SPAZIO N°5

The fifth chapter is entirely dedicated to SPAZIO No. 5 and to the editorial titled ‘Discontinuity of Space in Caravaggio.’ The chapter is opened by the translation from Italian to English of Moretti’s text. The fifth editorial offers the opportunity to investigate and critically develop the theme of light and its opposite, shadow, as an architectural material through which reality is revealed. Moretti writes that in the Renaissance, representation is a ‘homogeneous reality that expresses itself according to a precise modulation of the laws of the spirit.’ Caravaggio breaks this practice, and space is fractured; light becomes the instrument to orchestrate space against a black background. The background is the transfigured shadow where the lighted figures live. He transforms light into an instrument of truth that reveals reality because, as Moretti writes, ‘for where there is light a body is a fact, where light is swallowed up it is nothingness, emptiness, a sidereal and eternal void.’ If, as Le Corbusier also says, ‘architecture is the skilful, correct, magnificent play of volumes under light … and, through the use of raw materials, must establish emotional relationships,’ in this framework the architectural composition, the mass, its plasticity, as well as its precise materiality, become instruments in the hands of the designer through which the architect controls and commands the poetic reaction between mass, light, time, space, perception, and emotions. In this pattern of references, the translation of Moretti’s editorial will be followed by a critical commentary essay, ‘The Fracture and Reconstruction of the Real.’ The essay aims to bring Moretti’s thought up to date through a dialogical comparison between the concepts expressed in the editorial and other examples from architecture, art, and cinema. It will be an opportunity to discuss and explore Caravaggio’s experience, providing an opportunity to reflect on the ‘density of the real’ in the architecture of certain masters, as well as to approach the concept of space/time montage. The chapter is closed by the iconographic documentation containing reproductions of the articles in their original layout, which provides valuable support for researchers all over the world.