Le mostre di arte contemporanea in Fortezza nelle foto di Andrea Sbardellati

Le mostre di arte contemporanea in Fortezza nelle fotografie di Andrea Sbardellati

Ivan Theimer Il sogno di Theimer, 2016, pp. 222-227 Ugo Riva, La Porta dell’Angelo, 2017, pp. 228-233 Gustavo Aceves, Lapidarium: dalla parte dei vinti, 2018, pp. 234-239 Mimmo Paladino, La regola di Piero, 2019-2020, pp. 240-247

historical notes: sixteenth-century events and notes on pre-existing buildings

Maurizio De Vita

Historical notes: sixteenth-century events and notes on pre-existing buildings

The Fortress of Arezzo closes the city’s defensive circuit towards the north-east, dominating the whole Arezzo area from its mighty bastions. Perhaps more than any other urban monument, it tells the history of Arezzo and the study of its architectural events completes many many references some of which are unpublished to studies on the architecture of Sangallo. It was built on a site previously occupied by pre-Roman and Roman buildings and, above all, by the medieval fortified citadel consisting of palaces, towers and a dense and rich fabric which was largely, if not entirely, taken over by the sixteenth-century military site. In October 1502, at the behest of the Medici, Giuliano da Sangallo was sent to Arezzo, where he outlined a project to reorganise the entire building of the Citadel and, probably also of the medieval Cassero, including it in the wider Fortress that was to be erected. Giuliano sent his brother Antonio – known as the Elder – to complete the circuit and the fortified structure. The first project was certainly revised and work was conducted around the years 1506-1508. The present Fortress preserves two bastions from this first construction phase: the one called della Chiesa and the Ponte di Soccorso bastion, as well as the connecting curtain wall between them. The two bastions display a specific morphology in the shape of a heart, forming the so-called “lobes” which, not particularly far from the curtain wall, fold and turn up, so as to house the embrasures. Their peculiar feature, other than their shape, is the consistent use of brick. The curtain wall, made of mixed stones in the masonry batter, presents a consecutive series of round arches in brick, with the extrados coinciding with the overlying frame in bull-shaped moulded sandstone; from this comes the lead cladding, punctuated by other arches coinciding with the ones below, but lower in height, forming a series of overlapping rings. The Fortress, whatever its structure, was put to the test during the prolonged siege it suffered at the hands the people of Arezzo from November 1529 to May of the following year; the new building was partially destroyed and the existing Cassero di San Donato dismantled. The reconstruction then passed into the hands of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger – Giuliano’s and Antonio the Elder’s nephew and architect of the Fortezza da Basso in Florence – who was sent to Arezzo by the Florentine Republic in 1534. The following are indications left between 1 and 9 June on the works to be carried out, “If everything must be ruined [...] both the castle walls towards the city and all the towers, the dwellings and palace of the citadel: everything must be reduced to a square”1 . The construction of the walls only began in 1538 under Cosimo I (1519-1574) and in 1539 the project

1 Cfr. Andanti 1988, Le Fortificazioni di Arezzo (sec. XIV- XV), a cura di A. Andanti, Comune di Arezzo, Arezzo, 1988, p. 13.

pagina a fronte Immagine della mostra di Ivan Theimer nella Fortezza (2016)

for the Fortress began with Giovanni d’Alessio, known as Nanni Unghero, a trusted collaborator of Sangallo’s. The surviving part that had previously been built was restored, reshaping the development towards the city; the Citadel was completely demolished in order to reuse the materials and leave room for cannon fire. In January 1540 works proceeded quickly and were finished in under a year on 22 July, with the construction of the other three bastions: the Belvedere and Diacciaia, with the Spina in the middle. As a result, the Fortress looked dissuasive and threatening towards the city of Arezzo and its citizens. These new defence systems were made in a more functional manner, were robust and entirely made of stone, perpendicular to the curtain wall and overhanging sharply. The flanks were defended from the intersections between the bastions and curtain walls, with cannons placed at cross-fire inside the loopholes; these areas could be reached from rooms inside the bastions communicating with the other strongholds by means of openings and corridors that ran along the curtain walls. When the new fronts of the Fortress were built, the interior remains of the pre-existing building had to be demolished or buried in order to erect the buildings needed for the garrison and storage. Restorations and excavations carried out recently have revealed a profusion of wall remains, vaults, arches and entire rooms, as well as the Porta Sant’Angelo, pertaining to the fourteenth-century enclosure. The fact that the Fortress was built in two phases is clearly documented in the plan of the Fortress, drawn up in 1552 by Giovan Battista Belluzzi2, on the basis of which we can ascribe the part in red to Giuliano and Antonio the Elder, and the yellow, more recent part, to Sangallo the Younger. The entire construction site was surrounded by a moat and was entered from the north-west through the current main entrance, once equipped with a drawbridge on six arches3 to overcome the existing height difference; back then there was another opening to the north-east, the Porta del Soccorso, which faced the countryside, also equipped with a movable bridge. Around 1583, over 40 years after the completion of the Fortress, a reinforcement structure was built under the south-east part called Tenaglia – pliers, due to its particular shape, but it was never completed and soon fell into ruin (hence the name Fortezzaccia Vecchia – old fortress) written on many later plans. This might have been the work of the great architect Bernardo Buontalenti (1536-1608) who, as we know, had prepared some studies on the defence system of Arezzo. Much of the initial settlement was in fact demolished to establish the Fortress, although it is impossible to perfectly reconstruct the entire building of the Citadel and the Cassero, or the shape of narrow streets and villages within it. The well-known demolition of the Torre Rossa and the Palazzo del Comune took place in November 1539, but many other towers and buildings also disappeared, including the Tarlati family property and a number of churches.

