Beltramo, Silvia

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Silvia Beltramo

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04 August 2020POLITECNICO DI TORINORepository ISTITUZIONALED.Y.F. GHIRARDO, recensione a S. BELTRAMO, Il marchesato di Saluzzo tra Gotico e Rinascimento. Architettura cittàe committenti, Viella, Roma 2015 / Beltramo, Silvia. - In: RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY. - ISSN 0034-4338. - STAMPA. -LXX:2(2017), pp. 660-662.OriginalD.Y.F. GHIRARDO, recensione a S. BELTRAMO, Il marchesato di Saluzzo tra Gotico e Rinascimento.Architettura città e committenti, Viella, Roma 2015Publisher:PublishedDOI:Terms of use:openAccessPublisher copyright(Article begins on next page)This article is made available under terms and conditions as specified in the  corresponding bibliographic description inthe repositoryAvailability:This version is available at: 11583/2747672 since: 2019-08-16T22:50:47ZRenaissance Society of AmericaIl marchesato di Saluzzo tra Gotico e Rinascimento: Architettura, citta,committenti. Silvia Beltramo.I libri di Viella Arte; Studi lombardi 8. Rome: Viella, 2015. xii þ 576 pp. €60.To the south of the duchy of Savoy, bordered by Provence on the west and the coastalcities of Nice, Ventimiglia, and Monaco to the south, sat the marchesato of Saluzzo. AsSilvia Beltramo documents, Saluzzo was buffeted by cultural and political forces from alldirections. The architecture and urban form of the marchesato’s major cities—Saluzzo,Revello, Carmagnola, and Verzuolo—as well as several smaller ones, testify to theintrusions that transformed their character over the course of the fifteenth century.Notably far off the traditional Rome-Florence-Venice axis, this study patientlyreconstructs the phases of development at the micro level of the single house, palace,alley, convent, church, city wall, or public building. Beltramo’s aims are multiple, butshe directs special attention both to documenting the changes in the public character andappearance of structures, and to revealing the participation of artisans and masterbuilders from both sides of the Alps over the course of the late fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies as they shaped Saluzzo. The study addresses the period when the marchesato660 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY VOLUME LXX, NO. 2absorbed influences both of Northern European Gothic and the new Renaissance trendsemanating from the Italian Peninsula, particularly Lombardy. Only painstaking,scrupulous, and long-term archival research, coupled with on-site inspections of thebuildings, made it possible to accomplish this considerable achievement. In this respect,Beltramo’s study falls into the category of the local history. Italy has a long tradition ofpassionate local historians, many of whose fine-grained studies end up beingfundamental to the work of professionals exploring broader topics. The differencesbetween the two types of histories are clear: local histories aim to document, whileprofessional histories address larger questions for which, in turn, local histories are oftenessential.Beltramo’s study bridges both, largely successfully. She offers house-by-housedocumentation of property transactions, architectural transformations, and eveninformation about functions, in the two centuries before owners began to assign newrepresentational functions. It was a surprise to discover how many notarial transactionstook place in the porticoes of private houses facing the public street, something elsewherefound generally in the porticoes of public buildings. Beltramo even includes details aboutinfrastructure, from paving to sewer systems, and she explores the connections betweenthem and the changing urban patterns of the four cities, as well as some of the smallertowns in the marchesato. Although the early chapters focus on urban plans andaristocratic housing, Beltramo also devotes chapters to the dwellings of the prosperousmercantile class, and to churches and monasteries. Luck was with her, for she wasfortunate enough to find a remarkable amount of archival documentation for severalhouses, which she paired with detailed and patient analyses of the structures themselves,bringing to light not only the phases of construction, but also a rich array of frescoes notunlike those of the palaces in Saluzzo and Manto.In the final chapter, the study shifts to the materials, their origins and use in thedifferent parts of the marchesato, and to the artisans engaged for individual buildings. Tothis end the author also documents the locations of the primary brick productionfacilities, the quarries for the stone and marble employed in churches, convents, andnoble tombs. Identifying individual artisans allows her to trace the influences fromSouthern France, especially Provence, from the northern Alps, and from Lombardy andNorthern Italy, and how they changed over time. Perhaps the most intriguing feature ofthis section is the careful documentation of craftsmanship and traditions in constructionsof stone, brick, wood, and tile as expressed in the individual buildings. Along with thefocus on a region long considered marginal, if considered at all, this may be the study’smost important contribution.Like the best local historians, Beltramo’s love of detail leads her to offer multipleinstances of similar phenomena, at times interrupting the flow of the analysis.Fortunately, following in the path of historians Carlo Tosco and Guido Montanari,Beltramo cautiously links these details to larger questions. Off the Rome-Florence-Venice axis, Saluzzo in the fifteenth century constitutes an intriguing example of thediffusion of new Renaissance approaches to architecture and urban planning. For661REVIEWSspecialists of subalpine architecture in Piemonte and Provence, it is a treasure trove ofnew material and a model for future studies.Diane Yvonne Francis Ghirardo, University of Southern California662 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY VOLUME LXX, NO. 2

D.Y.F. GHIRARDO, recensione a S. BELTRAMO, Il marchesato di Saluzzo tra Gotico e Rinascimento. Architettura città e committenti, Viella, Roma 2015

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D.Y.F. GHIRARDO, recensione a S. BELTRAMO, Il marchesato di Saluzzo tra Gotico e Rinascimento. Architettura città e committenti, Viella, Roma 2015

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