Tra Hayrat e Art Nouveau
Su alcuni progetti di fontane hamidiane di Raimondo D'Aronco
abstract
In more than fifteen years (1893‑1909) spent in the Ottoman Empire working as an architect for the court and elites of Istanbul, the Italian architect Raimondo D’Aronco built an important amount of public works and religious buildings. Due to the abundance of archival sources, D’Aronco’s Istanbul years are relatively well‑known. However, some preliminary studies for water fountains, mostly never built, have not been examined in depth. This essay highlights how D’Aronco’s sketches for water fountains reveal an original attempt at combining elements of the Ottoman Baroque with the latest visual trends of Art Nouveau, in the context of an expression of public architecture that aimed at extolling the pious deeds (hayrat) promoted by Sultan Abdülhamid II.
Keywords: Water fountains • Ottoman architecture • Raimondo D'Aronco • Art Nouveau • Philanthropy • Pious deeds