2 Cfr. Lamberini D. 2007, Il Sanmarino, Giovanni Battista Belluzzi architetto militare e trattatista del Cinquecento, Olschki, Firenze 2007 (see related text) 3 Cfr. ASF, Scrittoio delle Fortezze e Fabbriche, Fabbriche Lorenesi, filza 2046, fasc. 20, 1806, Sheets relating to the Fortress of Arezzo.

Decadence and progressive disarmament of the Fortress

The so-called War of the Duchy of Castro (1641-44) was waged between Pope Urban VIII and the Duke of Parma – who was allied with Venice, Modena and Florence – ending in 1649 with the annexation of the feudal estate of Viterbo to the Papal State. Despite the restoration of the Fortress, we know from a 1634 payment note that during the first phase of the war a gradual abandonment of the Fortress had already begun through a conspicuous cut in internal staff, now numbering only one castellan, four bombardiers and 19 soldiers. Subsequently, during the entire eighteenth century the city enjoyed a period of great peace during which, in 1737, the reigning family changed: the grandducal territories passed to Francesco Stefano of Habsburg-Lorraine (as Francis II, from 1708-1765). With the death of Francesco Maria and his nephew and direct heir Ferdinand, the fate of the Medici house passed into the hands of the only male left, Giovanni Gastone (1671-1737) brother of Ferdinand himself and of Anna Maria Luisa, Palatine Electress, who assisted with the handover. The decision on the ownership of the Grand Duchy was taken in Vienna back in 1735: after the end of the War of the Polish Succession Poland was awarded the Duchy of Lorraine and European diplomats allotted the future Tuscan heritage to the reigning but ousted Duke of Lorraine. There are documents produced in the following years on the inspections carried out as well as reports about the condition of the damaged armaments needing replacement and maintenance work. In 1661 the drawbridge was removed from the Porta del Soccorso4 while other accounting documents report an ever greater agricultural use of the entire building, to the detriment of its military purposes. With the rule of the Lorraines, Colonel Odoardo Warren was entrusted with the task of making the fort efficient again, counting it among the fortifications which, referring to Arezzo ‘His Imperial Majesty ordered should be armed [...]’5, as we read in the report by Warren himself alongside the excellent relief of the Arezzo fortifications drawn up in 1749 together with the plans of other cities and fortresses in the Grand Duchy. But the wish didn’t materialise due to the turn of events: the Prato area was leased for the planting and cultivation of mulberry trees and various rooms inside the Fortress were used as deposits and lodgings for a wool factory recently established in the city. Finally in 1782, Grand Duke Peter Leopold decided to shut down the factory and once the military garrison was demolished, the Fortress was put up for sale and bought on 25 October of the following year by the Gamurrini family, who turned the entire site into an agricultural estate. From the destruction by Napoleonic troops to twentieth-century transformations intended ‘for public use’ In 1791 Ferdinand III (1769-1824) succeeded his father Peter Leopold, who had taken the Austrian throne a year earlier. Worried by Napoleon’s expansionist aims, in November 1798, just 15 years after the sale of the Fortress, Ferdinand retook possession of the barracks, and although he never displayed

4 Cfr. Paturzo F. 2006, La Fortezza di Arezzo e il Colle di San Donato dalle origini ad oggi, Letizia, Arezzo 2006, p.108. 5 Cfr. Warren O. 1979, Raccolta di piante delle principali città e fortezze del Gran Ducato di Toscana, 1749, a cura di F. Gurrieri e L. Zangheri, Firenze 1979 Warren 1979, p. 123.

