La committenza legata alla Lingua d’Italia a Rodi: tracce di un patrimonio disperso

Evidence of the Order’s patronage in the architecture of the town of Rhodes and the island is essentially inscriptions, coats of arms, and more rarely religious portraits: the architectural and artistic heritage connected to the Hospitallers is generally little known and in a fragmentary state; even less known are the patronage activities of the Knights of the Tongue of Italy, for which specific studies are missing. The paper will address a survey of the available information on the subject, by examining the main evidence of patronage: tombstones, religious and civil buildings, and the urban fortifications. On the one hand the Hospitallers largely reused the existing Byzantine architecture, and on the other they progressively introduced in Rhodes the forms of French Gothic (already tested in Cyprus) and then some Renaissance motifs. Therefore, there would not exist a specific mode of Hospitaller architecture in Rhodes, but signs of the reproduction of forms and models coming from elsewhere. Specific elements brought by the Tongue of Italy could perhaps be discovered, but it is a research yet to be done.