Lo specchio della fantasia: immaginario urbano e realtà architettonica nei disegni dei Galli Bibiena

The relationship between reality and representation have made the drawing one of the best sources ofhistorical research on architecture and city. In the search for visual clues such as admissible evidencefor the study of the urban history often emerge drawings that do not portray the existing or existedspaces but represent the qualities of an urban metaphysics reality, imaginary, or often foreshadowed.It is the iconography of the possible city, able to evoke not only a real space but also to direct the tasteof an era. This paper presents the results of a research carried out on urban and architecturalrepresentations produced by artists of the Galli Bibiena family and built on geometric-analytical bases.Through rigorous analysis and geometric restitution of perspective it is revealed in virtual models thespirit of the eighteenth-century urban ideal, beautifully outlined in the whims and fantasticcompositions of only drawn cities and architectures.