«Immensa, misteriosa, leggera, fantastica, degna del Dio vivente» Luigi Cibrario e la rinascita risorgimentale dell’architettura medievale.

In Dialogo tra un Pedante ed il Medio Evo (Dialog between a Pedant and the Middle Ages) the novella in the form of a dialogue published in the Novelle (1836) by Luigi Cibrario (1802-1870), the «Middle Ages» make a remark to the sceptical «Modern Pedant», their «enemy»: «I do not boast of statues and colosseums, but of an architecture that is immense, mysterious, light, terrific, worthy of the living God». 2021 marks the bicentenary of Cibrario’s graduation in Literature. A “friend” of Carlo Alberto, the statesman-historian climbed to the upper levels of the Turin society and was nominated Secretary of the Deputazione di Storia Patria (1833) and Senator (1848). An expert in economics and Savoy and Medieval history, he was more of a «lord» of the Middle Ages than a «master of the past». His works explore and disentangle «Savoy Medievalism» – of which Cibrario was the «grand puppeteer» – and broader Subalpine and Italian medievalisms. At the same time, they tackle the negative readings of pre-union Medieval revivalism as a superficial matter of taste of the Romantic Era (a «foreign [and «accidental»] remnant») and unveil the relationship between the rediscovery of the Middle Ages, the Risorgimento, and the rebirth of Medieval architecture. Cibrario was neither an architect nor an architectural historian/theorist. Yet his works – which, among many other things, embrace architectural history – are an instrument (external to academia and architectural practice) to challenge the historiographical idea that the relationship between style and culture was «never sustained» in the preunion context, and to outline the rebirth of Medieval architecture in the Risorgimento and explore its popularisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]