2.1 THE PIONEERS
One of the first conservators to stand out was the Italian architect Leon Battista Alberti in the 15th century. Built on the site of a small church of Dominican monks (13th-14th c.), the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, had an unfinished
façade until a wealthy Florentine merchant, Giovanni Rucellai, provided funding for the work and commissioned his favourite architect. Leon Battista Alberti was thus put in charge of completing this delicate unfinished structure, strictly respecting
the geometric proportions and producing an elegant and harmonious composition of serpentine and Carrara marble. This academic feat attached value to pre-existing elements, made full use of the existing geometry and was guided by the composition of
the finishes. Alberti “simply” completed the façade with a classical order based on proportion. In order to provide unity to the whole and add harmony “the façade was completed with a basic order based on proportion. He used stone intarsias in order
to unify the whole, creating harmony between the original Gothic elements and the new ones while paying homage to the Tuscan constructive tradition”.
In the 16th century, another pioneer, Andrea Palladio, was the official architect for the works of the Republic of Venice, working mostly in the city of Vicenza and its surroundings, including the Basilica. At the time this work was considered a full-scale restoration, with a two-storey Loggia surrounding the former Palazzo della Ragione of Vicenza like a new structural enclosure. This two-floor composition benefited greatly from the use of Venetian windows, which join a central arch with two horizontal elements in the form of architraves on either side (also know as the Palladio motif). The façade columns supporting the individual arches are doubled towards the interior, transforming the arch into a thin barrel vault which created a fantastically renewed urban setting, a new shell for the medieval buildings which was completely in keeping with the Piazza dei Signori and the Renaissance city. The excellence of this architectural solution from the perspective of heritage management lies in the technique how Palladio designed the facade's openings following and respecting the existing floor plan of the original palace. Although this would have resulted in uneven horizontal dimensions for the windows and as a result either different heights for the arches or parabolic arches of the same height could have appeared. Despite of this threat the facade looks harmonic and symmetric as the central great windows of the Palladio motif were conceived with equal dimensions throughout the whole facade, while the differeces in width are symmetrically handled as part of the architraves on the sides of these great arched openings.
Another precursor of the discipline was Francesco Borromini in the 17th century. When working on the project for the Oratorio dei Filippini in Roma, Borromini employed constructive and typological languages which differed greatly from the simple sober lines of the original convent. The collective spaces for classrooms were used for the interpretation of dramatic and musical oratory. The spaces for private residence were humble and welcoming, organized around interior courtyards designed to function as small ideal cities. This was all finished off with one of the first Baroque façades, respecting the volumes and planes of the original church while also setting itself apart from it with a sober counterpoint of the concave and convex forms. This humble solution shows a great respect for the predecessor neighboring building, offering a useful example for any later developments in the neighbourhood of monuments and any facades of heritage importance.
In the 18th century following the frantic activity of the excavations on the Palatine in Rome (1729), in Villa Adriana in Tivoli (from 1734), and the Roman cities of Paestum (1746), Pompeii (1748) and Herculaneum (1750), the concept of local antiquities and the search for national identity was reinforced. There was therefore a gradual definition of guidelines and actions favouring archaeological conservation, and it is worth noting the particular role of two Roman architects, Rafael Stern and Giuseppe Valadier, in the first half of the 19th century.
An analysis of the case of the Roman Colosseum highlights two interventions which resolve a major structural issue, preventing the collapse of several wings of the Colosseum following years of abandonment, looting and earthquakes:
In the solution by Rafael Stern (1807) the arches on the wing towards the Lateran were consolidated using a simple abstract buttress. This intervention made it possible to maintain the authenticity of the Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre) by creating a formal and material contrast between the new and existing projects while also halting the degradation, bricking off the parts in poor condition, and adding simpler textures and details in new finishes. In addition, the second intervention, carried out by the architect Giuseppe Valadier (1826) in another weak section of the construction, resolved the structural issue by re-establishing some abstract arches to create continuity between the new and existing projects. These two actions by Stern and Valadier employed a new pragmatic approach: establishing a distinction between the additions and the original parts to create a dialogue, while also incorporating recognizable simplification and contrast, developments considered essential from the 20th century on.