Academic literature on the topic 'Palazzo Butera (Palermo, Italy)'

This paper interrogates familial devotion and its relationship with parts of the house other than the chapel. In detail, it aims to problematize the issue of the devotional/non-devotional use of paintings inside the house by moving the focus from this dual opposition to the active role of canvases, broadly defined. Informed by Jacques Derrida’s and Pierre Bourdieu’s writings, this paper argues for the structural nature of the paintings inside the house and their meaningful correlation with both the arrangement of the domestic interior and the practices of people experiencing those spaces. To do this, the paper challenges the overwhelming attention paid by early-modern scholars to Northern and central Italy and investigates a precise case study, i.e., Palazzo Scordia in Palermo (Sicily). The research draws upon primary sources and amongst these, upon two detailed inventories of furniture referring to two subsequent generations of an aristocratic clan residing in Palermo between the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, i.e., Ercole and Giuseppe Branciforti, princes of Scordia.

Abstract. The project for the second competition for the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy, drawn up between 1888 and 1889 sees Ernesto Basile (Palermo 1857-1932) as winner ex aequo. Basile's project envisages the construction of a large monumental building (182.70 m by 171.40 m), in which the three halls, the Chamber, the Senate and the Royal Sessions Hall, develop around a large central courtyard; it will not be realized due to the fall of the Crispi government in 1891, but presents, in embryo, solutions adopted in the expansion of Palazzo Montecitorio (1903 - 1918), entrusted to Basile, in which the Chamber of Deputies, still existing today, is may consider “a sort of budding, from the organism of his second Parliament Building” (Mauro, Sessa 2000b).The original drawings are kept and cataloged in the Basile Endowment of the Scientific Collections of the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo, edited by Professor Ettore Sessa (Mauro, Sessa, 2000a; Sessa, 2014, Mauro, Sessa, 2015).In a first phase, the conjectural reconstruction and digital modeling was carried out (Avella, 2020), and in a second phase, a first 3D printing model was created, limited to the main front, which involved the design of the decomposition and assembly according to criteria respectful of architectural parties (Avella, 2021).This work presents the progress of the work, extended to the bodies containing the Chamber of Deputies and that of the Senate and the integration with Augmented Reality systems, in view of the future permanent exhibition at the premises of the Basile Endowment. The integration with Augmented Reality visualization systems stems from the desire to allow the observer to visualize the external envelope of the physical model and the internal spaces of the parliamentary halls.

