived in Palermo, Serradifalco was developing a process of revision of medieval Sicilian architecture, with the purpose of finding a “new architecture” for the future. Viollet-le-Duc became involved in this process. The essay underlines the similarities between the experience of Serradifalco and the contemporary activity of Viollet-le-Duc after his stay in Sicily. Apart from differences due to their cultural and political background, they both identified the basis to create a new architectural language in medieval architecture.