I sistemi costruttivi nell’architettura medievale: John Ruskin e le coperture a volta

John Ruskin’s ability to depict the architecture he had studied in depth during several trips to Italy, drawing preserved buildings together with others falling into disuse, provide us with a wide and exhaustive series of construction details and architectural elements regarding part of the Italian medieval heritage, especially of Northern and Central Italy. This paper presents part of an ongoing research on vaulted systems used in religious buildings between Romanesque and Gothic, focusing in particular on the wide phase of experimentation linked to the introduction of cross vaults. Ruskin’s contribution to the theme of vaulted roofs, with a focus on the architectural solutions that he documented, has been analyzed through the review of his autograph texts preserved in the Ruskin Library of the Lancaster University and the comparison with some studies in the wide Ruskinian historiography, also in relationship with other Authors, such as Robert Willis