This year, now in its 10th edition with the Rimini Conference next September 25-27, we can with conviction argue that today our knowledge of the architecture of deception, quadrature, and many of their protagonists are gone into specific details that the chapter on quadrature enjoys , at this Moment, a specific  historigraphical strand and an autonomy where the pioneering essays and volumes written by Rossana Bossaglia (University of Pavia) and Simonetta Coppa (Milan Superintendence) for the Lombardy area, by Marinella Pigozzi and Anna Maria Matteucci (University of Bologna) for the Bologna and Emilia areas and, specifically, also with regard to the relationship between art/science, illusionistic decoration/prospective/geometry, etc. ; by the late Ezia Gavazza (University of Genoa) for the Genoese area; by Fauzia Farneti and Stefano Bertocci (University of Florence) for the Tuscan area, which turned out to be very rich in architectural illusionism, and not only in the city of Florence, as, moreover, the same Farneti and Bertocci have been making us aware of since 2002, with insights into a chapter of Florentine art history-that of quadrature in churches between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-until then lacking a repertoire of artists and a critical reading of their activity; by Mimma Pasculli, Isabella di Liddo and Marianna Saccente for the Apulian area.

Over the past decade, the study group has focused its research on the Natali figures, Giuseppe, Francesco and Giovan Battista, in Pontremoli, Piacenza, Casale Monferrato, Vicenza and Naples in order to learn much more better the training, cultural references, formal and perspective language of these painters who also played a fundamental role in the formation of the quadraturist school of the cities where they worked.

With the publication of the volume of the Matera Proceedings, edited by Elisa Acanfora, and in anticipation of the publication of the contributions presented in Varese (November 2022) and Morbegno (November 2024), the importance of painted architecture, quadrature, and conservation and preservation in the broader in the most articulated geography of baroque, late baroque and Rococo decoration is fully revealed. In recent years, studies have also uncovered significant examples of architectural illusionism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

It is also important to emphasize a factor of equal importance: the ever-increasing knowledge available to us today (the aspects of the relationship between art/science, color/light, reality/fiction, etc.) must form the preliminary and indispensable basis for the preparation of any maintenance and restoration work on these pictorial apparatuses.

Since 2002, in fact, the Conventions on quadraturism have also emphasized the problems of the conservation of these apparatuses, some of which have been lost over time, others concealed by improper maintenance interventions and waiting to be discovered, known and studied in order to offer us other points of work and debate.

These Conferences, with the editorial outcomes that have resulted so far, constitute a great opportunity for interdisciplinary dialogue and, above all, can mend that rift that had been created between those in charge of conservation and the world of the Academy.

We are convinced that from all these meetings knowledge is being consolidated and enriched, a priority factor for the protection and enhancement of the architecture of painted space, whether secular or religious.

The conference Quadraturism, scenography and grand decoration: mutual influences in related systems, will take place from September 25 to 27, 2025 in Rimini, a city in the formerly papal Romagna that counted an outstanding medieval, Renaissance and Baroque artistic heritage, the latter unfortunately lost in the last world war event.

The 10th edition of the International Conference of Studies devoted to Quadraturism and Great Decoration intends to investigate the forms of painted architecture from the 17th to the 19th century within the macro areas of northern, central and southern Italy, Europe and Latin America, also focusing on the terms in which painted architecture relates to figure painting and set design. Moving in the orbit of the multiple declinations of perspective knowledge and practice, it is also intended to devote a specific space of analysis to scenography.

In a chronological period between the 17th and 19th centuries, significant experiences and episodes for the reconstruction and understanding of the history and geography of the genre of architectural illusionism, scenography between Italy, Europe and Latin America will therefore be presented and discussed, from which territorial specificities, relations between artistic centers and peripheries, connections or networks between different cultural contexts, as well as experiences of continuity or discontinuity with respect to tradition will inevitably emerge. Finally, the conference will give ample emphasis to issues related to the conservation, protection and new ways of valorizing a heritage, that of large painted surfaces in particular, which inevitably brings with it articulated and complex problems.