Il cantiere di Sant'Antonio a Padova (1877-1903) nella rilettura critica delle carte conservate presso l'Archivio Storico della Veneranda Arca
In: Quaderni dell'Istituto di Storia dell'Architettura: 67, 2018
DOI: 10.1400/258550
This essay retraces the activities conducted in the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua on the occasion of the celebrations of
the 7h centenary of the birth of Donatello, starting in 1893. In particular, it focuses on the changes made by Camillo Boito
studying the fund at the Historical Archive of the Veneranda Arca di Sant’Antonio, where a corpus of 150 books by different
authors is collected, dating from the 1860s until the years of the celebrations of the centenary. The essay focuses in particular
on the growth in maturity of Camillo Boito, who in the previous decade had drawn up a manifesto on the methodological
approach to restoration projects, in the Agenda at the Congress of Engineers and Architects of Rome in 1883.
From a review
of the manifesto’s relationships to the various proposed projects, a multifaceted figure of Boito emerges, which along with the
design of new and original projects, supports the view of a restorer whose interventions were guided by the constant dilemma
between a respect for the work of art and the requests of the client.