An exhibition in Bassano del Grappa celebrates the end of the restoration of Palladio's Bridge

Until October 10, the Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa are offering the exhibition Palladio, Bassano and the Bridge. Invention, History, Myth, an exhibition curated by Guido Beltramini, Barbara Guidi, Fabrizio Magani and Vincenzo Tiné, sponsored by theCity Council to celebrate the conclusion of the long restoration of the Ponte degli Alpini, also known as the Ponte Vecchio.

The Bassano bridge in its present form was designed by Andrea Palladio (Andrea di Pietro della Gondola; Padua, 1508 - Maser, 1580), between 1567 and 1569. Unlike most 16th-century architects, Palladio was an architect of bridges: bridges of stone, of wood, and of paper. The latter are undoubtedly the ones that will have the most pronounced impact on the figurative culture of the following centuries: published in the pages of the Quattro Libri, the treatise published in Venice in 1570, they will become the protagonists of the dreams of eighteenth-century artists. Algarotti would ask Canaletto to show him the Rialto bridge as Palladio had envisioned it, but Bellotto, Carlevarijs and Piranesi would also make bridges one of the privileged subjects of their views.

The exhibition tells the myth of the bridge, but at the same time it speaks of a bridge that has been concrete and real for 500 years, the Bassano bridge, designed by Palladio, destroyed and rebuilt several times in an epic that from the eighteenth century of Ferracina reaches the present of the Ponte degli Alpini. The exhibition’s narrative unfolds from Palladio’s original drawings, 16th-century books, ancient maps, 18th-century paintings, late 19th-century photographs, and contemporary study models.

For all information you can visit the official website of the Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa.

Pictured: Antonio Canaletto, Capriccio con edifici palladiani (c. 1750; oil on canvas, 58 x 82 cm; Parma, Complesso monumentale della Pilotta)

An exhibition in Bassano del Grappa celebrates the end of the restoration of Palladio's Bridge

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