Palazzo de'Rossi. Una storia pistoiese

20. Soluzione delle due porte in angolo nel ripiano superiore dello
scalone, prima dell’ultimo re stauro.
22. Veduta assiale della volta sopra lo scalone, con stucchi e medaglione centrale un tempo affresca to. Stato antecedente
all’ultimo restauro. Progetto di Raffaello Ulivi, 1748-1756; decorazioni di Tommaso Cremona, 1755-1760.
21. Aspetto del ripiano superiore dello scalone, con
particolari architettonici e decorativi, prima dell’ultimo
restauro.
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the stone moldings. The quadrangular ones on the upper floors repeat, although with diminishing
projection, the pediment with an upside-down central conch flanked by two short inverted volutes
in a graceful and simplified late-baroque style. In keeping with what the artistic and monumental
panorama of the early 18th century could offer even in Pistoia, as a distant echo of the architectural
glories of Rome, Florence or Northern Italy. I’m thinking of the polychrome marble crowning of
the altar carved between 1700 and 1705 by the sculptor Andrea Vaccà for the chapel of Sant’Agata
in the Palazzo Comunale (fig. 27), 70 or the stucco ornaments executed in 1709 by the Sienese Giovan
Domenico Rusconi for the oratory of the Madonna dell’Umiltà aka of San Giuseppe in the church
of Sant’Andrea as part of the renovation planned for it in 1734 by Raffaello Ulivi (fig. 26). 71
I’m also thinking of the ideas, more remote in time and space, that well-known baroque
buildings could offer, even through the medium of architectural manuals and treatises: such
as the model of the quadrangular window, with a pediment with an inverted conch, installed
on the third level of the west façade of Palazzo Barberini in Rome between 1629 and 1632; 72
and of the architecture painted, in extreme perspective, by Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709); 73 but
also of the innumerable testimonies to the popularity of this motif provided by decorators
and stuccoists up until the middle of the 18th century.
Raffaello Ulivi’s inventiveness was put to its greatest test in the design of the molding that,
running around the top of the third floor of Palazzo de’ Rossi, ennobled the building with its
“grandeur,” interspersing the sequence of pairs of classical brackets “in the Roman style” with
female protomes, inverted conches and festoons alternating with smooth rectangles (figs. 28-33).
However, while the ornamental repertoire executed by skilled workers from Lugano 74 to Raffaello
Ulivi’s design could by this time add little that was new in the field of late-baroque architectural
decoration, apart from the clarity of their relations and proportions, the architect should instead
be given the credit for a wholly personal articulation of the various parts of the building and
their mutual connections with the lucid and rational capacity of a structuralist, and above all for
having identified the best routes for internal circulation, in relation to their purpose.
23. Veduta della sistemazione, effettuata nel dicembre
1802, della statua di Mercurio sul pianerotto lo dello
scalone, fra il primo e il secondo piano del palazzo. Dopo
l’ultimo restauro.
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