Deconstructing a quadratura’s imaginary space

Abstract

Focusing the architectural qualities inherent to Quadratura painting, this essay embraces the acknowledgment of its perspectival strategies, ambitioned space/form and achieved synthesis between represented and built space. To accomplish such an inquiry, was taken under consideration the imaginary architectures outlined by Luís Gonçalves Sena (1754), at the Church of Santarém’s Jesuit College. Verifying the structural, compositional, ornamental, and spatial qualities, underneath the outlined image, two methods to its deconstruction are explored: the perspective restitution, dismantling the quadratura through a reverse application of perspective procedures and removing parameters strictly related to the Ars Pingendi; and the rehabilitation of the architectural idea, exploring compositional logics of the illusory space confronting it with the wider practice of the Scientia Aedificandi. Methodologies that allows to fully analyze the Quadratura’s architectural contents as well as the relation among image and tectonic of the resulting global baroque space.