Zevi and the 19th Century: the Stubborn Resistance of Critical Thought

Abstract

In the first edition of Saper vedere l’architettura (1948), Bruno Zevi stigmatized the Nineteenth Century with a judgment that left no doubt as to his opinion: «an era – he wrote – of mediocre inventiveness and sterile poetics». A period that found expression through eclecticism and numerous revivals, «in which the most debased literary Romanticism unrestrainedly mixed with archaeological science». In short, a century of «creative reflux». These terse judgments, however, don’t stop the author from recognizing the artistic abilities and merits of several Italian and European architects active in that century. On the other hand these architects have no place in his book because the aim of a critical and historical study is to spread «good architecture», and at the same time to «prevent the
construction of monstrosities». Zevi’s view of the 19th century goes well beyond the apparent limitations of such a declaratively militant critique. He focuses his attention on the multiformity of expressions and image of a century that is the
incubator of modern architecture. The present contribution aims to investigate these themes through a comparison between Zevi’s historiography of the period between the post-war reconstruction and the profound changes that took place in the 1960s and the “stories” that in that same period mark a new starting point in architectural theory.