The Zisa. Representations of a Highly Desired Monument

Abstract

The essay analyses iconographic material depicting the Zisa from the early 1800s up to the surveys propaedeutic to its restoration, from the perspective views of engravings and lithographs depicting its urban surroundings, to the ideal reconstructions of diverse restoration proposals and stylistic reworkings. The application of geometric rules uncovers analogies and differences in these diverse representations, proving they are little more than “virtual reconstructions”, in other words, images of a building that may never have had any of the configurations used to represent it over the years. The different readings of the building, from the nineteenth century to its recovery by Caronia, tend in fact to repropose an ideal original matrix suitable to the cultural context in which they were produced, holding true to the idea of a work of architecture that was more desired than it was real.