Bassano del Grappa celebrates the restoration of the Palladio-designed bridge with an exhibition

The Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa present from May 23 to September 26, 2021 the exhibition Palladio, Bassano and the Bridge. Invention, History, Myth, curated by Guido Beltramini, Barbara Guidi, Fabrizio Magani and Vincenzo Tiné.

Promoted by the Municipal Administration of Bassano del Grappa on the occasion of the conclusion of the long restoration of the Ponte Vecchio also known as the Ponte degli Alpini, the exhibition intends to retrace the history of this monument that has become a symbol of the city and is the first in a rich series of events aimed at celebrating its return.

The myth of the bridge will be recounted, but at the same time it will talk about a concrete bridge, the bridge of Bassano, designed by Palladio, destroyed and rebuilt several times in an epic that from the eighteenth century of Ferracina comes to the present of the Ponte degli Alpini.

The exhibition’s narrative will begin with original drawings by Palladio, sixteenth-century books, ancient maps, eighteenth-century paintings, late nineteenth-century photographs, and contemporary study models.

Unlike most 16th-century architects, Palladio is an architect of bridges: bridges of stone, wood, and paper. The latter will have a strong 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 was made possible thanks to a synergy between the Museo Civico di Bassano, the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the provinces of Verona, Rovigo and Vicenza, and the Centro Studi Internazionali di Architettura Andrea Palladio-Palladio Museum in Vicenza. A scholarly volume, capable of providing the tools for reading the history of the Bassano bridge and its centuries of history, will accompany the exhibition itinerary. Divided into three sections, the volume will first contextualize from a historical point of view the 16th-century construction phase of the bridge within the economy, politics and Bassano society of the time. The second section, with a Palladian theme, will account for new developments in research on Palladio and stone and wooden bridges, paying particular attention to the bridge in the city of Bassano and the one in Cismon del Grappa. A third section will cover the “material life” and transformations of the bridge over a chronological span from its construction to its recent restoration, as well as the power of its myth in the figurative arts.

For more info: www.museibassano.it

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

Bassano del Grappa celebrates the restoration of the Palladio-designed bridge with an exhibition

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