La tesi affronta la tematica del rapporto tra le arti e l’architettura, ricorrente nei dibattiti culturali sin dalla primigenia antinomia téchne/ars ma di particolare importanza nella prima metà del Novecento. Dapprima la questione viene inquadrata a livello generale, tramite l’analisi di tre episodi peculiari dei primi decenni del ventesimo secolo, ossia: la quinta edizione della Triennale di Milano del 1933, consacrata alla pittura murale; il sesto Convegno Volta del 1936, dedicato al tema “Rapporti dell’architettura con le arti figurative”; la promulgazione della Legge del 2%, che prevedeva la destinazione di almeno la suddetta percentuale, rispetto al totale della spesa preventivata, per la realizzazione di decorazioni artistiche negli edifici pubblici da costruire. In seguito l’analisi si sofferma sulla particolare tipologia edilizia monumentale dei Palazzi di Giustizia: sono presentati brevemente tutti gli edifici costruiti in Italia dall’unificazione nazionale agli anni Cinquanta del Novecento, mentre un maggior approfondimento è riservato ai due casi che costituiscono i modelli di riferimento: il Palazzo di Giustizia di Roma, progettato alla fine del diciannovesimo secolo da Guglielmo Calderini, ed il Palazzo di Giustizia di Milano, progettato negli anni Trenta da Marcello Piacentini, uno dei principali protagonisti della ricerca. Successivamente il medesimo tema viene indagato affrontando l'analisi dei tre Palazzi di Giustizia costruiti in Sicilia, nell’arco temporale individuato, a Messina, a Catania ed a Palermo. Dal confronto dei tre casi emergono le peculiarità di ciascun edificio, le caratteristiche comuni e le diverse declinazioni della tematica in relazione al contesto, al periodo storico, alle esigenze funzionali ed ai mutamenti estetici ed architettonici avvenuti nel giro di pochi anni in Italia. L’analisi restituisce, quindi, una dettagliata descrizione degli aspetti architettonici ed artistici degli edifici e si prefigge di inquadrare le figure degli architetti che li progettarono – Marcello Piacentini, Francesco Fichera e Gaetano ed Ernesto Rapisardi – e dei numerosi artisti coinvolti nella realizzazione dell’apparato decorativo esterno ed interno dei Palazzi, tracciandone dei profili biografici e ricostruendone la produzione. Lo studio, perciò, non si limita alla messa in evidenza delle vicende e dei caratteri progettuali, costruttivi e decorativi dei tre casi ma individua le evoluzioni stilistiche avvenute a livello architettonico ed artistico. Inoltre intende tracciare i rapporti e le connessioni esistenti fra i protagonisti, individuandoli non soltanto tramite le consuete indagini bibliografiche ma anche attraverso le analisi archivistiche e lo spoglio di riviste specialistiche dell’epoca, come “Architettura e Arti Decorative”, “Architettura”, “Emporium” e molte altre, e di alcuni quotidiani coevi alle fasi realizzative dei Palazzi. I numerosi documenti individuati, infatti, costituiscono l'ossatura portante del racconto e vi sono inseriti con continuità allo scopo di restituire le dinamiche intercorse e taluni dettagli altrimenti trascurati dalle fonti bibliografiche esistenti.
The thesis addresses the theme of the relationship between arts and architecture, recurring in cultural debates for many centuries but of particular importance in the first decades of the twentieth century: first, it frames it at a general level, through the analysis of three peculiar episodes, namely the fifth edition of the “Triennale di Milano” in 1933, dedicated to mural painting, the sixth “Convegno Volta” in 1936, conference devoted to the theme “Relationships of Architecture with the Figurative Arts”, and the promulgation of the “2% Law”, which provided for the allocation of at least the aforementioned percentage to artistic decorations in relation to the total expenditure planned for public buildings to be constructed. The analysis then dwells on a particular type of monumental building, that of the Palace of Justice: all the buildings constructed from the unification of Italy to the 1950s are briefly presented, focusing on the two cases that constitute the reference models, namely the Palace of Justice in Rome, designed at the end of the nineteenth century by Guglielmo Calderini, and the Palace of Justice in Milan, designed in the 1930s by Marcello Piacentini, which is one of the main protagonists of research. Subsequently, the same theme is investigated in depth in three specific cases, namely the Palaces of Justice built in Sicily during the defined period, in Messina, Catania and Palermo. The comparison of the three cases reveals the peculiarities, the common characteristics and the different declinations of the theme in relation to the context, the historical period, the functional requirements and the aesthetic and architectural changes occurred in a few years. The analysis returns, therefore, a detailed description of the architectural and artistic aspects of the three Palaces and reconstructs the figures of the architects who designed them – Marcello Piacentini, Francesco Fichera and Gaetano and Ernesto Rapisardi respectively – and of the numerous artists involved in the realization of the external and internal decorative apparatus of the buildings, tracing their biographical profiles and reconstructing their production. The study, however, is not limited to highlight the individual characteristics of the three cases but identifies the stylistic evolutions that took place at an architectural and artistic level in those years. Moreover, it traces the relationships and connections between the protagonists, identified not only by means of bibliographical surveys but also through numerous archival analyses and the perusal of specialized magazines, such as "Architettura e Arti Decorative", "Architettura", "Emporium" and many others, and some newspapers of the period. The several documents identified, in fact, constitute the backbone of the story, with the aim of returning the dynamics that took place and certain details otherwise neglected by the existing bibliographic sources.