MILIZIA, FRANCESCO. - Architectural theorist, b. at Oria in 1725, d. at Rome in 1798. He is a typical rationalist, but not without touches of neoclassical taste.
His principal works are Principii di architettura civile; Dell'arte di vedere nelle belle arti del disegno secondo i principi di Sulzer e di Mengs; Saggio di architettura civile. Preoccupied with spatial two-dimensionality and with the problem of horizontal and vertical linearity, he polemicizes against depth as dangerous for feared scenographic solutions; he is against the plastic-dynamic dialectic that Michelangelo adopted in his buildings: «churches with two-story facades and internally encumbered by pilasters»; «altars with useless columns atop a heap of pedestals and with extravagant pediments» (Roma nelle belle arti del disegno, Bologna 1826, p. 456 ff.). The polemic is harsher against the «Borrominesque follies» («churches with facades like a turban»). For Milizia, bound to the formulas of static and plastic architectural determinism, beauty is born from structural necessity itself (ideas also expressed by Fra Carlo Lodoli [1690-1761] and collected by A. Memmo in the Elementi d'architettura lodoliana, Rome 1786); yet some pre-Romantic motif appears in the urbanistic problem: «it is a great evil of a great city, the exactness of uniformity» (Saggio di architettura civile, ibid. 1827, p. 88).
Bibliography
Massimo Petrocchi