Intorno a Guarini. Studi sull’architettura del Seicento nel quarto centenario della nascita dell’architetto modenese a cura di T. Manfredi e S. Piazza
Among the leading figures in 17th-century European architecture, Guarino Guarini (1624-1683) was an architect with a highly itinerant life. Modenese by birth and Roman by training, as a Theatine novice, Guarini, over the course of his 30-year career, before and after his final move to Turin, lived for several years in Messina and Paris, stayed for short periods in Parma, Guastalla, Vicenza and Milan, where he died in 1683; he certainly visited Bologna, Naples and presumably Palermo, Syracuse, Piacenza, Venice, and Lyon, to mention only the most important centers, pending evidence of other stays abroad, foremost among them in Lisbon. This biographical feature combines with a personality endowed with exceptional vitality, curiosity and autonomy, giving shape to one of the most multifaceted and, in some respects, enigmatic personalities of the century, who, even today, solicits historiographical insights and critical reconsiderations, especially in relation to the origin of his most original inventions.