The art of taking over places from the past

Abstract

Two graphic representations of the city of Milan and its places of power. The first, known erroneously as " map by Galvano Fiamma ", was probably drawn by Pietro Ghioldi in the last decade of the XIV^th  century; the second, by Pietro del Massajo, shows the Lombard capital's place inPtolemy's Geography in the 1470s. It smoothes out the city's temporalities, while the diagram accompanying Fiamma's story, on the contrary, reveals its remanence, re-semantization and reallocation. It is in the gap between these two representations of the city's past that the analysis takes place, in order to define the formal rules of a monumental configuration of places of power, playing on three   variables: time, space and social use. How can we revive a political future by taking over the places of power of former regimes ? In the case of late medieval Italy, which is the focus of attention here, the question overlaps with that of theinsignorimento of places of communal power and civic memory, which can become depoliticized as they become more and more embellished.

Contents

• An architectural drawing under the eye of a young man : a look back at a detached sheet of paper by Leonardo da Vinci
• Between norma and speculum, the architectural model and the dedication scene
• The affair of the Tiburio of the Duomo of Milan in 1490 : the politicization of architectural competitions
• Giorgio Vasari and the double architectural event of decision and implementation
• What is the young man drawn by Leonardo in (Windsor 12552)  thinking about? Italo Calvino'spensosità and Henry James's monumental neurosis
• The " urban phrase " (Jean-Christophe Bailly, 2013), or the art of reassigning the traces of this urban past to the present of a new political semantics
• In the city, through urban planning but also through social use, bringing disjointed temporalities into contemporaneity (Bernard Lepetit and Denise Pumain eds., Temporalités urbaines, Paris, Anthropos, 1993)
• When time subjects architectural works to " losses, recoveries, substitutions of various kinds " (Umberto Eco, L'Œuvre ouverte, Paris, Seuil, 1962)
• And yet, the topographical insistence of places
• In Milan, theinsignorimento of places of power at the time of Azzone Visconti (Louis Green, " Galvano Fiamma, Azzone Visconti and the revival of the classical theory of magnificence ", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 53, 1990)
• Galvano Fiamma, chronicler and theorist of power (Paolo Tomea, " Per Galvano Fiamma ", Italia medioevale e umanistica, 39, 1996)
• In a universal chronicle, Marckalada, America's other name (Paolo Chiesa, Marckalada: Quando l'America aveva un altro nome, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2023)
• This is not a map of Milan (Patrick Boucheron, " La carta di Milano di Galvano Fiamma/Pietro Ghioldi (fine XIV secolo) ", in Marco Folin dir., Rappresentare la città. Topografie urbane nell'Italia di antico regime ( Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 2010)
• From Bonvesin della Riva to Galvano Fiamma, civic praise through measurement
• Traces, ruins, memory : Milan's two enclosures 
• Inventing a political future in the ruins of Rome (Patrick Boucheron, " Dis-assembling the Civic Square ", in Ann Davidian and Laurent Jeanpierre eds, What Makes an Assembly? Stories, Experiences, Inquiries, London, Sternberg Press & Evens Foundation, 2022)
• Le theatrum civitatis, lieu d'instauration du pouvoir consulaire au XII^thsiècle d'après Landulf le Jeune (Chris Wickham, Somnambules d'un nouveau monde. L'émergence des communes italiennes au XII^thsiècle, Bruxelles, Zones sensibles, 2021)
• Broletto and Palatium : qualifications, requalifications
• In the pre-communal city, the bishop in his palace (Maureen Miller, The Bishop's Palace. Architecture & Authority in Medieval Italy, New York, Cornell UP, 2000)
• When civic space depoliticizes itself by embellishing itself (Patrick Boucheron, " Politisation et dépolitisation d'un lieu commun. Remarques sur la notion de 'bien commun' dans les villes d'Italie centro-septentrionale entre commune et seigneurie ", in Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin and Anne-Laure Van Bruane eds, "De Bono Communi. Discours et pratique du Bien Commun dans les villes d'Europe occidentale (XIII^th -XVI^th s.), Turnhout, Brepols, 2010)
• From city to territory, a change of scale in town-planning ambitions
• Milan, 1470 : with Pietro del Massaio's plan, a new game is played (Patrick Boucheron, " Le passé, mais pas exactement. Mémoire urbaine et miroir princier à Milan au XV^thsiècle ", in Philippe Morel ed, Le Miroir et l'espace du prince dans l'art italien de la Renaissance, Rennes-Tours, PUR/PUFR, 2012).