The Casanatense library possesses a large number of works by architect Luigi Canina, distributed in various locations depending on the type of publication. Many of them have been digitised and are available for online consultation, all have been catalogued in SBN and can be found in our Opac.
Wanting to make the existence of the great archaeologist’s works in the library more widely known, with this editorial we point out our holdings and introduce the character and his activities: below we excerpt the extensive entry in the Biografico degli Italiani edited by Werner Oechslin, to which we refer for full reading.
The fifth son of Giacomo Camillo and Maddalena Robusti, he was born in Casale Monferrato on 24 Oct. 1795; he was first educated at the Augustinian boarding school in nearby Valenza, where – according to Oreste Raggi – his artistic interest first manifested itself. In 1810 he moved to Turin to study architecture: his teachers were G. Talucchi and, above all, F. Bonsignore; he completed his studies – interrupted from 1812 to 1814 for military service – in 1814. After an activity hitherto unknown, but possibly in the service of Bonsignore, who was then preparing the plans for the Gran Madre di Dio, he moved to Rome in 1818, with a scholarship obtained on Talucchi’s recommendation, from where he would send evidence of his activity to Turin.
In Rome – according to his English friend T. L. Donaldson – the young Canina would first have worked on the illustrations for a new edition of Mariano Vasi’s Itinerario. He would thus have had the opportunity to immediately come into contact with A. Nibby, who nevertheless edited subsequent editions of Vasi using the old illustrations. Shortly afterwards, he presented the Accademia di S. Luca with the Anfiteatro Flavio, described, measured and restored: a historical work, which, accompanied by some fifteen drawings, was received and judged favourably by the academicians on 28 Sept. 1822. To this period undoubtedly dates his first relations with Giuseppe Valadier, who was then carrying out excavations and restoration work in the Colosseum and who perhaps influenced the young Canina in the choice of the theme of the work presented to the Academy. The young man’s first decisive orientation towards the activity of archaeologist-architect, in which he was to become Valadier’s true successor, is undoubtedly due to these relations.
In that same 1822 Canina was to present the first plans for the embellishment of the new area purchased by the Borghese family for their park towards Valle Giulia and Via Flaminia. Aided by his patron Evasio Gozzani, in 1825 he succeeded Antonio and Marco Asprucci as architect to the Borghese family; from 1830 he became, after V. Fontana, architect of the Borghese estates under the administration of the Marquis Gozzani.
In the 1820s he completed the decorations of his Roman villa for Prince Camillo Borghese, illustrated – and compared with those of Villa Adriana in Tivoli – by Canina himself in Le nuove fabbriche della Villa Borghese denominata Pinciana, Rome 1828. From 1825 onwards, he built two bridge-viaducts over the old road of the Three Madonnas: the first in the form of Egyptian propylaea flanked by porticoes and two obelisks with inscriptions, prepared by W. Gell, glorifying the Borghese family; the second with a triumphal arch in imitation of the Roman ones. Both constructions were completed in 1826-27.
Less original than the Egyptian propylaea, which represent a valid example of Canina’s neoclassicism and can be read against the backdrop of his theoretical interests formulated shortly afterwards, but certainly better known and more important, are the great Ionic propylaea that form the main entrance to Villa Borghese towards Via Flaminia. After great difficulties, to which E. Gozzani’s rich epistolary bears witness, work began at the end of 1827 and was completed in 1828. The solemn inauguration of the monument took place on 1 August 1829 and the inscription was added in 1833. With the great propylaea, whose Ionic order was derived from the temple of Poseidon on Sunion in Greece, the still young Canina emerged as one of the greatest new exponents of Roman architecture. The work holds its own against equally ambitious European examples: L. Cagnola’s Porta Ticinese propylaea in Milan, dated 1814; D. Burton’s at Hyde Park Corner in London, dated 1828; those designed by L. von Klenze from 1817 for the Königsplatz in Munich. With this work, Canina assumed an important position in Rome but, at a time when he had few major architectural appointments, he was mainly directed towards an academic career as an archaeologist, scholar and expert.
The architectural works undertaken by Canina from this time onwards as architect to the Borghese family are few and far between. At Villa Borghese, he built the much-discussed Aesculapius fountain (1830-33), enlarged the park’s main street and finally constructed the Corinthian temple façade, modelled on a monument on the Appian Way, thus documenting Canina’s constant interest in archaeology. However, he also had many obligations as a consultant for engineering works, and his interest in mechanics dates back to this period, with the invention of an elevator called a ‘mechanical chair’. He collaborated with the machinist Angelo Lusvergh, directed hydraulic works together with L. Palazzi and supervised the rehabilitation of the Aldobrandini aqueduct: on this occasion, Canina had the opportunity to study the ancient monuments of the Tuscolano and later published them in the Descrizione dell’antico Tuscolo, Rome 1841. More important, in the field of hydraulic engineering, are the works for the draining of the lake of Castiglione di Gabi near Rome, carried out starting in 1837. […]
From his arrival in Rome in 1818 and at the same time as his first work for the Borghese Canina cultivated his archaeological interests. With an essay Intorno un fragmento della marmorea Pianta Capitolina riconosciuto appartenere alle Terme di Tito, published in Mem. rom. of antiquities and fine arts, II (1825), 4, pp. 119-128, began a series of researches, which were to be mainly printed in the Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeological Correspondence as well as in the Memoirs. Much more important, however, is the impressive series of volumes that begins in 1827 with the first part of Architecture of the Principal Ancient Peoples Considered in Monuments, dedicated to Greek Architecture.
