Architetture di sacrificio: le alterne fortune del pavimento cosmatesco nella SS. Annunziate dell'arciconfraternita degli Ottimati a Reggio Calabria (1908-1934)

The traumatic experience of the world conflict characterizes, with the birth of the so-called ‘restauro critico’, an important stage in the evolution of the theroretical thought on the architectonic restoration. Meaningfully, however, while interventions on damaged monuments, follow criteria that derogate from the principles of the so-called ‘restauro filologico’ and they mark, for many aspects, a regression of the matter, is in relation to restoration of paintings that we can record a significant disciplinary advancement. In 1946 Cesare Brandi experiences the technique of integration with ‘tratteggio’ in occasion of the restorations of frescoes dedicates to the Vergine Maria into the Cappella Mazzatosta head in the Church of S. Maria della Verità in Viterbo. The theoretical foundation of this new technique, that will be an important aspect of Brandi’s theory on restoration, is in the requirement to give back the frescoes a unit that the new fragment condition (even if recomposed) does not concur to pick up and the usual procedures to neutral character, invocate from philological theory, do not concur to re-establish. This new technique is also useful to reorganize that dialogue, that he considers as interrupted, between painting (the fragments of frescoes) and architecture (the integral chapel). With the help of existing documentation, this essay inquires the theoretical foundations from which the intervention moves. The restoration, in fact, places like interesting prelude to Brandi’s Theory and to the definition of ‘critical’ guide lines.