Berardo Galiani
Berardo Galiani[1] (19 December 1724 – 11 March 1774) was an Italian architectural theorist, author of treatises on architecture and Vitruvian exegete.
Contents
Biography
Born in Teramo, the son of Matteo and Anna Maria Ciaburri, he was the older brother of Ferdinando, known as Abbot Galiani.[2] After graduating in civil and canon law (in utroque iure) and taking minor orders in 1737, Galiani embarked on a judicial career. Soon he gave another turn to his life: he married Agnese Mercadante in 1749 (belonging to a noble family of Sessa Aurunca) and devoted himself to the study of architecture.
His translation based on ancient texts of Vitruvius' De architectura had a great success,[3] so that the book had several other editions.[4] The success of this work earned him the appointment as a member of the Accademia Ercolanese (1758) and the Accademia della Crusca (1759), adding to the appointments already achieved in previous years at the Accademia degli Emuli (1750) and the Accademia di San Luca (1755).
During his life, he alternated the activity of archaeologist with that of writer and scholar of architecture. He accompanied Johann Joachim Winckelmann in the archaeological excavations of the Herculaneum, in particular in the Roman theater that still lies buried under a thick blanket of eruptive debris. In the following years he was also the protagonist of a bitter literary controversy with Winckelmann himself, who accused the Ercolano authorities of conducting the archaeological enterprise with unscientific methods and techniques, but that ended with an unexpected reconciliation.
The exact architectural structure of the Roman theater was a topic of particular concern in the eighteenth century, due to the precarious state of preservation of the few known examples, as well as the substantial obscurity of the only available literary source, namely the De architectura itself. In this cultural context, the need to restore the ceiling of the Olympic Theatre in Vicenza triggered a heated philological dispute about the real morphology of the classical model of reference (and its Palladian counterpart), in which Galiani himself was involved.[5] Called to express himself on this controversy together with other scholars, in 1764 Berardo elaborated a very articulate opinion, based not only on his Vitruvian studies, but also on his direct knowledge of the Herculaneum Theater.
In 1770, towards the end of his life, he was appointed by Minister Tanucci Superintendent of the Royal House of Massa and of the recently established Royal Nautical Boarding School of Cocumella: a lower school for the training of sailors created in Sant'Agnello,[6] near Sorrento, at the behest of Ferdinand IV.
Family
From his marriage with Agnese Mercadante, he had three daughters:
- 1751: Anna Maria, who married on August 10, 1774 the Marquis Marcello Maria Natali Sifola.
- 1753: Maria Gaetana, who married in first marriage the Marquis Andrea di Sarno, patrician of Benevento and in second marriage Giulio Venuti.
- Rosa who was the marquise of Sassinoro.
The Vitruvian edition
The valuable edition of Vitruvius' De architectura, published in 1758, is considered the best of the entire eighteenth century, especially for the presence of a vast apparatus of footnotes that summarize and develop all the philological research of previous centuries.
The Latin text itself is the result of a careful collation of various ancient specimens, in particular of two Latin codices kept in the Vatican Library which were pointed out to him by Giovanni Gaetano Bottari.
In addition to taking care of the Italian translation (the fifth), Galiani personally drew the 25 plates ("branches"[7]) of excellent workmanship, collected at the end of the volume, which translate into images the thorough and rigorous philological research conducted on the Vitruvian text, which in turn came completely devoid of the original iconographic apparatus.
The library
In order to complete his numerous editorial projects (all unpublished, with the exception of the Vitruvian edition of 1758) Galiani had gathered an extraordinary collection of treatises and other texts on architecture, consisting of over a thousand volumes, hoarding them from all over Europe, also thanks to the intermediation of his brother Ferdinando, who for many years was the diplomatic representative of the Kingdom of Naples in Paris.
After his death, this precious book collection was purchased by Empress Catherine II of Russia and transferred to the Hermitage Museum, where it joined those of Diderot and Voltaire. On this occasion, Ferdinando himself had two sales catalogs printed (one on architectural texts, the other on works on different subjects), whose recent discovery has allowed us to reconstruct almost completely the size of this conspicuous library, celebrated since the 18th century.[8]
Works
- Amusement des filles ed des jeunes gens (1747; published under the name Dr. Galario Bedrani, an anagram of his name)
- Della perfetta conservazione del grano (1754)
- De architectura (1758; 5th Italian translation of Vitruvius' work with Latin text)
- Componimenti in morte del marchese Niccolò Fraggianni (1763)
- Del bello (1765)
Notes
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External links
- Galiani, Berardo
- Works by Berardo Galiani at Gallica
- Berardo Galiani e le inedite "Riflessioni critiche sopra l'Essai sur l'Architetcure" di Marc-Antoine Laugier
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- ↑ Called the Marquis Galiani. In some texts he is erroneously referred to as "Bernardo".
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- ↑ In Naples and Siena in 1790, Milan in 1823, 1832 and 1844 and Venice in 1854.
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- ↑ The frontispiece and the title page were engraved by Francesco La Marra, while the 25 plates are the work of Francesco Cepparuli. The vignettes, finally, are partly signed by Ignazio Lucchesini, but they must be attributed, obviously, to the programmatic and ideational ambit of Galiani himself.
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