Bernardo Antonio Vittone’s Dispersed Professional Archive

Abstract

The documental production that can be referred to Bernardo Antonio Vittone’s atelier consists of several hundreds of documents. These documents, texts and drawings, have been dispersed among several Italian, French and German public and private archives and collections under circumstances that, in most cases, have never been fully clarified. An exhaustive overview of all this material is not possible, as there is no clear perimeter circumscribing the amount of documents produced by the architect. In fact, a formally defined “professional archive” by Vittone has never actually existed. There are, however, several documental funds and groups of funds. Their actual location can be used both to map the places where Vittone has studied and worked, and to trace the history of the private and public collections, that since the 19th century have inherited or bought drawings from the architect’s atelier, usually acquiring them from Vittone’s former assistants. Our research has clarified that the dissemination of Vittone’s graphic material seems to be mostly due to the resale and dispersion of Mario Ludovico Quarini’s archive. The former assistant and architect, after acquiring a conspicuous portion of Vittone’s papers at his master’s death, had combined them with his own drawings and those of other architectural professionals. Any reconstruction attempt of Vittone’s archive, therefore, must pass through the analysis and identification of Quarini’s legacy.