Rome Measured and Imagined

Rome Measured and Imagined Early Modern Maps of the Eternal City

by Jessica Maier

University of Chicago Press, 2015
Cloth: 978-0-226-12763-7 | Electronic: 978-0-226-12777-4
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226127774.001.0001

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ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

At the turn of the fifteenth century, Rome was in the midst of a dramatic transformation from what the fourteenth-century poet Petrarch had termed a “crumbling city” populated by “broken ruins” into a prosperous Christian capital. Scholars, artists, architects, and engineers fascinated by Rome were spurred to develop new graphic modes for depicting the city—and the genre known as the city portrait exploded.

In Rome Measured and Imagined, Jessica Maier explores the history of this genre—which merged the accuracy of scientific endeavor with the imaginative aspects of art—during the rise of Renaissance print culture. Through an exploration of works dating from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, her book interweaves the story of the city portrait with that of Rome itself.

Highly interdisciplinary and beautifully illustrated with nearly one hundred city portraits, Rome Measured and Imagined advances the scholarship on Renaissance Rome and print culture in fascinating ways.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jessica Maier is assistant professor of art history at Mount Holyoke College.

REVIEWS

“Maier’s sweeping survey of Renaissance efforts to represent Rome’s complex urban topography will be of great interest to historians of art, architecture, urban design, cartography, and print culture. Rome Measured and Imagined raises important questions of accuracy and representational license with implications that extend to how we conceptualize and navigate cities in the digital age.”

— John Pinto, Princeton University

“Rome Measured and Imagined is a much-needed and welcome contribution to the field. Maier succeeds admirably in subsuming the extensive scholarly literature on her subject, in closely examining Rome’s urban images, and in providing a rich and engaging account of the evolution of a genre.”

— Sarah McPhee, Emory University

“How do we create the portrait of a city? When that city is Rome, with its undulating hills and its endless layers of history, the challenge must involve deeper questions about time, space, structure, and civic destiny. Maier’s splendid, engaging book tracks the elusive art of portraying Rome on paper, both ‘the ineffable ancient city’ and ‘its tangible modern twin’, from the Eternal City's resurgence in the fifteenth century to its affirmation as a modern European capital in Giambattista Nolli's monumental urban plan of 1748, writing with a sprezzatura worthy of that sparkling era.”

— Ingrid Rowland, University of Notre Dame

“In lucid and evocative prose, Maier focuses early modern Rome through the different lenses of those who portrayed it in its most idealized manner. With the fascinating Rome Measured and Imagined, she brings to life not only the 1551 Bufalini map that is her center, but indeed the entire project of making and perusing maps. This visual history of city portraits shows us how Rome as it was has provided subject matter for innovative artists, antiquarians, printmakers, and engineers, each portrayal redolent of the technological values and visual preferences of its moment.”

— Evelyn Lincoln, Brown University

"In this imaginative, meticulous book, Maier explores the world of early modern maps of Rome, from Alberti’s treatise on cartography (c. 1450) to the 18th-century enterprises of Nolli, Vasi, and Piranesi. Rome, “the quintessential palimpsest,” underwent grand reinvention in this period, and ritratti, or “portraits” of the city (as city maps and views were called) reflect not only changes in its urban framework but also shifts in artistic style, new attitudes toward antiquity, and contemporary improvements in cartography and surveying. In attempting to represent “the real Rome,” therefore, ritratti were both scientific and artistic, merging “measured rendering” with “creative expression.” Though Maier focuses on maps, such as those by Bufalini, Ligorio, Du Pérac, and Falda, she wisely expands her scope to address more essentially visual sources (late medieval images of cities) and key textual sources (Alberti and Raphael) and analyzes her evidence for artistic, scientific, intellectual, historical, and even commercial insights. The book is therefore as interdisciplinary as its material, useful for introducing students to its subject and serving as a fine example of interdisciplinary scholarship."

