Stenio Solinas
The
John Soane's house-museum while are coming out the draws of the Renaissance
architecture he collects. London.
In
front of you there is the Apollo of Belvedere, a two metres perfect mould
of the original bronze. If you look at it in the middle of its legs, not for
knowingness but to see what is hidden behind it, it will appear to you a view
of a without equal Canaletto. 
Downward here it is the alabaster
sarcophagus of the pharaoh Seti I. A bizarre figure of 
Italian discovered it, Giovanni
Belzoni, Barnum of Egyptology according to the definition of Mario Praz.
An extempore archaeologist, he recovered it from the Kings valley. It arrived
in Europe in 1821 and here, where still it is, in 1825. Behind you, finally
there's the bust of the master of the house. Sir Francis Chantrey, sculpted
it for him, along many sittings endured for two years. Sir John Soane, main
architect of the pre-Victorian England, the conceiver and artificer of the
most unbelievable house- museum ever seen, more than a Londoner of his ages
seemed an ancient roman. On the land of his country estate, at Pitshanger,
he arranged some roman ruins remnants to enjoy visitors; the circular form
of the Vesta temple at Tivoli, a cork model of which worked by Giovanni Alfieri
he kept, remained for him an element of inspiration; the classic world as
a source of pleasures and teachings. John Soane, the museum bearing his name,
the eccentricity and the variety of his collections and his architectonic
concepts are getting back to the fore in these days at the light of the two
volumes publication of the more than 700 pages of the Italian Renaissance
Drawings (Azimuth Editions-Sir John Soane's Museum, 180 pounds), a first catalogue 
raisonné of the more than 30 thousands draws , from
the XVI century to the XIX century, he collected during his life: from the
Coner code, where Bernardo della Volpaia reproduced the buildings of ancient
times up to the Vasari Album, Zucchi, Adam, Piranesi. The last one, in the
house of Lincoln's Inn Fields, Soane transformed into a public 
monument and a private one
for himself and his view of architecture as the queen of the fine arts, has
a place of honour. The young student of the Royal Academy, who arrived at
Rome in 1778 with a three years scholarship to complete his Grand Tour, knew
the visionary roman artist just during his last year of life. Piranesi made
a present of four roman incisions of his to the twenty-five years old small-towner:
they are exposed in the Breakfast Parlour of Lincoln' Inns. Later Soane acquired
the series of the fifteen India ink traced temperas Piranesi dedicated to
Paestum, where temples, arches and columns stand out among cows at grass,
stray dogs , cowherds, in the grey of a nature almost made shy by what has
been built there, by the magnificence dream it had been nursed.To give them
a proper homage, Soane elaborated a Picture Room with huge swinging shelves.
Who enters, finds himself into a only four by four room, but the walls are
practically arranged in layers, thanks to some panels covering them along
the whole length and width .
As in a Chinese boxes toy, any panel, opening,
shows its contents and prepares the visitor to what is hidden behind. So Piranesi,
is with Hogart, with the series of the Electoral Campaign, acquired by 
Soane
in one of the auction of Mrs.Garrick, the widow of the great Britain actor,
and with the sensational Career of the libertine, where the England of the
novels of Fielding and Defoe revives through the rise and fall of Tom Rakewell
(Thomas the scapegrace) who squandered the father's property in orgies, gambling
houses and horse races. And moreover: pictures of Turner, the Raffaello school
cartoons of the 'Presentation in the temple ', the views of Clerisseau...
Up and down along 400 square metres, vertically arranged, Soane gutted, modelled
again, combined in a visionary sequence of wings and hiding places, crypts
and corridors, stairs and passages, three thousand Greek and roman bronzes,
Egyptian jewels, Chinese ceramics, mediaeval terracotta compete among themselves...
To a public life plenty of acknowledgements and satisfactions (the Bank of
England, planned and built by him is till deemed a masterpiece nowadays),
acted as a counterpoise a painful private life. A son of his went to jail
for debts, revolted against him and made his mother die of broken heart. Getting
older, Soane begun to have serious troubles with sight. Successfully operated
on a cataract, he wrote the surgeon: You have been so clever that, after Napoleon,
I deem you the greatest hero of modern ages . He had his own sense of humour.
Ten days before dying, on January 20th 1837, he placed a winged bronze Victory
in front of a watercolour picture representing the funeral mausoleum of his
wife. He felt he was leaving, but he knew he would leave a winning sign. After150
years and more since his death, it's present more than ever.
Mensile di scienza medica e attualita`