a hostile attitude towards Napoleon, was nonetheless cautious and at the ready. In May 1799 the rebellion against the French troops occupying the entire region was ignited. Arezzo was the first city to rise with the so-called Viva Maria uprisings6: the Fortress was put into working order and a sudden reorganisation of defences involved all the walls and gates, which were fitted with a moat and cannons. Nevertheless, in October 1800, Napoleon’s troops entered the city from Porta San Lorentino, plundering and devastating the building. As a punitive gesture, on 26 October the Belvedere bastion was mined and literally split into two parts, and subsequently the same happened to the Ponte di Soccorso, where damage brought the interior rooms and church to view, subsequently affecting the walls of San Lorentino and the namesake Porta, the wooden components of which were burned. In November of the same year the French demolished the buildings used as warehouses inside the Fortress, irreparably damaging the old church of S. Donato in Cremona. In 1896, as part of the project drawn up by the chief engineer of the Umberto Tavanti council technical office, the existing ditch was filled by covering the walkway of the movable bridge, which stood on masonry pillars and arches. While moving the soil various archaeological remains came to light but unfortunately were promptly demolished with mines because considered of little value. Furthermore, a straight road was built in line with the entrance to the Fortress along the shorter axis of the Prato oval, and a dense line of plane, lime and maple trees was planted. The twentieth-century chronicles referring to the Fortress of Arezzo testify to a conspicuous silence and indifference of the council, scholars and experts with respect to the fate of the building, which was left to a progressive abandonment. This disenchantment and lack of studies and restoration works are at the origin of the decision to place a reinforced concrete tank in the centre of the Fortress, a square block with sides measuring about 40 meters, partially buried at a depth of around eight metres. To this day, given the difficulty of knowing what previous excavations unearthed, we must remember that the soil was scattered inside the Fortress itself, raising the original height of the parade ground by about four metres.

The first restoration phase of the Fortezza

The restoration of the Fortezza’s external facings7, carried out between 2008 and 2011, was an extraordinary application of stone restoration criteria and techniques, starting from a careful survey with state-of-the-art technology and diagnostics. The stages, methods and techniques can be summed up as follows8:

6 Cfr. Bacci A. 1999, Viva Maria! Storia in ottava rima dell’insurrezione aretina nel 1799 contro i francesi con una nota introduttiva, Calosci, Cortona 1999. 7 A more detailed report of the restoration carried out in this first phase can be found in M. DE VITA, Il restauro lapideo. Le mura della Fortezza di Arezzo, Firenze 2012. 8 The works described below were conducted following multiple and documented samplings, which were planned and assessed together with the Superintendency.

- During the works preceding the actual restoration and building work unsafe parts were secured and stabilised, and parts that had detached from their support were put back in place. The material that had collapsed and accumulated was cleaned up by removing the vegetation; it was then sorted and the stone and terracotta pieces that could be reused for tiling and refurbishing were stocked in the yard. The grass and shrubs were uprooted, after spraying chemicals on the leaves and letting the plants dry out before removing the roots, while taking special care not to damage the surrounding masonry. - Investigations were conducted on materials and bio-deteriogenic organisms: physical, chemical and petrographic analyses were carried out to identify and test suitable products; various samples of mortars were analysed to identify their exact composition, particle size and colour scheme. Biological analyses were conducted on all the vestments of the towers and connecting buildings to find bio-deteriogenics on stone samples and to identify and classify these organisms in order to establish which actions and disinfection chemicals to use and how to apply the biocidal products. - As a result of the chemical investigations, after sampling and evaluating the results, specific biocidal products were sprayed in cycles to eliminate the lower vegetation colonies consisting of bacteria, algae and lichens. After the sprays had devitalised the organisms, these were removed by hand, with brushes and sponges or with low-pressure water jets. - Cleaning operations were carried out with diversified and selective techniques and only after establishing which method to use by analysing several samples taken from different parts of the vestment. The methods used were: dry cleaning to eliminate particles, dust, dirt and guano deposits, which were removed with brushes, brooms, scrapers and air blasts or vacuum cleaners; cleaning stable stone surfaces with low pressure de-ionised water to remove the patina of smog and surface deposits; mechanically removing the solubilized deposits with flat and sorghum brushes; cleaning stone and brick and mixed stone walls to remove organic and inorganic coatings that had been devitalised; removing deposits treated with basic solvents with water jets with rotating heads; selective cleaning of stone surfaces in the areas where deposits were thicker, more compact and adherent, by washing them down with distilled water and a saturated solution of ammonium carbonate; and finally brushing the deposits off. - The following specific consolidation work was carried out: specific consolidation of fragments and pieces of veneer after pre-consolidating them with ethyl silicate products, re-adhering scales and crumbling fragments with epoxy resin and by inserting fiberglass pins; consolidating cracks and fractures between non-separable parts of stone material by inserting steel straps and injecting epoxy resins; consolidating sprues, fractures and small non-structural lesions by inserting stainless steel pins after preparing the holes, and injecting pressurised fluid epoxy resin; indenting masonry to mend specific lesions or disconnected parts with the same stone as the existing one, filled with a suitable mortar, then plastered externally with lime mortar. - Substantial work was carried out on the stucco, dowels and seals such as: filling in deep cracks by casting or injecting mortars made of natural hydraulic lime and mason sand; dowelling small terracotta

