Il lessico di John Ruskin per il restauro d’architettura: termini, significati e concetti

The contribution aims at investigating John Ruskin’s lexicon in the writings regarding the field of architectural restoration, enclosed in the texts elaborated upon returning from the trips to Italy in the 1840s, which give a decisive impulse to the considerations on the subject of the ‘permanence’ of material testimonies of architecture. In this frame, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) are taken as reference with the aim of identifying the lemmas chosen for the considerations related to “restoration”, together with other writings which contain references to the same theme and some drawings, in which there are remarks and annotations that provide further documents to be studied. From this picture it emerges how, if some words more closely related to operation appear either rarely or not at all – conservation, restoration or repair –, they are words related to themicroscopic and analytical investigation – fissures, dashes – to form those judgment criteria of the restorative action – injury, deprive –, which shift the attention towards the diversified attitudes aimed at the existing buildings – care, destruction – The analysis provides an essential key to the interpretation of John Ruskin’s peculiar method of elaboration: actually, the correspondences between specific elements, from time to time differently put in connection, constitute the network of relationships that will contribute to define key concepts – character, time – for the subsequent development of thought regarding restoration, which in the mid-nineteenth century began to see the theoretical reflection comparing with operation, in significant tasks both in the Italian and in the European scene.