Reconstructing the Illusion: VH on Bernini's Solid-Perspective for Felipe IV

Introduction

At the beginning of 2012, Delfin Rodriguez Ruiz, Professor of Art History at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid and passionate scholar of Baroque art, agreed with El Museo Nacional del Prado to organize an exhibition aimed at reconstructing and exhibiting the relationships the Roman artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini had had with the Royal Court of Spain in the political and cultural environment of the 17th century. The exhibition entitled Las Animas de Bernini: Arte en Roma para la corte espanola, which was arranged in four rooms of the museum from 6 November 2014 to 8 February 2015, presented documents and works by Bernini and other artists of his age.¹

In anticipation of the exhibition, Rodriguez Ruiz involved some scholars to investigate the role of Bernini as an artist for the Spanish crown and to analyze some of the works to be exhibited. These studies converged into a book entitled Bernini: Roma y la Monarquia Hispanica, which has been published at the end of 2014.

As a part of these studies, the author was involved by Prof. Marcello Fagiolo in the enquiry of a little-known architectural project made by Bernini as a monument dedicated to Felipe IV of Spain to be built in Rome. The research work was conducted with the scientific criteria aligned with the recent guidelines of Digital Heritage (DH) and Virtual Heritage (VH). An initial stage of reading, analysis, and interpretation of the documents was followed by both the three-dimensional digital reconstruction of the structure, which has helped to highlight a number of geometric and constructive aspects that were imperceptible in the designs, and the editing of proper visual and multimedia products designed to complement the historical document during the exhibition and to promote a full understanding of its theatrical and illusionistic values.

This chapter is organized in parts that methodologically and critically cover the phases of the entire process of study, knowledge, reconstruction, modeling, animation, exposition and dissemination of the results of this research. In particular, the first section expresses a concise historical framework of the context in which the monument was designed, the role Bernini had in the process and its historiographical misfortune. The second section describes the sources the author has been taking into account to understand and reconstruct the sacellum designed by Bernini and its planned location in the portico of the Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome. The third section describes the operations specifically related to the DH phase, ranging from the digital copy of the design sheets to their critical re-drawing. The fourth section describes the operations specifically related to the VH phase, ranging from the construction of the two-dimensional model of the project to the rendering and animation after the three-dimensional reconstruction model. The fifth section describes the operations of disclosure and presentation of the results, with particular attention to the specificities of the involved media and target. The sixth section is dedicated to a final consideration on the whole operation about the agency of digital models in DH and VH practices.