parts into the facings that had deteriorated and were in danger of collapsing by using recycled ancient stone or terracotta elements similar in shape and colour to the existing components, fitted with a hydraulic lime mortar, sand and pozzolanic ash; sealing and grouting the joints; filling in the alveolised bricks, the deeper bumps and dips with lime mortar, executed with the original technique. - Works on the summit of the covering stonework, such as: restoring, filling and sealing the ridges and contours, and the uneven stone elements of the walls by scarfing the links; cleaning, washing, applying hydraulic mortar, smoothing the surfaces with slats of iron and modelling the joints to encourage the flow of water. - To consolidate the overall surface of the wall, two coats of ethyl silicate were applied with a brush, while monitoring how the stone absorbed the product; the entire surface was protected by applying water repellent spray made of alcoholic silane solution. - As for consolidating and securing parts of the walls that had collapsed, and eliminating the conditions that made them unstable, works were conducted on the disruptions caused in 1800 by mines detonated in the Bastione del Belvedere, the Bastione della Chiesa and the Bastione del Soccorso. Consolidation work was carried out on the projecting elements of the walls and conglomerates that were dislocated to the point that large building masses were no longer connected to each other, although apparently stable. Following specific pre-consolidation and consolidation operations, cores were made to allow the insertion of stainless steel bars on the entire length of the ramparts, placed horizontally and at a regular distance, and stainless steel rods grouted into the masonry obliquely to ensure structural continuity. The reinforcement straps of the steel bars were positioned on the outer layer of the walls, as the corresponding outer plates were brittle and relatively thick. As the reinforcement straps below the tiles are invisible to the eye, they were therefore marked by processing the overlying dressed stone as well as by clearly indicating their exact location on the plan and images that are kept by the local council.

The second phase of the restoration – open spaces and bastions in the Fortezza

Following the restoration work initially carried out by means of specialized works on the curtain walls and multiple, complex and delicate conservative operations conducted on the ramparts as well as the open spaces inside the Fortress, the building has now become a permanent place for an unexpected nemesis – a physical and mental space handed down to history, to help understand the city and finally do the Fortress justice, albeit partially. The second phase of the restorations9 started in 2012 and was recently concluded with the restoration of the Belvedere bastion10, making it possible to reopen the inner open areas of the Fortress, the walkways and all the spaces inside the ramparts.11 From the commissioner’s point of view, namely the Council of Arezzo – who have been committed to

9 Cfr. De Vita M. 2012, Il restauro lapideo. Le mura della Fortezza di Arezzo, Edifir, Firenze 2012. 10 Cfr. De Vita M. 2017, La fortezza di Arezzo: le trasformazioni di un ‘colle fortificato’ ed i recenti restauri, in RICerca REStauro, Sezione 2B: Conoscenza dell’edificio: casi-studio, Roma 2017. 11 The restoration of the Fortress of Arezzo is directed by M. De Vita with Ulrike Schulze, Studio De Vita & Schulze Architetti (with SPIRA srl, Consilium srl, SERTEC sas; consolidation project of the Belvedere bastion: engineer G. Clerissi).

recovering the Fortress since 2007 – the reasons for the restoration were mainly based on the wish to overcome this abandonment once and for all: faced with the distance, not to say to the refusal of the city towards a physically and socially deteriorated space, in fact, the Fortress had the potential to offer ancient but persistent traces of past dominations, destructions and attempts at denying identity values. The work was aimed at returning an extraordinary monument to the community, but also at creating a new cultural centre that could house art exhibitions, shows, educational activities, learning spaces and knowledge sharing. This forgotten place had to become the cultural, temporal and physical nexus to reconnect the city with its citizens, to link its controversial past with a shared future and Arezzo with the land surrounding it and the world. There were other problems though: first of all potential hazards due to the impossibility of constantly monitoring people entering the building as well as preventing further alterations and disruptions to the site; this required an objective responsibility to be shouldered by the Council which was mainly committed to the cultural dimension of the project. The decision to set up the organisational and decision-making body needed to channel resources and experts arose from the strong wish to reduce the above-mentioned distance and spoilage by transforming the site into a place of belonging, and using the Fortress for the most disparate forms of sharing, socialisation, and collective discovery. It should be noted that when the works were scheduled to start, there was no intention of turning the Fortress of Arezzo into a venue for contemporary art and sculpture exhibitions. The general plan developed during the design phase and pursued during restoration referred broadly to exhibition spaces, educational activities and rooms equipped for temporary exhibitions suitable for hosting works of art but also typical local products that would showcase the activities carried out in the Arezzo area. Before this project started there was no specific research on the Fortress, nor were there surveys or an indepth analysis. After some preliminary historical and archival research a direct analysis of the Fortress and its parts was conducted with a survey of reliefs both of the external curtain walls and of the interior spaces, and with the study of material and diagnostic analyses. This enabled the reconstruction of the past building stages, which led to an informative basis for the planning concept. Regarding the intervention methods and repurposing of the Fortress, right from the beginning of the planning a network of paths was established among the spaces inside the ramparts and the interior open areas.

