The National Academy of San Luca dedicates the Paolo Portoghesi exhibition to Paolo Portoghesi (1931-2023). Look, words, photographs , scheduled from 5 October to 4 November 2023 , curated and organized by Francesco Cellini, Vice President and Laura Bertolaccini, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Academy.

The exhibition, placed under the High Patronage of the President of the Italian Republic , is the beginning of a reflection on the legacy left by the great architect, historian and critic of architecture, academic since 1966 and President of the Academy in the two-year period 2013-2014 , a figure of great importance for international architectural culture.

The first of a series of events that the Academy intends to dedicate to him, the exhibition focuses on what would constantly characterize and trace his entire life: a passionate and intense writing, composed at the age of only sixteen, by Paolo Portoghesi: by Francesco Borromini (reproduced in some parts in the catalog and from which the title of the exhibition draws inspiration) and a selection from the immense archive of studio photographs taken by Portoghesi starting from the mid-1960s for his first critical investigation on Francesco Borromini, on architecture and the baroque city.

72 photographs on display , taken from negatives in 6x6 format and strictly in black and white, mainly of works by Francesco Borromini: the church of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, San Giovanni in Laterano, the Casa dei Filippini, Sant'Agnese in Agone, Palazzo Falconieri, the College of Propaganda Fide, the church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte.

Shots taken with a Rolleiflex or a Hasselblad, cameras that could be held in the hand (which allowed him to climb everywhere), thus abandoning the static nature of shooting with a tripod and starting to gain a knowledge, even photographic, of architecture through paths, and therefore images, previously unpublished.

Portoghesi, with words and images, describes the architecture and the city by changing the point of view, as in the shots from below to above or vice versa, to give image and strength to the baroque spatial richness.