The Sala Storica in the Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Siena
Photograph: Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati

Part of the Architetti a Siena exhibition
installation in the library
Photograph: Biblioteca Comunale
degli Intronati

Basement corridor in the library, with open shelving and computer stations
Photograph: Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati

Sketchbook of Oreste Vannocci Biringucci,
late sixteenth century
Photograph: Biblioteca Comunale
degli Intronati

Design for a stage set, Sienese artist, third
quarter of the sixteenth century
Photograph: Biblioteca Comunale
degli Intronati

Exhibition Review

Architetti a Siena. Testimonianze della Biblioteca comunale tra XV e XVIII secolo
Curators: Daniele Danesi, Milena Pagni, Annalisa Pezzo

Biblioteca comunale degli Intronati, Siena
19 December 2009 to 12 April 2010

PDF version

The exhibition Architetti a Siena. Testimonianze della Biblioteca comunale tra XV e XVIII secolo (Architects in Siena: Documents from the Biblioteca Comunale from the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries) celebrates the 250th anniversary of the foundation of the Sienese library, which opened to the public in 1759. It follows the exhibition entitled Hic liber est (2009) which illustrated the history of the library collections and the use of manuscripts and books since the Middle Ages, drawing on the institution’s incredibly rich holdings. Now the curators have chosen to focus on the architectural drawings collection which contains extraordinarily important pieces, but which at the same time is largely unexplored or understudied.

The first librarian of the Biblioteca Comunale, Giuseppe Ciaccheri (1724-1804), was interested in everything related to the arts in Siena—especially Renaissance architecture—and in some fifty years of maniacal activity collected most of the pieces that constitute the present drawing collection, now in part on display. The exhibition therefore features drawings, manuscripts, sketchbooks, and printed treatises which collectively illustrate the architectural events in the city from ca. 1450 (and in one instance, even earlier) to ca. 1750. Among the most important documents are Giuliano da Sangallo’s Sienese sketchbook (ms. S.IV.8), drawings and manuscripts by Antonio Averulino called Filarete (the Trattato di architettura civile, ms. L.V.9), Francesco di Giorgio Martini (the Trattato d’architettura civile e militare, ms. S.IV.4, and others), Baldassarre Peruzzi and his school (the so-called Taccuino senese di Baldassarre Peruzzi, ms. S.IV.7, and others), Oreste Vannocci Biringucci’s sketchbook (ms. S.IV.1), the autograph page layout draft of the Trattato d’architettura by Pietro Cataneo (ms. L.IV.6), annotated books and drawings by Teofilo Gallaccini (ms. L.IV.3 and others), as well as those by Giacomo Franchini. Among other discoveries awaiting the visitor, these sources reveal that behind the general impression of a Gothic city “apparently frozen in time, Siena continually tried to transform itself,”* with challenging projects such as that of a classical portico around the city’s main square, repeatedly considered throughout the centuries.

The project for Palazzo Sansedoni by Giovanni d’Agostino from the Banca Monte dei Paschi collection, one of the oldest and most famous surviving orthogonal elevation drawings (dated 4 February 1340), opens the exhibition in the main hall of the library. Used until very recently as a public reading room, this hall is now called “Sala storica” and functions as an exhibition space, restored along with the rest of the library for its 250th anniversary. The building in which the library has been housed from its foundation is the ancient seat of the Sapienza, the city’s university, and still earlier was the Misericordia hospital, an irregular, elongated medieval block, modified several times over the centuries. A medieval alley crossing this block is still recognizable as the long corridor in the basement, now arranged to host computer stations and part of the library’s open shelving area (a true revolution in the system of the library’s use).  A first highlight of the show relates directly to this institutional history: the Giuliano da Sangallo sketchbook, open to the pages featuring the project for a new seat of the Sienese Sapienza. This design is generally dated ca. 1492 but may be earlier** and the exact location for which it was intended is still a matter of discussion among scholars.

The exhibition continues with another wonderful set of drawings related to the idea of building a classical arcade around Piazza del Campo (ms. E.I.2, cc. 1-6), part of a “dream of a Siena all’antica that appears in the first half of the sixteenth century, envisaged by Baldassarre Peruzzi, his pupils and followers,” as Matthias Quast writes in the catalogue (p. 89), a project then revived around 1547 and again in the early eighteenth century. The interpretation proposed by Quast seems very convincing: the drawings could have been an exercise on the subject of the arcaded piazza, elaborated around 1530 by different pupils supervised by Peruzzi himself; all the drawings, in fact, represent variations in perspective of the same elements—a corner bay and a standard bay—of a Doric portico with given dimensions.

A large section of the exhibition is devoted to Gallaccini (1564-1641), well-known in the eighteenth-century Venetian neoclassical milieu of Joseph Smith, Andrea Memmo and Francesco Algarotti as the author of the treatise on the Errori degli Architetti, then published by Antonio Visentini with his own drawings. Displayed in this section are drawings that are part of an album traditionally attributed to Antonio Maria Lari (ms. S.II.4), now identified as copies by Gallaccini from the Books III and IV by Sebastiano Serlio. One can also see Gallaccini’s manuscripts on fortifications and on harbors (ms. L.IV.3), and his annotated books (for instance Daniele Barbaro’s Vitruvius edition), that well illustrate how this amateur of architecture was essentially a strong, learned reader.

The last section explores the intense activity of the architect-decorator Giacomo Franchini (1664?-1736), amply documented by a rich collection of drawings once again acquired by Ciaccheri (ms. S.I.1, S. I. 1₂, S. I. 8). A first group includes drawings from printed books on contemporary Roman architecture, such as Domenico De Rossi’s Studio di Architettura civile (Rome, 1702), in which Borromini’s works prevail; a second body is formed by several architectural projects for Siena (minor churches, family chapels, urban interventions, private palace renovations, as well as the archbishop’s palace).

The exhibition could, to a certain extent, be described as “highlights of the library,” but at the same time is a not-to-be-missed opportunity to see treasures normally visible only to scholars. The show stimulates interest in Siena’s early modern architecture—largely understudied—and, finally, fosters appreciation for this recently restored building, home to an historic public library that equally welcomes curious citizens, high school students, as well as demanding scholars.

Giulia Ceriani Sebregondi
Sapienza, Università di Roma

Publication related to the exhibition:

Daniele Danesi, Milena Pagni, Annalisa Pezzo, editors, Architetti a Siena. Testimonianze della Biblioteca comunale tra XV e XVIII secolo, Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2009, 264 pp., 90 color and 120 b/w illus., € 32.00, ISBN: 9788836615797

*As Bernardina Sani writes in the catalogue (p. 10).

**See Emanuela Ferretti’s essay in the catalogue.