The restored Bastions develop into a cultural mission

On the one hand, therefore, the Fortress rooms inside the visible and measurable bastions had to be preserved in all their components, operating the necessary albeit rare structural reinforcement operations, and maintaining each integral part in the single rooms as evidence of a building style and concept of fortified spaces, as well as stopping the degradation without making renovations. The planned use required designing easily reversible and low-maintenance technological equipment. Functional

needs, regulatory and comfort requirements that would let people enter and spend time inside the Fortress highlighted the need forinteraction between pre-existing parts and new additions, thereby justifying the restoration procedures as well as the specialised work carried out on ancient materials. These requirements led to the addition of custom-made mechanised connections, by inventing glass skylights to cover large smoke vents; arranging metal walkways to connect rooms on different levels; inserting reversible technological totems; setting up the electric circuit board; arranging multi-directional and multi-purpose luminous tubes and lighting fixtures suitable for various events; as well as fitting underfloor heating with pipes and fanned coil units located where the flooring was missing, and arranged so as not to conflict with future fittings. The works planned and carried out inside the ramparts took account of various cultural events to be held across the different rooms, based on the requirement for multi-purposing and the consequent need for fittings that could later be changed. In fact, the restoration works were completed in 2015 and conducted inside the Spina, Diacciaia and Soccorso bastions, in both familiar and rediscovered spaces, and in the additional areas found after the excavations, known as ‘former shelter’ – visible and used as such during WW2. This allowed us to recognize the historical and archival value of these places, while setting them up for cultural and educational activities in a broad sense which, only starting from 2016 would result in a clear long-term project dedicated primarily to sculpture and contemporary art. Regarding the work carried out on the ramparts, the spatial system that typifies the cultural use of the Fortress of Arezzo finds a particularly significant example in the Soccorso bastion on how to reorganize entrances and exits as well as the use of the building and its dedicated areas. This functional and architectural addition establishes an unprecedented dialogue between ancient and recent architecture through the contemporary language of newly built heart-shaped portion of the bastion, which collapsed under Napoleonic mines in 1800. It writes a new and unpublished page on the identity of this place as a meeting point of cultural opportunities, formal and functional research as well as the expression of the complex relationship between monuments and modernity. The Soccorso bastion is also a new entrance to the Fortress; the figurative recomposition of its geometry, without concealing the original loss of continuity, bridges the gap from a formal point of view and reverses the sense of traditional impenetrability that is typical of defensive buildings: the new curtain wall allows for controlled transparency at night as well as in daytime Recent restoration work on the Belvedere bastion included an additional entrance to the Fortress, with the aim of allowing large crowds of people to exit; stopping and consolidating the materials and masses shattered over the course of two centuries; linking internal paths with walkways, stairs and aerial bridges; and reconstituting the walkway. The monument has therefore become accessible to thousands of people who are attracted to the place and attend various cultural events, from the exhibitions mentioned above to upcoming open air performances.

Open areas inside the Fortress connect places and time

The original floor level was raised in the past to reach four metres in height, altering the initial layout of the open spaces. This was due to a number of factors: the considerable alterations suffered by the Fortress with the destruction of all the buildings by the Napoleonic troops in October 1800; the subsequent transformation of the interior into a shapeless and meaningless area; changes to the original internal level by obstructing the excavated lands; and the construction of the water tank. As for future activities, research on the potential uses of these spaces was outlined in the planning phase, dedicating these areas to walking, entertainment and socialising purposes some adjustments became necessary as previous inner landscapes were discovered. On the one hand, the cleaning and excavation of the ground confirmed some planning forecasts that had been made during the building phase, while on the other hand as work on the site and excavation progressed the reading of archival and quantitative data was constantly updated and new spaces were found for re-purposing. More than the initial project, the site itself has therefore determined the programme and a continuous update of a specific cultural vision within a framework that was general and partially undefined, yet compensated by the information coming from the extraordinary discoveries made visible and accessible to the community. The restoration project aimed at reaching new widespread recognition of the historical and architectural values of the Fortress. Excavations and additions, functional consolidation and extensions, theoretical studies and checks were conducted while removing from the original spaces the strata of soil that for about 50 years had distorted the perception and understanding of the site, concealing whole areas and preventing the unveiling of a context that was much larger than what was apparent.

Restoration works and findings link the past to the present

Excavations were then carried out until the original altitude was identified, assuming it to be about four metres lower than the height of the ground at the beginning of the operations, a quota that was to be reached wherever possible, but obviously not around the water tank, which was considered fixed at the centre of the Fortress. Many areas and passages recorded in the historical cartography were found and, thanks to further tests and a few fortuitous findings, important artefacts belonging to post-ancient and ancient times that predated the sixteenth-century defence building came to light. In the area between the Diacciaia and Soccorso bastions the remains of a building from the Augustan age were found, with extensive stretches of mosaic pavement in good condition and elevated parts of walls with plaster and colours still preserved – an area currently under study and awaiting further excavation and a potential repurposing. In the space between the Chiesa and Soccorso bastions, an underground area was unearthed – probably a church built in the late medieval period and used as a crypt in the sixteenth-century church destroyed by the Napoleonic mines. And finally, many findings belong

