Guido Zucchini (historian)

Guido Zucchini (C.E.1882 – 1957), Italian engineer and art historian.

Bologna:

First lines:

The Bolognese territory preserves numerous traces of the life of ancient peoples, perhaps of the Mediterranean race, sheltered from the wild beasts in the scattered lake stations and in the caves. In Rastellino, in Bazzano, in Pragatto, in the Farneto cave on the right of the Zena stream the land has jealously guarded, for centuries, modest clay vases, crude stone tools, flints for defense and attack, and the worked bones of brutes.

Quotes:

• Towards C.E.1199, Bologna saw the two most singular and famous towers rise simultaneously: slender and vibrant, like a sword pointed towards the sky, the one built by the Asinelli and thrown upwards for more than ninety-seven meters above a square base of approximately eight meters on each side; slightly less wide, still resting on a base covered with selenite blocks, but inclined towards the east and unfinished due to the subsidence of the land, that of the Garisendi, who in the new competition of noble emulation had to stop the construction of the symbol of their strength. (pp. 28-30)

• As the towers thickened, the great bell tower of San Pietro was added to the marvelous group of two hundred dark brick piers, built by Alberto, inzigniero of the Municipality and the Chapter in pure Romanesque style: at his feet the bishop Enrico della Fratta raised his episcopal seat by adorning it with a very high portico with round columns and circular arches. (pp. 38-39)

• The freedom conquered [by the Bolognese] against the Viscontis, the desire to seal the new republican regime with a grandiose construction, dedicated to a local saint, perhaps emulation, which pushed them to surpass the cathedral of Milan and that of Florence, were the causes of the erection of San Petronio. (p. 54)

• The forty-two years, in which Giovanni II Bentivoglio with the name of gonfaloniere for life, granted to him by the conventions of Paul II (C.E.1465), he was a true lord, mark an era of splendor never reached again in the history of the city [of Bologna]. Giovanni's prudent and shrewd lordship led to immediate benefits and a notable degree of prosperity and independence. (p. 79)
• Giovanni II Bentivoglio He did not neglect to make friends of the people with lavish celebrations and tournaments and splendid banquets and courtships, to considerably improve the city by favoring and procuring embellishments to the streets, houses, temples, to call to his small court of writers and artists and to show how, like the other lords, he too could aspire to the title of father of the country. (p. 80)
• The mark left by Bentivoglio in the field of the arts was truly great: he was responsible for much of the current layout of the main streets and squares of Bologna and his desire to offer the foreigners who gathered here illustrious weddings and for splendid tournaments the view of a renewed city proud of its importance. The fortresses of the countryside and the walls and gates of the city were reinforced according to what the new science of war and the new obsidian methods required: his palace it was finished and enriched with a large tower and gardens, ^[sic] and rooms painted and decorated with gold ceilings (Gigli) and vast stables: the buildings of the Municipality and the Podestà at his behest they were restored and covered with new architecture: private individuals competed to erect houses and palaces so that in a short time the majority of the city was renovated and every man tried to build to the pleasure of Signor Messer Joane (Gaspare Nadi). Architects and bricklayers came from Lombardy and Veneto, sculptors from Tuscany, painters and illuminators from Ferrara and Modena; new and rich decorations in brightly colored terracotta, elegant candlesticks and boulder decorations came to adorn the facades of the houses, new paintings and frescoes enriched the churches, and Bologna was soon «bold, fantastic, shapely» (G. Carducci). (p. 81)

• Aristotele Fioravanti [...] architect and engineer of the Municipality of Bologna, very skilled in regulating water and designing new hydraulic works, in straightening towers, in moving tenement buildings, good ' 'machine maker, as Filarete called him, and 'good expert in measurements. (pp. 82-83)
• To him Aristotele Fioravanti we owe in all probability the model of the Palazzo del Podestà ordered by the Regiment in C.E.1472, since it was necessary to repair the façade towards the main square that the Burselli said it was ruinous for its antiquity. And the Municipality must have done well to entrust the study of the new works to ^[sic], then the height of his fame, sought after and envied by the courts of Italy and abroad, wandering in those years between Rome, Naples (C.E.1471) and Bologna. It was better for no one than him to solve the problem of redoing the large portico and the Romanesque façade without completely demolishing either one or the other, but only covering them with new forms. (p. 83)
• [...] if the decorations of the candlesticks and the capitals and moldings are due to Tuscan stonecutters, the architectural ensemble of the [del Podestà] palace appears to be the creation of a local craftsman who, in designing the model, had guided by the technical needs of the construction, the new renaissance forms and especially the design of the pilasters imported from Pagno di Lapo and finally some purely local uses, such as that of placing small circular windows in the frieze to illuminate the large and traditional flat ceiling rich in carved wood and paintings. (p. 83)

• The internal peace in the city of Bologna is matched by a new development of the arts, especially of architecture: so that the destruction of the Palazzo Bentivoglio [in C.E.1507] really seems to mark the death of the elegance and minute and hackneyed decorations of the fifteenth century and the beginning of a new rebirth ^[sic] by classical examples. (p. 116)
• The formation of the Italian kingdom favored the development of an eclectic architecture and the renewed consciousness of our people soon led to grandiose building renovations and the applications of recent hygienic and sanitary conquests: but perhaps one day the regret will be great in thinking about which the master plans of Italian cities were entrusted to inexperienced hands. The sudden desire for demolitions and the sudden love for large spaces and large streets mathematically straight and intersecting at right angles prevented the coordination of the needs of traffic and hygiene with those of history and art and of preserving together with the fruits of new arts, the witnesses of the past and the picturesque aspects and the reasons for these aspects. (p. 164)
• Bologna is not as well known as it deserves: its severe beauties, the gloomy appearance of the streets and houses, the escapes of endless porticoes, the play of shadows and lights of its winding streets and its bright squares , the solemn atriums and the sumptuous staircases, the decorative details of its terracottas, the calmness of the C.E.17th-century decorations do not allow the hasty traveler immediate enjoyment and do not elicit cries of admiration. The city, which first of all had an ancient civilization, which radiated so much light through the Studio allied to the flourishing of the highly democratic and humanitarian Municipality, which produced painters to support Baroque art with a magnificent brush, must be loved patiently, must be discovered step by step, corner by corner, act by act, intention by intention. (pp. 170-171)

Bibliography:

• Guido Zucchini, Bologna, Italian Institute of Graphic Arts, Bergamo, C.E.1905.

Bibliography:

• Guido Zucchini, Bologna, Italian Institute of Graphic Arts, Bergamo, C.E.1905.