Architectural Theory and Rome's Topography
Literature on architectural theory and the topography of Rome has been a focal point of the Bibliotheca Hertziana’s collection since its foundation. Interest initially focused on the great treatise editions of the 15th and 16th centuries, such as Vitruvius, Leon Battista Alberti, Sebastiano Serlio and Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, which were systematically supplemented over the decades by publications from the following centuries. In addition, a remarkable fund of illustrated literature on Rome accumulated, including classics such as works by Étienne Duperac, Giuseppe Vasi, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi. Together they offer a survey of the development of the city of Rome and the history of its perception that is rare in its completeness.
Dn 370-2500 raro IX
Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, or Ioannes Iacobus de Rubeis in Latin (1627–1691), worked as a printer and publisher of collections of engravings at Santa Maria della Pace in Rome from 1648 to 1691. The work here, which involved various artists, documents the church building projects of the time with views, sections and floor plans, for example by Francesco Borromini (1599–1667) and Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola (1507–1573). The only anomaly is an engraving by Nicolas Laigniel (ca. 1670–1705), which depicts the Healing of Peter’s Shadow by Giovanni Battista Manelli (1598–1680), of which a drawing exists. The copper title is signed by Jacques (Jacobus) Blondeau (1655–1698). The remaining plates were engraved by Jean Colin (1651–1696) and Giovanni Francesco Venturini (1650–1710), using models by Francesco Bufalini (1670–1716) and Lorenzo Nuvolone (1619–1703). Various other editions of this compendium were subsequently published.
Dg 532-2830 raro IX
Johann Jakob von Sandrart (1655–1698) was a draughtsman, etcher, engraver, art dealer, and publisher in Nuremberg. This extensive collection of engraving on the Roman churches, printed without a date, is based on the second edition of the work of the same name, which Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi had first published in 1683 and then in a modified version in 1684.
Dg 532-200 raro IX
This collection of engravings, which is listed under the title Le sette basiliche di Roma, contains a cartouche with the inscription on the first of the seven engravings, which shows the façade of St. Peter’s in Rome: “Al Mol.to Ill.[ust]re., Sig.[no]re et P[ad]ron mio Osser[vandissi]mo Pietro Bassani umil.[iss]mo Serv[itore]. Gio. Batt. de Rossi in Roma in Piazza Navona”. The De Rossi were a dynasty of printers from Milan who settled in Rome in the 17th century and divided into two lines, one named after its location near Santa Maria della Pace – hence alla Pace – and another whose workshop in Piazza Navona was run by Giovanni Battista de Rossi from 1635 to 1672. He acquired numerous printed sheets from contemporary printers and published works by famous artists such as Marc Antonio Raimondi (1475–1534). The work with the seven Roman pilgrimage churches was probably printed around 1650, with older depictions clearly serving as a model: for Santa Maria Maggiore, for example, the view by Giacomo Lauro (1550–1605) from 1618, and the façade of St. Peter’s is shown similarly to the engraving by Matthaeus Greuter (1564–1638) from 1613. The addressee of the publication, Pietro Bassani, appears to have frequented the scholarly milieu of his time; his friendship with Cassiano del Pozzo (1588–1657) is documented and Giuseppe Richa (1693–1761) mentions him as the savior of an inscription on the Roman church of San Girolamo della Carità.
Dn 105-320 raro VII
This work, for which we are indebted to the engineers P. Fortuna, Giovanni Montiroli and L. Zeloni, represents a novel and, for Rome, first attempt at a different kind of urban representation. While Giambattista Nolli’s city plan of 1748 had created a new scale for the correct representation of urban space, it had lost the three-dimensionality and thus the perceptibility of building volumes and architectural elements that older city plans conveyed with their combination of plan and bird’s-eye view. With the façade elevations, it is now possible to reproduce entire streets in a way that primarily captures the baroque appearance of the city rather than its medieval and palimpsest-like character. With Pareidolia. Vie, piazze e monumenti di Roma, the architects Sebastian Felix Ernst & Christian Losert used the work in 2020 as a starting point for a “self-learning” neural network. After a training process, a software program generated drawings whose algorithm was derived from the profiles of the façades and whose result has been included in the Bibliotheca Hertziana collections.
Dg 540-4350 grgr