to the remains of medieval buildings and fortifications and also to works that were probably carried out according to the first plan of the Medici Fortress by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder and his brother Giuliano, then covered up and modified by the project of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. As yet unfinished, the open spaces inside the Fortress have been redesigned and create a sequence of paths at different levels, connected to a gentle slope accessible at the lower levels, with a high central area corresponding to a height of about one metres above the upper surface of the tank floor. Viewpoints onlooking the archaeological sites have been set up and designed in perspective as starting points to reach the excavations and their final arrangement. The patrol walkway - redefined and completed with metal bridges to compensate for collapsed or unusable parts – once a place for sighting and controlling over the land and the conquered city, is now providing new perceptions and views of urban and territorial landscape. At the centre of the Fortress, above and next to the tank that is still in use, a space dedicated to exhibitions offers and reignites the comparison of this place with contemporary culture thanks to open-air seating, a stage and a sub-stage equipped with dressing rooms, technical rooms, toilets and warehouses. Many of the restored areas are also comparable thanks in particular to contemporary sculpture exhibitions. The arrangement of contemporary works of art involves part of the open spaces in the Fortress and the interiors of the ramparts; the appeal it has exerted on the public has exceeded all expectations, evidently tickling the intellectual curiosity of anyone who finds themselves reinterpreting these new opportunities by experiencing them inside the ancient defensive garrison, and who perceives them as a critical potential, which seems in some ways to exalt a sense of eternity.

Contemporary art bursts into rediscovered places with an unexpected welcome

As already mentioned at the beginning, a long-term strategic choice by the local council included temporarily housing new sculptures in the Fortress, with the aim of creating a cultivated dialogue among: symbolic values; the dense language of present-day art with this place, or rather, places; and the highest artistic and architectural expressions of the city and land of Arezzo. The centre of this dialogue should house art’s timeless time; stories vis-à-vis history; linguistic research as the ultimate expression of intense poetic values; the reciprocal, ever-new revelations about the history of the defensive building and of the city that, each time, should have been made to visitors by the Fortress and other iconic areas of the city of Arezzo on the one hand and art installations on the other. Setting these conditions meant suggesting complex dialogues, far from research and exhibitions about contrasting and dissonant diversities, even when they became potential vehicles for strongly poetic or provocative cultural messages, but now sought out and offered to make up authentic spatial symphonies that can generate entirely unexpected cultural sounds which have always been here, but haven’t yet materialised. This ever-changing encounter involves areas and rooms in the Fortress that didn’t necessarily coincide with the exhibition destinations planned in the project; this way an unprecedented assonance emerged

between unique and unpredictable contemporary artistic research and an unrepeatable restoration, by establishing intense agreements and harmonies, which were definitely sought out and wished for by the artist, the exhibition and set-up curators, but certainly became greatly amplified and more powerful than expected. Visitors’ perceptions are solicited on multiple levels, transforming ancient spaces into timeless scenarios, with the rare symbolic and material strength of pre-existing art enhancing the historical narrative and the way the building is shared and/or used by the public today. The rooms in the Spina and the Diacciaia bastions have hosted many works by the above-mentioned artists but every time the combination of works, the feelings of the artists and the rooms in the Fortress have determined a sort of cultural sharing, derived perhaps from a common cultural heritage. The long narrative of the spaces and rooms in the fortress, enhanced by the restoration project, embraces works of art which in turn recount time and history and yet include classical art themes. Such a choice provides a far greater sensory effect and a more intense dialogue than could be offered by displays of contemporary art heavily contrasting ancient surroundings which tend to produce a preconceived form of otherness. The exhibition in 2016 by12 Czech, naturalised French sculptor Ivan Theimer – who has also worked in Pietrasanta – was divided into paths populated by small and large bronzes arranged along the connecting tracts between the ramparts, on the walkways in the open areas of the Fortress and inside the bastions themselves. The mythological characters and sketches of works created for great European town squares were thus assembled. These include the bronze obelisks for the Elysée Palace, the commemorative monument for the Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights for the bicentennial of the French Revolution, and the sculpture to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. Hercules holding an obelisk and located in the central area was identified during the restoration and redesigned in the interstices between the medieval and sixteenth-century walls. The same applies to the other pieces, and perhaps more than for any other work, its displacement has made it a powerful and hypnotic reference to the eternal comparison of stories with History. In the interview for the exhibition catalogue Ivan Theimer speaks explicitly of his conversation with Arezzo and classicism, thus describing his journey, “... my life is full of destinies, just like the history of the classical world. I discovered Arezzo and of course Piero when I was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris ... I often admired the Pala di Brera in Milan, the Baptism of London and the San Antonio polyptich in Perugia, and the Maddalena del Parto of Monterchi. Sansepolcro’s Pala della Misericordia and its protective mantle inspired me for the monument I created in Dieulefit in Provence, a memorial dedicated to Pity that can overcome War. The frescoes of the True Cross and the stones of Arezzo, which slope down from the Etruscan hill towards the plain, awoke me to ancient dreams and underground memories. This is a true story of rebirth for someone who has experienced

