IL SECOLO BREVE DI RENATO SALINAS: PENSIERO E OPERATO PER UNA STORIA DEL RESTAURO IN SARDEGNA

The paper illustrates the thought and work of the superintendent Renato Salinas with the aim of better understanding the guidelines of protection and the interventions carried out in Sardinia in the Second half of XX century (1953-1973), providing new insights for the comprhension of a poorly investigated period of the local history of restoration. The Fifties, in fact, marked a deep break, as a consequence of the great political, social and economic changes taking place in those years in Sardinia and in the wider national context, while the contemporary culture of Italian restoration took shape. The research highlights Salinas' peculiarity in the studies on local architecture, fundamentally based on the Giovannoni's scientific model. His action in the field of heritage protection confirms his full awareness of the concept of palimpsest and the importance he recognized to stratifications, with particular attention to Baroque elements. He decisively contributed to overcoming the widespread practice of deleting the Baroque style layers and to give value to the historical-artistic contaminations, as autochthonous expressions of the peripheries of art. Finally, despite the many contradictions and limitations of certain choices, he set the stage for the protection of the landscape in Sardinia, courageously starting the first actions to safeguard the most significant coastal areas of the island.