ARCHITETTURA E COSTRUZIONE IN ITALIA MERIDIONALE (XVI-XVII SEC.)

Is it possible today to write about the architecture ofsouthern Italy and its islands, in an age rich in echoesand studies about Italian history, while trying to avoidany justification, the circularity of common places oran excessive insistence on identity? Are there new paradigmsthat can to some extent, lead us to a differentidea of the South and make us understand that the architectureof that part of Italy that is often belittled isnot devoid of progress, that it had its own masters,personal experimentation efforts, and debates, and thatit is not the place (or only the place) of inertia, tradition,improvisation, fatalistic acceptance and backwardness?Perhaps this is now possible today, with theavailable materials and sources, if we renounce buildingthe narration on language, understood as style, and onrepresentation, by embedding alleged messages and allegoriesfor contemporaries and for posterity in the architecturalchoices and arguments that have long had acentral place in traditional historiography. This study presents the final results of the CosmedProject. Its four chapters examine the special ties thatbind the construction of the vaults and domes of southernItaly and its islands with a broader and more articulatednetwork especially in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries. The study reveals the existenceof a transcultural Mediterranean crossed by masterswith diverse skill sets who imported their experience,blending it with other building traditions and achievingresults that transcend boundaries imposed by the historiographyof individual countries.In particular, it addresses the topic of funeral mausoleumsplaced in the choir of churches, the debate ondome claddings with particular reference to the city ofPalermo, the search for vault solutions without ribs andfinally a survey of some apparently isolated and marginalcases in southern Italy showing the ties and experimentsthat actually inspired them.