12 Exhibition curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, set-up by Roberto Barbetti, Francesca Sacchi Tommasi and Andrea Sbardellati.

migration, the search for a new identity, but has also encountered hospitality, and the feelings of places and people ...”13 Equally clarifying are the thoughts with which exhibition curator Vittorio Sgarbi opens the catalogue. “One day in Arezzo, Theimer found the mirror of his vision, first in the Chimera and then in the History of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca. Measuring himself against Piero, Ivan crowned a dream, and his laborious training now belongs to history, not to a delusion. The integral need to retrace Myths finds a precursor in some of Piero’s rare works on non-religious subjects. I’m thinking of Hercules (fig. 3) torn away from Borgo Sansepolcro and now at the Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston as a true resuscitation of the ancient, a reconstruction of a lost world. In that Hercules, Piero literally represents what rebirth is, namely feeling the old and modern world as one. And when Theimer conceived his Hercules supporting an obelisk, he retraced Piero’s journey. This is clear in the majestic area of the Fortress populated by Theimer’s warriors and trophies, a space that is ideal to reconstruct Myths and a world of heroes that today have disappeared. Upon entering the Fortress of Arezzo we don’t feel, as in other contemporary art exhibitions held in a historical space, the chasm between ancient and modern worlds. The sculptures exhibited in the Fortress seem to have been born there, as part of an ideal and material continuity. The distance between two worlds and two ways of thinking is imperceptible. There is no abstraction”14 . Even before recent restorations, during excavation and investigation works carried out in the 1990s, one of the entry gates to the medieval citadel was found. It had reappeared and been incorporated into the sixteenth-century building and then destroyed to build the Medici Fortress. It was called the Angel Gate because a bas-relief depicting Saint Michael the Archangel – now at the Museum of Medieval and Modern Art in Arezzo – was found above the entrance archway. The exhibition on Ugo Riva’s works (fig. 4,5 and 6) was held in the Fortress from June to January 201715 and appropriately titled The Angel’s Gate, as the Fortress was populated with angels, which were imagined and materialiseed with the same unpredictability wherever a dialogue took place in an unknown language, both old and new, making angels talk with matter and space. This dialogue explains the eternity of matter itself, its infinite mutability, the only apparent boundaries imposed on terracotta, bronze and stone by figures and architecture, whose belonging to the classics unleashes matter itself into the present-day imaginary and sensory world. Here too it is worthwhile to talk about the main characters of the exhibition, which indicate the union, dialogue and revelation of the encounter between restored space and contemporary artistic expression. Ugo Riva describes his encounter with the Fortress as such, “... While the magic of the place took hold of me, the works necessary to inhabit it spontaneously appeared in my mind. The exhibition took shape

13 Cfr. Sgarbi (a cura di) 2016, Il Sogno di Theimer, Maggioli Musei, Santarcangelo di Romagna, 2016, p. 212. 14 Ibid., p. 14. 15 Cfr. Sgarbi (a cura di) 2017, La Porta dell’Angelo, Arezzo 2017, p. 15.

on its own ... I would have much liked to find myself face to face with this new creature that spoke to me of itself, of its history, of the souls who had lived through it, perceived its energy ... When I went back to the Fortress, to look at the space once more, I felt that a strong and meaningful understanding could be born between the Fortress and my work, revealing itself as a necessity before becoming a certainty”.16 Likewise, the intense and unexpected confrontation between the historical sedimentation of the Fortress narrated through the restoration and Ugo Riva’s works – which were born antique – lives ‘out of corrosion’, says the exhibition’s curator: “... Here the tormented creations by Ugo Riva have found peace, refuge. After the Sassi of Matera ... it is now the turn of this powerful and defensive architecture. Fate establishes a specific identity and vocation for places. Here it is: this happened for Arezzo and for its Medici Fortress. And I am sure that the future of this space will be to house sculptures and a dialogue between modern and ancient art”17 . Mexican artist Gustavo Aceves exhibited his work just after, in the second half of 2018, with the title Lapidarium: on the side of the vanquished, a travelling project that the artist has been working at since 2014, logistically extending the comparison between modern-day thinking and classical spaces, and involving the Fortress, the Church of Saint Francis, the Duomo churchyard and the Vasari square, to include over 200 works made of stone, bronze, resin, wood and other materials that have become travelling equestrian symbols of escape, abandonment and migration, like scattered fragments of pain and hope. His horses (fig. 7 and 8), formed by intensely evocative fragments of human trails, are galloping to tell stories of losers and anti-heroes. Horses – the heraldic symbol of Arezzo – belong to an iconography that inspired Aceves starting from the wanderings of the Quadriga of Saint Marc, the same that Francesco Petrarca reported in 1364 as transferred to the Republic of Venice. The work of the Mexican master transforms the Quadriga into a tale of wanderings, interpreted by solitary, restless horses, standing between the Spina and the Diacciaia bastions, and other galloping foals gathered in a herd between the second and first body of guard of the Fortress (fig. 9), giving rise to the noisiest and most lacerating silences ever felt for centuries. One of the most renown contemporary artists meets one of his Masters: this is the meaning of The rule of Piero – the great solo exhibition to be held in Arezzo from 15 June 2019 to 31 January 2020 and that will showcase Mimmo Paladino’s tribute to the great fifteenth-century painter Piero della Francesca. Paladino’s art is rooted in the great Italian figurative and philosophical tradition. This passion has often led him to rediscover the most diverse cultures, in search of a comparison with archetypes, iconic matrices and founding traditions which, from pre-Roman civilisations to the Renaissance, have studded the thinking of people around the Mediterranean. The Arezzo exhibition18 explores the relationship

