Carlo Scarpa: a [curious] shaft of light, a golden standard, the hands and a face of a woman: reflections on the design process and layout of Palazzo Abatellis 1953-1954

Abstract

This study describes the spatial organization of the entire Gallery Regional Palace of Abatellis as a place of complex mediation between the commitment of the Carlo Scarpa project, the sense of measure and harmony and the requests of the curator Giorgio Vigni. The book tries to understand the link between the place and the design process of Scarpa, discarding the chronology of the intervention itself with reflections concerning the design process of the exhibition, they reveal a possible code message. It is a targeted reconnaissance, whose narrative is also recomposed by thanks to some clues (found during the study of the correspondence and drawings, not always known and published), which should be read like a novel, from beginning to end, resisting the temptation to jump to the last chapter to see what happens. The author recounts spatial contexts that, like parallel stories apparently separated until the end, come together again, and reveals a possible truth aboutm the Sibiu Crucifixion by Antonello, present exhibition of Messina in 1953, which, along the itinerary of Palazzo Abatellis, you find the hypothetical “container”, the golden Gonfalon displayed beyond the Crosses Room. Foreword by Richard Murphy; Afterword by Giampiero Bosoni