— CHOICE

"In Maier’s fine book on the mapping of Rome up to the eighteenth century, there is no echo of the everyday, often intensely litigated apportionment of urban space. Nor, as Maier notes, was there anything in early modern Rome similar to today’s tourist maps, used for orientation and quickly discarded. This was, she emphasizes, a mapping culture remote from today’s utilitarian concerns, although, as she also observes, the range of mapping technologies and formats available now is oddly reminiscent of the diversity in authorship, format and purpose of early modern maps of Rome."

— Imago Mundi

"A new, fresh introduction to the theme: a bright companion to a complex interdisciplinary topic, as well as a scholarly overview that is concise and original."

— Renaissance Quarterly

"This book traces the history of monumental printed maps, or 'city portraits,' of Rome throughout the early modern period. While not neglecting the gradual professionalization and growing accuracy of the maps produced, it differs from previous publications on this topic by also focusing on the "vision" these maps offer of the city, with all her timeless and unique qualities. To this end, Maier not only analyzes the prints themselves, but also discusses their makers, their audiences, and the contexts in which they were produced and appreciated. This leads her to consider these city portraits as a separate genre that peaked in the early modern period, balancing measurement and imagination in a way that is foreign to our modern understanding of cartography... We can now consider these city portraits as an early modern genre in its own right, that is best appreciated in its interaction with other scholarly, artistic, and literary genres. To see that maps of Rome, just like antiquarian treatises, drawings, or poems, also represent a certain perspective, this book is most valuable."

— H-Italy

Acknowledgments

Introduction. “Icarus Spreading His Wings”: The Early Modern City Brought to Life - Jessica Maier
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226127774.003.0001
[city portrait, likeness, Ptolemy, chorography, maps, pictorial views, Rome, print, palimpsest]
The city portrait, like portraits of human beings, arose in the fifteenth century as a commemorative form combining likeness with symbolism. It came to be associated with a category that the ancient geographer Ptolemy had termed chorography—small-scale terrestrial representation that conveyed outward resemblance along with intangible qualities. Renaissance city portraits like Francesco Rosselli’s “View with a Chain” of Florence or Jacopo de’ Barbari’s view of Venice were simultaneously faithful simulations and creative interpretations of their subjects. To convey their messages, city portraits assumed a range of graphic forms, from maps to pictorial views and ingenious hybrids. While they appeared in a variety of media, the most innovative works were prints that were geared toward the open market. Rome was one of the most frequently represented of all cities, and a place where all the challenges of urban representation crystallized. The Eternal City was a palimpsest of past and present glory, never just a neutral physical reality, and its complicated identity resisted any straightforward visual record. (pages 1 - 18)
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Chapter One. Toward a New City Image: Leon Battista Alberti’s Descriptio urbis Romae (ca. 1450) and Francesco Rosselli’s Lost View of Rome (ca. 1485–90) - Jessica Maier
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226127774.003.0002
[cartographic, pictorial, Leon Battista Alberti, Descriptio urbis Romae, plan, Rome, humanism, Francesco Rosselli, city view, renewal]
The late fifteenth century saw the emergence of two paradigms: Leon Battista Alberti’s Descriptio urbis Romae, a treatise describing the scholar’s method for making a geometric plan of Rome, and Francesco Rosselli’s panoramic view of the city. Situating both works relative to late medieval portrayals, this chapter shows how they established the cartographic and pictorial approaches that came to dominate city imagery. Alberti’s Descriptio stemmed from the stimulating atmosphere of mid-fifteenth-century Rome, particularly the intellectual circle of the curia. His friends included noted humanists Flavio Biondo and Poggio Bracciolini, and Alberti’s project fits well with their investigations of the city’s history and topography. Rosselli’s city view, by contrast, was the work of a professional printmaker—one of the first to specialize in realistic city portraits. His work, unlike Alberti’s, was a popular success that inspired a plethora of imitations. But Alberti’s map and principles had an equally significant influence in the realm of urban mapping. For all their differences, both works expressed Rome’s burgeoning renewal, or renovatio, and both were united by a commitment to measurement and exactitude that set them apart from all that had come before, while providing a foundation for all that came after. (pages 19 - 48)
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Late Medieval Origins

