La città ideale, drawing of Leonardo Savioli, 1943

The diffusion by Flora Savioli of Leonardo Savioli’s corpus of plates about the “ideal city”, drawn during the first half of the nineteen forties, has led to the discovery of a new dimension of Savioli’s character, for this article’s author.  Finding out about a quite unknown episode of his work has enhanced his already complex personality as a painter, a draughtsman, and an architect in the eyes of whom, as a pupil, knew and frequented him during the second half of the nineteen sixties, in one of his most intense times, with a complete renovation through the search of a diverse and more modern expressive language. Therefore, it seemed the right time to widen the divulgation of this Corpus of drawings, incorporating some criticism to help interpreting the singularity of the graphic work.

In this way, a critical operation is accomplished, where, by examining the individual drawings with a predetermined filter and specific interpretation parameters, one can end up subdividing the group of plates in different categories, of which the drawings themselves are the expression. Therefore, the drawings, arranged in such a way that too subjective observations would arise as less as possible, have been subjected to a thorough and punctual analysis in order to exteriorize the different components of the graphic work.

Jacques Guillerme states, referring to a drawing by Le Corbusier: ‘…Details in this sketch, at a first glance, may seem insignificant, even to the point of believing that only the author’s name justifies taking into consideration this ‘scribble’. The drawing, however, must be considered differently. Evidently, the author’s name does have an influence, but when the scribble is seen in a wide diachronic series, it is possible to try to ‘read’ and interpret its enigmatic and ambiguous features by comparison; they are enigmatic because they are ambiguous.’ This kind of considerations can be fairly applied to the series of drawings by Leonardo Savioli about the ‘ideal city.’ Every single one of them would indeed loose a great deal of its communication capabilities, if analyzed separately. However, we are in front of a continuity of thought, which relates the whole graphic operation, despite the apparent discontinuity in the way a theme is approached, which, on the other hand, is as multiform as that of the city. The very heterogeneity of expressive techniques, that can only be verified with a thorough analysis, is nothing but a way of making the graphics coherent, translating the different aspects of a problem, considered as a whole. That is why it is useful to try and show the different components present, through a reading entirely intrinsic to the graphic work, in order to try and evidence the wealth of values that it can still transmit. In this sense, different reading levels are possible; even better it is possible to ‘read’ the series of drawings through some reference parameters defined previously. These parameters take into consideration, firstly, subject and argumentation, and, secondly, the kind of graphic expression and the purpose of intention. Just as it is possible to subdivide (and this time as a balance of the preceding operation) the whole set of plates in different categories, depending on whether they are the expression of argumentation, projection choices, symbolic relationships, visions, project applications, or architectural language.

The smaller group of drawings, but the most interesting one nonetheless from a graphic and figurative point of view, is composed of three plates that go from the 18th to the 20th, and the 24th. All plates vary, ranging from the kinds of representation to the point used. They get loaded with expressive intentions that prove the search of those elements that we had defined as symbolic relationships. Through morphological and typological kinds, it is still possible to find elements of general references examined before: the river, the plane area designed lineally, the axis directed towards the slope, etc. (image 18th, next).
 

 
Finally, in plate number XX, that would be seen as a fragment of the following lamina number XXIV, where the techniques used in the both plates mentioned find their highest expression.