Thus began Canina’s vast oeuvre as an architectural historian and archaeologist, which followed a well-prepared overall publication plan. The wide-ranging and ambitious programme can already be deduced from the manifesto that preceded the printing of Greek Architecture and is in the tradition of the contemporary historiography of J.J. Winckelmann, L. Cicognara, J.B. Séroux d’Agincourt and A. Hirt. It is therefore no coincidence that Canina was soon very supportive of the project for an Italian edition of the Storia dell’arte demonstrated with Agincourt’s monuments, later printed in Milan and Prato. Canina’s work is subdivided into three sections, devoted to the study of Egyptian, Greek and Roman architecture, which are in turn tripartite according to more methodological criteria. […].
Canina’s literary activity – which began with such ambition – is from the very beginning linked to his relations with 
the world of Roman artists and scholars. Having broken off his relations with Valadier when he, as a younger man, was preferred to the elder architect for the work on the Villa Borghese, Canina found other opportunities to come into contact with the scholarly milieu outside the Accademia di S. Luca: he met Nibby – if not already in 1818 – for the edition of Selected Monuments of the Villa Borghese and Luigi Marini, who put his library at his disposal. Perhaps it was also due to this knowledge that he decided to set up his own printing and chalcography, feat that allowed Canina to publish his works at a rapid pace, and that soon gained him general esteem. Among other things, he had the merit of being among the first in Rome to introduce the new Bodonian types. The very success of Canina’s scientific production was essentially based on the operation of his printing house, which continued, at least partially, even after the general censorship of 1849 by the Vatican.
Canina’s activity is also linked to the life of various Roman institutions. A member of the Institute of Archaeological Correspondence since its foundation (1829), in 1830 he was called to join its board of directors. […]
With his excavation work, Canina extended his archaeological research to the Roman Campagna. In addition to those mentioned above, the following publications are the fruit of this research: Descrizione di Cere antica (Roma 1838), Esposizione storica della Campagna romana antica (ibid. 1839), Descrizione dell’antico Tuscolo (ibid. 1841), la Pianta della Campagna romana (ibid. 1843), L’antica città di Veij descritta e dimostrata con i monumenti (ibid. 1847), L’antica Etruria Marittima…, descritta ed illustrata con i monumenti (ibid. 1851).
The essays published in the Annals of the Instituto in 1852 and 1853, and especially La prima parte della via Appia, dalla porta Capena a Boville, described and demonstrated with surviving monuments, published in Rome in 1853, bear witness to his excavation and research work on the monumental complex of the via Appia.
1842 saw the beginning of the period that was to lead Canina into international contacts and towards the realisation of new building projects: in that year he accompanied Queen Maria Cristina to Turin after her stay in Rome. When he fell ill, he was accommodated at Palazzo Chiablese; here the project for a rebuilding of Turin Cathedral was born: Research into the architecture most appropriate to Christian times, and its application to the idea of replacing the cathedral church of S. Giovanni in Turin (Rome 1843).
Republished ‘much enlarged’ in 1846 (also in Rome), the volume is certainly to be regarded as Canina’s most important contribution to 19th century architectural theory. It documents his personal position in 19th century eclecticism, which emerges from the way he tackles and solves the problems of religious architecture. For this, in fact, he proposes the use of the basilica model, which he illustrates through examples of ancient and early Christian monuments and his own projects for the cathedral of Turin and the sanctuary of Oropa; he offers a series of four prototypes, and finally arrives – always against the backdrop of the history that saw the basilica born, according to Canina, already in Egyptian architecture – at a synthesis between the different types of basilicas and classical formal modes. […]
Studies for the catafalque of King Victor Emmanuel I
In Turin, Canina was offered to succeed F. Bonsignore (who died in 1843) as professor of architecture. In 1845 he was commissioned to carry out the plans for the sanctuary of Oropa.
Canina. gladly accepted this commission, with the intention of realising his idea of religious architecture, on which he was reasoning at the time. Completed in 1846, the plans for Oropa would in fact be included, as has already been mentioned, in the second edition of the Ricerche sull’architettura of the same year. May 1847 saw the execution of the model, which was presented to Pius IX at the Quirinal Palace on 8 June and then transported to Turin and Oropa (where it is kept in the sanctuary’s archives). Work, which began in 1848, was interrupted the following year, but Canina continued to work on the project, and in 1856 he was still making minor changes to the original model. His return from London in 1845 gave C. the opportunity to visit Ravenna, Forlì, Urbino, Pesaro and Spoleto. He returned to London again in 1851 to visit the Universal Exhibition. [..]
Canina’s third London trip was the result of his meeting with the Duke of Northumberland in 1853 through the Egyptologist W. Gardner about the restoration of Almwick Castle. Thus, in June 1856, the architect decided to travel to England once again; he set off with his pupil and assistant G. Montiroli and painter A. Mantovani, he arrived in Almwich after short stops in Paris and London. He got in touch with Cockerell and Th. L. Donaldson, to whom he wrote that he wanted to contribute to a renewal of artistic taste with his works in Almwick. He also collaborated on the exact reconstruction of Michelangelo’s designs for S. Pietro intended for the book Illustrations architectural and pictorial of the genius of Michael Angelo, published in 1857. He left London on 23 Sept. 1856 and arrived in Florence on 12 Oct., welcomed by P. Poccianti. On 17 Oct. he died, and was buried in S. Croce.