Alberti’s Survey of Rome

Rosselli’s Rome in Twelve Sheets

Chapter Two. Putting Rome into Drawing: The Lessons of Architecture and Antiquity in the Early 1500s - Jessica Maier
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226127774.003.0003
[Raphael, letter, Leo X, reconstruction, New St. Peter’s, surveying, perspective, orthogonal, measured drawings, pictorialism]
Chapter two addresses Raphael’s project to create measured drawings of Rome’s ruins, as recorded in his official Letter to Pope Leo X (ca. 1513-20). Although his focus was the representation of single buildings as opposed to the larger urban fabric, Raphael relied on the same surveying principles as Alberti the previous century, and his project similarly reflects his Roman context. In the early 1500s, architects and scholars came together in their quest to generate a graphic reconstruction of antiquity, with both groups turning to representational techniques that were being developed for the construction of New St. Peter’s. The only surviving evidence for Raphael’s project is textual, but the drawings of many of his colleagues and a spate of subsequent illustrated books by Sebastiano Serlio, Antonio Labacco, Bartolomeo Marliani, and others bear out his program and testify to its larger cultural relevance. In his Letter to Leo X, Raphael also formulated a theoretical stance on the value of perspective rendering vis-à-vis measured or orthogonal forms that gives insight into the Renaissance reception for these modes—hinting at a nascent association of aesthetic qualities with pictorialism, not cartography. (pages 49 - 76)
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Raphael’s Call to Preserve, Measure,and Draw the Ruins

Raphael’s Larger Goals and Audience

Drawn from the Grave: Illustrated Works on Ancient Rome after Raphael

Pictorialism Revisited

Chapter Three. Syntheses: Leonardo Bufalini’s Plan of Rome (1551) - Jessica Maier
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226127774.003.0004
[Leonardo Bufalini, ichnographic plan, Rome, fortifications, surveying, engineers, antiquity, Antonio Blado, print]
Leonardo Bufalini’s groundbreaking map of Rome was the sequel to Alberti’s and Raphael’s projects, for it resulted from related methods and cultural impetus. A horizontal ground plan or “ichnography,” it was the first measured portrayal of the entire urban fabric—including its architecture, streets, and topography—meant as a grand public statement. Bufalini was an engineer who participated in the papal campaign to improve Rome’s fortifications in the 1530s and 1540s. Like many of his colleagues, he nurtured a passion for antiquity. His plan reflects this background, for in it Bufalini reconstructed invisible ruins even as he accurately mapped the latest urban changes, in a deliberate conflation of classical and Christian, imagination and reality. Published by Antonio Blado, an important figure in the early professionalization of the Roman print industry, Bufalini’s plan inspired few imitations, but it had a profound impact on pictorial views that appropriated its measured information for the sake of topographical accuracy. These works, too, show an increasing emphasis on exactitude, even as they signal a preference for vividly illusionistic views of the city. Bufalini’s urban diagram simply does not seem to have resonated with viewers. (pages 77 - 118)
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Origins, Form, and Function of Bufalini’s Plan

