Review: Nella mente di Vincenzo Scamozzi: un intellettuale architetto al tramonto del Rinascimento

Abstract

Nella mente di Vincenzo Scamozzi: un intellettuale architetto al tramonto del Rinascimento Palladio Museum, Vicenza, Italy 25 May–20 November 2016 Stepping into the exhibition Nella mente di Vincenzo Scamozzi , the visitor immediately encountered a billowing cloud of stylized books floating on the opposite wall, which illustrated the nearly 250 titles quoted in Vincenzo Scamozzi's magisterial treatise of 1615, L'idea della Architettura Universale .1 This textual nebula emblematized the theme of the refined little show, hosted by the Palladio Museum in a single room on the piano nobile of the Palazzo Barbarano in Vicenza. Jointly organized by the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, in collaboration with the Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin, the exhibition was all about Scamozzi's books. It presented the lifelong process by which the first Palladian architect read, annotated, and illustrated the volumes he collected, as well as showing how he composed and edited his own publications—in short, how he used books as tools to shape his mind and his oeuvre as both a builder and a theoretician. The exhibition largely depended on the research of Katherine Isard, one of the curators, who recently reconstructed the architect's book collection and the role it played in a professional practice based on a relentless pursuit of learning.2 Such an …