Pelagio Palagi’s Floating Castles: ‘Risorgimental Neo-Medievalism’, Architectural Ephemera, and Politics at the Court of Savoy

Abstract

In 1842, the court artist Pelagio Palagi (1775–1860) devised four temporary floating castles on the river Po for the remarkable urban celebrations for the nuptials of His Royal Highness Victor Emmanuel of Savoy-Carignan (1820–1878) to Her Imperial and Royal Highness Maria Adelaide of Habsburg (1822–1855) in Turin. The structures formed the central pieces of a broad medievalist programme that, during the reign of Charles Albert of Savoy-Carignan (1831–1849), brought the Middle Ages back to life in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. Challenging the classicised image of the Sabaudian monarchy, this article insists that neo-medieval architecture and the architectural style that I call ‘Risorgimental neo-medievalism’ mirrored a calibrated medievalist and royalist strategy against the background of Italy’s ‘resurgence’. Countering recurrent biases that read Italian revivalist architecture as an exercise in taste, it discusses Palagi’s designs as the tools of a political reworking of the Middle Ages, in open dialogue with the disciplines of architectural history and medievalism studies. By reading the urban festivities staged in the capital as a strategically orchestrated political act, this article assesses the medievalist initiatives, culminating in the spectacle on the river Po, as propagandistic vehicles to convey meaning to a vast public, which underscore the role of medievalist rhetoric in challenging the dominant classicist iconography and forging the ‘identity’ of the modern Sabaudian nation.

Keywords

• neo-medievalism
• architectural ephemera
• savoy
• risorgimento
• politics
• italy