Resumo:
The book by Alois Riegl (1858-1905) Der moderne Denkmalkultus, sein Wesen und seine Entsehung (The Modern Cult of Monuments: its essence and its genesis), from 1903, is one of the capital works in Theories of Conservation & Restoration. The main contribution of the book was in its theory of Values, where it performed a Copernican revolution and recognized in the subject the source of meaning about heritage.The paper traces the origins of the idea of changeable values conferred by the subject from the Germanic tradition, and, in Riegl's work, shows that the counterpart of Values are the Purposes that guide the manufacture of artifacts in History and the necessary study of the intentionality in Art History.The paper then inquires how tensions between intentions, their logical conflicts and those that arise from their origin and diffusion throughout society, and the tangents between the wills of different epochs and their central role in Rieglian theories.
