Porta et fenestra: frammenti di un libro del Seicento napoletano

Abstract

In spring 2011 some small engravings of immaginative portals appeared on the antiquarian market in Palermo, interesting traces of a bigger collection probably put together by an unknown Sicilian architect. Assembled with other portals coming from the book "Porte d'archittettura rustica...", by Orazio Perucci, these engravings make part for sure of another book -till now apparently unknown to the scholars - dedicaded to the same specific theme of "Porta et fenestra" (portals and windows), as can be drawn from a fragment of the title page. By the schape and the language, these portals can be easily dated to the seventeenth century, while the author can be identified in Bonaventura Presti (Bologna, ?-Naples, 1685), architect of the Carthusian order. It is well known that in 1669 he created a treatise on military architecture, while virtually ignored by contemporary source is the printed work introduces in this article. It represents a publisching experience unprecedented up to that moment in southern Italy. Form the oddity of the results, we can imagine an influence on Presti's project coming from the collections already proposed by Bernardino Radi (1619) or Alexander Francini (1631). Presti's inventions show an assimilation, perhaps even a sort of indirect homage, to the decorations produced by Cosimo Fanzago. So, the rediscovery of this book and its graphic contents can fill a vacuum and help a deepener understanding of the southern baroque, specially of the reasons and the means of a fast wide spread of such models in the second half of XVII century.