Bufalini’s Background and Intended Audience

Bufalini and the Art of Surveying

Ancient and Modern in Bufalini’s Map

The Early Reception and Influence of Bufalini’s Map

The Modern Reception of Bufalini’s Map

Chapter Four. Antitheses: Ancient and Modern Rome in Sixteenth-Century Imagery - Jessica Maier
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226127774.003.0005
[paragone, reconstruction, Pirro Ligorio, Stefano Du Pérac, Forma urbis Romae, Mario Cartaro, Antonio Lafreri, print]
In the late sixteenth century, mapmakers turned away from Bufalini’s timeless fusion as well as his ichnographic language in order to sift through the Roman palimpsest. Their desire to recreate the ancient city as a counterpoint to the modern resulted in a veritable subgenre of Rome-then-and-now imagery. The pervasive theme of paragone—or competitive comparison—runs through these works, which express a longing to see the past resurrected and brought into dialogue with the present. Pirro Ligorio’s dazzling map of Roma Antica (1561) was not a reconstruction of the ancient city per se, but rather a glorious, learned reinvention. Stefano Du Pérac’s Sciographia of 1574 took inspiration from Ligorio, but incorporated a new source: the ancient, shattered marble plan know as the Forma urbis Romae. Mario Cartaro’s pendant etchings (1576/1579) made the paragone explicit by pairing the ancient city with “new” Rome or Roma Nuova. All of these works reveal shifting perceptions of Rome’s venerable past and Renaissance renewal, as well as a growing sense of historical rupture. Publishers like Antonio Lafreri, who dominated Rome’s active print business in the mid-to-late 1500s, were eager to answer the growing demand for such images and for city portraits in general. (pages 119 - 162)
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Bartolomeo Marliani, Pirro Ligorio, and the “Memory of Ancient Things”

Stefano Du Pérac, the Ancient Forma urbis, and the City Renewed

Mario Cartaro and the Paragone of Ancient and Modern

Plates

Roman Print Culture, Dissemination,and the Market

Chapter Five. “Before the Eyes of the Whole World”: The City Writ Large, 1593–1676 - Jessica Maier
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226127774.003.0006
[Baroque Rome, theatre, Antonio Tempesta, Matteo Greuter, Giovanni Battista Falda, De Rossi family, architectural, painterly]
Chapter five traces a splendid sequence of large-scale prints by Antonio Tempesta (1593), Matteo Greuter (1618), Giovanni Battista Falda (1676), and others who turned away from Roma Antica to focus on the most recent form of the city. Although these works were not sponsored by the papacy, they took on a newly ideological and propagandistic tone. Rome was being remade as a grand theater that proclaimed the Church’s triumph over grave challenges, and the maps addressed in this chapter perfectly expressed the militancy of the Baroque city. With the rise of the Grand Tour, their messages were exported far and wide. In Rome, their production was increasingly concentrated in the hands of highly professionalized printers like the De Rossi family. Owing in large part to the expertise of their makers, these works surpassed imagery of previous generations in sheer size, technical finesse, architectural detail, and overall magnificence. They can be divided into two main trends—the painterly and the architectural—but like earlier works they continued to merge qualitative and quantitative information. If these images failed to reinvent the wheel, they refined themes that were first manifested in the mid-1400s and brought them to a glorious pinnacle. (pages 163 - 210)
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Antonio Tempesta’s Prospectus and Its Progeny: Painterly Approaches to the Reenergized City

Matteo Greuter, Giovanni Battista Falda, and Architectural Approaches to Seventeenth-Century Rome

Epilogue. The Eternal City Measured and Imagined - Jessica Maier
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226127774.003.0007
[Giovanni Battista Nolli, enlightenment, rationalism, Giuseppe Vasi, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Campus Martius, ichnography, measurement, imagination]
The flexible, inclusive approach to urban representation of the early modern period was abandoned in the eighteenth century with the publication of Giovanni Battista Nolli’s Pianta grande (1748) and Giuseppe Vasi’s Prospetto dell’alma città di Roma (1765). Nolli’s great map is the descendant of Bufalini’s, but is far more accurate: a quintessential product of Enlightenment rationalism. By contrast, Vasi’s Prospetto is an atmospheric and evocative picture, but its emphasis on the specifics of the observed natural world is comparable to Nolli’s empiricism. Both men studiously segregated the cartographic and the pictorial modes, which eventually would come to have different goals and uses—the former more scientific and documentary, the latter more artistic and commemorative. That theirs was a time of transition, however, is indicated by Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s giant etching of the Campus Martius district of ancient Rome (1762). In this map, which is just as expertly ichnographic as Nolli’s, Piranesi created a beguiling city out of known ruins and brilliantly inventive phantoms. The crowning expression of the longstanding creative approach to reconstruction, Piranesi’s work reminds us that all maps up to his day were fusions of measurement and imagination. (pages 211 - 230)
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Notes

Index