La scuola torinese di Paolo Verzone e l'architettura bizantina in Asia Minore nei fondi fotografici del Politecnico di Torino

Politecnico di Torino’s archives document over half a century of research and teaching activities by Paolo Verzone and his collaborators and students, between Italy and the territories of Asia Minor. The contribution deals with an examination of the archive and its organization and, through the re-reading of Verzone’s main writings, focuses on the construction of the iconographic support and the relationship between what has been published and the rich photographic documentation preserved. Engineer by training, Paolo Verzone (Vercelli 1902-Turin 1986) is a historian of ancient, medieval and Byzantine architecture, full professor since 1942 of Stylistic and constructive characters of monuments, director of the Institute of History of Architecture and from 1978 to 1986, professor emeritus at the Politecnico di Torino. Between 1951 and 1953 he was also in charge of the chair of History of architecture at the Teknik Üniversitesi in Istanbul and in 1957 he obtained from the Turkish government the concession for the excavation in the area of ancient Hierapolis, today Pamukkale, where he started the Italian Archaeological Mission of Hierapolis in Phrygia which he directed as head of mission until 1978. A long research and teaching activity that originated, at the Politecnico di Torino, a complex archive now inserted in the broader context of the historical collections of the University which count, only for the architecture documents, including the materials of which he wrote, 40 archival collections, part of academic training, part acquired by professionals and technical studies in Turin and Piedmont between the second half of the nineteenth century and the early 2000s. The collection of documents concerning Byzantium and Byzantine architecture is particularly rich; among this documentary material, photographs occupy an important position, also in consideration of Verzone’s particular familiarity with the photographic medium. As he sketches and notes with extraordinary skill, he photographs to the same extent, considering the shot as a document in all respects. This natural predisposition is associated with a particular attention to the material data, to the structural logic and to the knowledge of the urban context, all elements that make Paolo Verzone’s photographs a specific document, very far from the artistic shot, even if some shots are of the highest value regarding the urban landscape representation. There are also, in Verzone’s collection, photographs purchased by specialized firms – systematically used for example for the exarchal area – and the comparison between authorial shots and commercial shots opens up a no less interesting field of analysis. The shots of Verzone and pupils are often used as a complement to scientific publications dedicated to Byzantine architecture in the micro-Asiatic area (much less in the exarchal area), so that they also accompany the development of Verzone’s critical thought as well as the formation of a group of scholars, then often in turn as teachers at the Politecnico di Torino. These, through the extraordinary gymnasium represented by the archaeological mission of Hierapolis, in continuing his studies on early Christian, Byzantine and Romanesque Architecture, give life to a real school, in which, upon the application of the master’s approach methodology, a very marked propensity for photography as an essential means of study is associated with.