Author: POLENI (Giovanni):
Title: Memorie Istoriche della Gran Cupola del Tempio e de' danni di essa, e de'; ristoramenti loro, Divise in Libri Cinque. Alla Santita' di Nosro Signore Papa Benedetto XIV.
Description: In Padova, Nella Stamperia de Seminario, Con Licenza de Superiori, 1748 Folio, 442 x 308 mms., pp. [viii], printed in double columns, with 470 columns, nine folding engraved plates, lettered A to K, 19 folding engraved illustrations in text, including half-title, contemporary vellum; lower margin of half-title stained, no free end-papers, binding a bit chipped and worn, but a reasonable copy, with very clear impressions of the plates. Giovanni Poleni (1683 - 1761) had an impressive career as an academic, with skills in mathematics, physics, the classics, and astronomy. He built the first calculator to use a pinwheel design. In 1748, he was summoned to Rome by Benedict XIV to examine the cupola of St. Peter's Cathedral, which was in danger of collapsing. He indicated how the repairs should proceed, and the work was done in 1743 and 1744, under the supervision of the architect Luigi Vanvitelli. The Pope was pleased with the result and commissioned the present volume, of which 700 copies were printed, according to Poleni. The original design in the 16th century involved the talents of Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Carlo Maderno and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The restoration was not a "done deal" for Poleni. One of the consultants about repairs to the crumbling dome was Giovanni Bottari (1689 - 1775). He was not an architect, nor a mathematician, and he was the only person to object to the restoration of the dome, regarding it as unnecessary and irrelevant. Poleni mentions him a few times in the Memorie. The Italian scholar Calogera Lina Augello proposed a translation into English, but it appears not to have been published yet. Ralph Waldo Emerson described St. Peter's as "an ornament of the earth ... the sublime of the beautiful." The spectacular plates were done by Pietro Monaco, after drawings by Poleni and Antonio Visentini. Cicognara 3842; Riccardi II, 297 'Bella e rara edizione'; Olschki Choix, 17835.

Keywords: architecture topography prose


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