Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Bruno Zevi. Carteggio

“I’m sorry I didn’t come to Florence for the transfer of Gaetano Salvemini’s remains,” Zevi wrote to Ragghianti in 1961. “I’ve been stuck in bed for four days because of a very trivial infection in my leg, the result of a scratch I got during a tennis match. Dear maestro: you are always young, but your students, when they take up tennis again after twenty years of not playing… this is what happens!” As in tennis, the epistolary exchange has moments of tension and lightness. Some letters have the force of a forehand loaded with energy, aimed at clarifying a point or defending a position. Others instead are more interlocutory, like a sliced backhand, inviting a pause and reflection, slowing the pace to make room for mutual understanding. Each letter is a gesture full of intention, traveling from one side of the court to the other. The words are well-calibrated strokes: some incisive like a volley, others slower, suspended in the air like a lob. Letters begin with a serve: the first writer opens the game with a message that invites dialogue or debate. The other responds, observing the effect of the stroke and carefully choosing how to return the ball. The beauty of the game lies in the continuity of the exchange, in the balance between sender and receiver, between the one who speaks and the one who listens. An exchange of letters, like a tennis match, lives through the harmony between the two players, through their commitment to keeping the ball in play, allowing each rally to be an opportunity to understand one another a little better. Published here for the first time in its entirety, including the documents preserved both in Lucca and in Rome, the correspondence between Ragghianti and Zevi is not only important for understanding the relationship between two of the most significant art and architectural historians of the twentieth century, but also allows us to retrace—through the perspectives of two of its leading protagonists—the history of architecture, art, politics, and Italian culture tout court in the twentieth century.