LUCE estratti LUCE 326_Carminati_Scuola Grande di San Rocco | Page 8

Prima / Before
Dopo / After
A new light for
the majestic paintings
by Tintoretto
In Venice, at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, the
enchanting project by lighting designer Alberto Pasetti
enhances the artistic heritage of the Chapter Hall
and the magnificent works of the great Venetian painter
A
complex intervention in terms of size and
concentration of artworks – the marvellous
Renaissance architecture welcomes, in fact, over
30 Tintoretto’s paintings, the wooden allegories
by Francesco Pianta, the bas-reliefs by Giovanni
Marchiori, and the statues by Girolamo
Campagna –, the new lighting of the Chapter
Hall has been presented on the occasion of the
celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the birth
of Tintoretto on the notes of Lux Aurumque by
Eric Whitacre, performed by the Cantori Veneziani
choir. Commissioned by the Confraternity of the
Scuola Grande di San Rocco, the lighting was
designed by Studio Pasetti Lighting with the
technical collaboration of iGuzzini.
A lay confraternity founded in 1478, the Scuola
Grande di San Rocco settled near the Frari
monastery in 1489, building a first seat, known
as Scoletta, and the church housing the remains
of Saint Roch, the patron saint of plague victims.
In 1517, due to its marked and rapid growth,
a larger seat is built on a rather traditional
model, with two superimposed main halls:
the ground-level one (Sala Terrena), with three
naves and directly facing the square, and the
upper one, an open hall destined to welcome
the meetings of the Chapter. Beside the latter,
the smaller Sala dell’Albergo housed the periodic
meetings of the Banca, a body of government
of the confraternity. It is with this very room,
in 1564, that the long partnership with Jacopo
Il nuovo modulo di illuminazione
inserito nelle storiche piantane
di Mariano Fortuny e schizzi
progettuali per il binario lungo
i dossali / The new lighting
module inserted in the historic
Mariano Fortuny floor lamps
and design sketches for the
electrified track running above
the wooden panels
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LUCE 326 / PROGETTARE LA LUCE
Robusti (1519-1594), known as Tintoretto, begins,
with the pictorial cycle dedicated to the theme of
the Passion of Christ. From 1576 to 1581, Tintoretto
dedicate his best forces to the great pictorial
enterprise of the Chapter Hall, cleverly exploiting
the difficult conditions of natural lighting and
the complex wooden framework of the ceiling,
the narrative structure on which he develops the
pictorial cycle dedicated to the Old Testament.
At the centre of the ceiling, the three main
canvases stand out; around them, an ordered
constellation in which 10 ovals alternates with
8 monochrome lozenges (which are copies
made in the 18th century by Giuseppe Angeli
on the model of the deteriorated originals).
Once the ceiling almost finished, in 1577,
Tintoretto completes the decoration of the hall
with 10 major paintings focusing on the life
of Christ, placed between the mullioned
windows of the hall, two paintings of Saint Roch
and Saint Sebastian, and the altarpiece
Apparition of St. Rocco. Between 1581 and 1584,
Tintoretto works on the realization of the Marian
cycle of the Sala Terrena.
Left unchanged for centuries, the room is finally
lit in 1937, when the superintendence and the
municipality entrusted Mariano Fortuny with
the task of lighting it. His eight floor lamps with
black paraboloids remained the only artificial
light source for over seventy years. It is only in
2011, in fact, that the Scuola Grande introduces
the LEDs in the Sala Terrena, followed three years
later by the Sala dell’Albergo. A veritable testbed,
the luminous direction, where differentiated and
programmed activations aim to arouse different
emotions, is here introduced, along with the
augmented reality, a useful tool to arouse the
interest of young people through the use of a
digital language that is well known to them.
In terms of Cultural Heritage enhancement, the
new challenge is played on the field of
innovation, both in terms of protection and
conservation, but above all in terms of
enjoyment of the artwork itself. And light can
here be a primary actor, able to influence the
in-depth perception of art in space through a
tailor-made project, a synthesis between
research and technological elaboration. But “how
to restore an order or a reading sense to this
space, which is itself dazzling? The best way
is to start from the dark, from that very darkness
that Tintoretto represents in the Garden of
Gethsemane, from which the soldiers emerge.”
So the lighting designer Alberto Pasetti explains
the genesis of the very long work of passion and
research that brought to the creation of a
non-invasive lighting system. Fully integrated
into the architectural space, the lighting solutions
combine the photometric characteristics of light
beams, which are consistent with the dimensions
of the large pictorial works, with the spectral
characteristics that are qualitatively appropriate
for the chromatic and figurative rendering of the
pictorial signs and light strokes of the Venetian
master. A project, as explained by Adolfo Guzzini,
president of iGuzzini illuminazione, in which
“the use of smart solutions, custom made
for the grandiose pictorial work of Tintoretto,
and the choice of specific LEDs and optics, able to
enhance the chromatic and luministic choices of
the artist, enhance the emotional and theatrical
charge of the paintings, improving the visitor’s
experience through a real perceptual
restoration.”
With this goal, the new system has been
developed on some existing bases, as for the
historic Mariano Fortuny floor lamps, where