Vittone 1920-2020. Afterword

Abstract

Since the resumption of the studies on Bernardo Vittone in the mid-nineties, a significant amount of research has been directed to filling the existing gaps in the knowledge on the architect’s biography. While many uncertainties still exist, Vittone’s life appears now better outlined, especially thanks to recent investigations on his youth in Turin and on his clients. A key issue that has emerged is represented by the particular character of Vittone’s culture, marked by his social origins as much as by his discovery, throughout the years of his architectural training, of the complexity of the Roman baroque tradition. In fact, what he studied and learned in Rome appears to have convinced him of the accuracy of his ideas, already marked, in his earlier education, by an in depth knowledge of Guarini’s architecture. From his return to Turin in 1733 to the end of his career in 1770, Vittone has constantly reconsidered the coordinates of his professional education: never rejecting them but measuring them with the new directions of thought that developed since the middle of the century, sometimes opening a conflict between the glorious, recent architectural past and the emerging “rationalist” and classicist requirements. The present survey, dedicated to the 250^th anniversary of Vittone’s death, is an opportunity to highlight new, necessary research paths on the architect’s life, his drawings, his publications, his library.