Selinunte, Sicily West
- Visions possible -
A Selinunte one walks among the ruins of temples and homes, including old beams and sand dunes. Remains of the city, the remains of monuments, fragments of columns. Carved stones are scattered in the grass, in the undulating plain, limited by the sea. Vision of the landscape imagery. Temple Temple A. .. C. .. names and drawings of a penalty unexciting that it does not hold the attention if not for some symbol. The vision and excitement, exploration, contemplation and sometimes the wait is the main activity of anyone in Selinunte or other similar places. Few, in fact, go to the archaeological sites to study in detail the characteristics, perhaps, for many, is more interesting to observe the scenery and architecture among themselves.
Through these notes and images that accompany them are going to propose the extraordinary work of an architect-archaeologist, and also great French designer, who in early 1900 study is scientifically and visionary, the archaeological site of Selinunte.
Jean Hulot was a French architect who lived in the late half of the 900 and 800. He worked in Selinunte from 1902 to 1908, with a scholarship to the Académie de France, aiming at a vast project of reading and decoding of the site based on surveys of historical, archaeological and architectural remains and the study of graphic representation, analytic and interpretations of the same. His work was published in France in 1909 in a large and valuable book entitled Sélinonte.
This was achieved in an era characterized by a strong historical spirit and a great deal of attention in the wake of classical architecture, through design of high precision and high quality communication and scientific perfectly fulfilled the expectations around the visionary perception and romantic narrative of the sites and ruins archaeological sites.
The season Grands Tours and Voyages in Italy and throughout the Mediterranean, focusing on research and scholarship about classical architecture was a constant 800. In 1823, two young students of the British Royal Academy of Arts in London, Samuel and William Angell Harris, arrived in Sicily with the intention of studying the site and begin an adventure Selinunte Excavation of finding, among the sand dunes that covered all the fragments of the metopes of the two temples now exhibited at the Archaeological Museum of Palermo. The campaign lasted a few months in fact, among various other adventures, had tragic results: Harris became ill with malaria and died, he was just 23 years, in Palermo.
In 1826, Angell published in London a paper on these excavations, and these findings, illustrated by drawings of the metopes reconstructed from fragments. Almost simultaneously Jacob Ignaz Hittorff, a Franco-German architect who lived between 700 and 800, enriched this season, historical and secular, in-depth studies, most learned sages and extraordinary architectural drawings, with the volume edition of Antique Architecture de la Sicile, published in 1827 and illustrated by dozens of extraordinary designs ever inclined to the picturesque (com ' was almost always until then). This work was celebrated throughout Europe for the extraordinary power of polychromy in these proposed designs for the classical architecture, as a result of many pioneering archaeological discoveries made by him, fueling a new vision of the Greek world until then had only theorized and opposed the austere and well-established vision mono-classicist.
the wake of this scholarly tradition, but also of the romantic fantasy still alive throughout the century, many archaeologists, architects and designers realized many other graphic rendering, architectural drawings and surveys at the sites of the world greek and Roman.
These architects were often of extraordinary artists: Jean Hulot, winner of the prestigious scholarship de l'Académie de France à Rome, was one of them.
His work on Selinunte, led by master Gustave Fougères, was published in 1909 for a wish of the French government in a valuable and large volume celebrating the title Sélinonte - La Ville, l'Acropole et les Temples.
This folio volumes, high quality printing and binding part contains a text particularly analytical, descriptive of the state of research at the time and also contains great images out of the text printed in aquatint, representing state-of-excavations selinuntini at the time of inspections (ie the first years of '900), along with the visionary, charming and highly detailed reconstructions of architectural and landscape of the city itself from various points of view.
The work of French architect Jean Hulot, in its "traditional" manner and form, it appears, shines and remains unsurpassed evocative potential.
These reconstructions, offering historical and scientific analysis to faithfully deductions "certain"? Of course not, but, offer a measured and thoughtful about the "possible" architecture, urban, life, activities, and the endless details of a day in the life of Selinunte.
houses, decorations, people, ships, port, flooring, hand signals, equipment and thousands of details ... .. All in describing and interpreting these tables - communicating - the daily routine and "normality" of the city of Selinunte and the lives of its population. It is suggested that a realistic and sustainable vision of the status of the site and the landscape, the coordinates of which we seek when we visit and we wander around the site.
Hulot tells us about his vision through a number of Selinunte large format drawings: fine engravings have an imaginary ideal certainly equally plausible and realistic (almost photographic) lived in the abstraction of the local artist. Similarly a photograph with his objectivity, Hulot designs are so realistic perspective and graphics to make the ambiguous perception of a possible reality over time.
an illusory and film, forcing the term virtual reality before its time. All, in fact, happened to watch a historical film of subject Roman, Egyptian or Biblical, those made in the 50s and almost historicized themselves, Hollywood or the Italians, who for some reason we are not rational in a context even empathize clearly papier-mache. Similarly, and perhaps more, Hulot's drawings are so realistic in their outlook, their orthogonality, their hyper-detail to make this dubious perception of a possible reality over time, and indeed the times, and two different : those of life and those shown in the representation of representation itself as a work of art, now historicized itself.
illusion and mirage, then? of course, but about something reasonably contextual.
These graphics support and help the observer's imagination and create excitement to the city of Selinunte and its history.
The reality: beyond the historical and scientific - archeology - is that paid to his eye, independent of each eye and a visionary individual more or less developed in every person. The sense of realism that can give these designs depends not only on general quality of clear, but also by the almost invisible - and yet perceptible - the quality and amount of detail contained in the tables at almost microscopic. This level of perception acts on ways to provide added value that determines the awe of these works so like the taste or aroma of a wine stay gives added value to the wine itself, and so is the music of an orchestra played in a concert hall has a dynamic range much greater than that which is emitted from a speaker, succeeding to be not only heard but also felt that the body is enveloped in the sound pressure.
The surplus in the vision of these is that element that led to their recovery and their presentation together with the additional presentation of more pictures of this historical period and dedicated to this site and its context.
© Pier Paolo Raffa, 2009
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