16 Ibid., p. 13. 17 The exhibition was commissioned by the Guido d’Arezzo Foundation and the Council of Arezzo and curated by Luigi Maria Di Corato. 18 The exhibition was commissioned by the Guido d’Arezzo Foundation and the Council of Arezzo, and curated by Luigi Maria Di Corato.

between Paladino and a figure of the past who most influenced his training and with whom he maintained a constant dialogue throughout his artistic research: Piero della Francesca. Their relationship is summed up in the title of the exhibition, The Rule of Piero, confirming how the Sansepolcro fifteenth-century painter and mathematician was a decisive source of inspiration not only on an aesthetic level, but also on a methodological and theoretical level. A gracious homage that unravels throughout the city and never directly calls into question the master on a formal level, but is reflected in manifest shared values, such as the encounter between tradition and modernity, between rationality and emotion, between light, form and colour and between idealisation, abstraction, symbols and reality. Over 50 works by Paladino are displayed in a travelling itinerary at six different exhibition sites. The two central points of the exhibition – which puts painting centre-of-stage and presents three-dimensional works in their natural pictorial vocation – are the Galleria comunale d’Arte Contemporanea, once more presenting great masterpieces to the public, and the Medicean Fortress, a recent stage for art exhibitions. The Fortress will showcase a core of monumental works, selected for their ability to trigger an uncommonly dramatic tension with the rough nature of these spaces. The path begins once more with a piece from the 80s, Senza titolo – untitled, a bronze chariot from 1988 bearing 20 heads as precious trophies of an apotropaic procession leading into the fortification. Among the other monumental pictorial sculptures presented, the nine elements of Vento d’acque – wind of waters, also in bronze, was made in 2005 and already exhibited at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, and the gigantic Specchi ustori – burning mirrors, was made in 2017 specifically for the Brescia exhibition.

La Fortezza di Arezzo, nata sulle spoglie della cittadella medioevale per volere dei Medici ed affidata ad Antonio da Sangallo “il Vecchio” ed al fratello Giuliano nei primi anni del cinquecento ed ad Antonio da Sangallo “il Giovane” nel terzo decennio dello stesso secolo, attaccata ed in parte distrutta nell’ottobre del 1800 dalle truppe napoleoniche, fu alterata nelle quote e disposizioni interne negli anni sessanta del novecento per realizzarvi un grande serbatoio per l’acqua potabile. Abbandonata poi e quasi sottratta alla frequentazione dei cittadini di Arezzo e a quella dei visitatori è stata restaurata fra il 2007 ed il 2019. La prima fase delle attività che il libro illustra (2007-2011) si riferisce a studi, progetti ed interventi di restauro specialistici sulle cortine murarie perimetrali della fortezza. Le indagini, i rilievi, i criteri e le tecniche restaurative sono riportate ed illustrate in dettaglio. La seconda fase, avviata nel 2012 e conclusasi nel 2019 è stata quella del restauro degli spazi aperti interni della fortezza, degli ambienti posti all’interno dei bastioni, dei camminamenti. Un intervento finalizzato quindi alla restituzione alla collettività di uno straordinario monumento ma anche alla creazione di un nuovo polo culturale, sede di mostre d’arte, spettacoli, attività didattiche, spazi per la conoscenza e lo scambio culturale.

Maurizio De Vita è Professore Ordinario di Restauro e Direttore della Scuola di specializzazione in Beni architettonici e del Paesaggio nel Dipartimento di Architettura dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze. Fa parte del Comitato scientifico nazionale dell’Istituto Italiano dei Castelli e dell’ ICOMOS International Committee on Fortifications and Military Heritage ICOFORT. Ha insegnato presso la Columbia University di New York, la Syracuse University, la facoltà di Architettura IUAV di Venezia ed attualmente svolge corsi e seminari alla Beijin University of Civil Engineering and Architecture di Pechino ed alla South-East University di Nanchino. Co-titolare dello Studio De Vita & Schulze Architetti con sede a Firenze e a Pechino ha progettato e diretto numerosi interventi di restauro su edifici di interesse storico artistico, complessi monumentali, mura urbane, parchi e giardini storici in Italia ed all’estero fra cui gli interventi principali del restauro della fortezza di Arezzo.

ISBN 978-88-3338-115-5