Florence, Franco Zampetti's zenithal photographs on display at Libreria Brunelleschi

From May 7 to August 31, 2025, Libreria Brunelleschi in Florence is hosting the exhibition Vertigine. Zenith Photographs | Franco Zampetti, curated by Vincenzo Circosta and Giuseppe Giari and organized by theOpera di Santa Maria del Fiore.

The exhibition, the fourth exhibition project carried out in the space of the Brunelleschi Bookshop that has as its theme the monuments of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, in this case seen through Zampetti’s zenithal images, displays a selection of seven large-format images that have as their subjects the Baptistery with the women’s galleries and the mosaics of the dome, Giotto’s Bell Tower with a view of its interior, and the Duomo with the counter-façade, the apse and the Sacristy of the Masses. Finally, an exterior shot, taken between the facade of the Cathedral and the Baptistery, in the area called “Paradise.” It is also possible to see a video that presents fourteen zenithal images, organized following the chronological succession of the realization of the monuments of Florence Cathedral.

Zenith photography makes it possible to synthesize from a single central point of view both planimetric and perspective views of the space. Franco Zampetti obtains these images by means of a specially designed and specially made camera, a unique apparatus that makes it possible to produce photographs without geometric distortions and with a wider overall vision than could be observed with the naked eye.

“Franco Zampetti is not content with usual shots,” explains Vincenzo Vaccaro, advisor to the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, “but with an uncommon vision he transports the observer to the center of the image. The width of the optical cone of the hyper-wide-angle lens exceeds the human physiological field of view, opening new horizons. In fact, the camera he designed is made in such a way as to take in the entire environment and make the space dilate, the resulting image is transformed into a work of art that transcends architecture. The observer looking at these images made in sacred spaces is seized with vertigo by the extraordinary vision he perceives and is projected into infinity. The objective vision of architecture then becomes a subjective moment enjoyable as pure poetry.”

“In observing Franco Zampetti’s zenithal photographs, I was immediately reminded of the first time I crossed the threshold of two very famous monuments, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Palazzo Borromeo on Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore,” said Vincenzo Circosta, co-curator of the exhibition. “The verticality of the two entrances with their ascending perspective with Byzantine reminiscences, I think, perfectly reflect the zenithal ’Vertigo’ orchestrated by the photographer. A sort of sublimation towards the Empyrean that, in the images taken by Franco at the Monumental Complex of Santa Maria del Fiore, is transformed from a photograph of Architecture into a sort of iconographic testimony suspended between the earthly and the divine.”

“Franco Zampetti’s photography could be read as aseptic documentation photography. Not so,” declares Giuseppe Giari, co-curator of the exhibition. “The photographer’s perfectly zenithal eye is functional to a humanistic operation: the translation of planes, from horizontal to vertical, the very fine search for balance and harmony of lines and forms, the positioning of monumental architecture, when even non-symmetrical, in a circle in turn inscribed in a square, in a Vitruvian format, produce the effect of placing us observers at the exact center of the image, of making it possible for the viewer, in this unusual perspective, to measure and confront the superhuman scale of sacred architecture.”

Images: Exhibition Vertigo. Zenith photographs by Franco Zampetti. Courtesy of Franco Zampetti

Florence, Franco Zampetti's zenithal photographs on display at Libreria Brunelleschi

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