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Mapping Rome's Rebirth

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Mapping Rome's Rebirth chapter 16 Mapping Rome’s Rebirth Jessica Maier Rome was depicted more often than any other place in the early modern period, leaving an unparalleled visual record. If Naples, as Vladimiro Valerio has observed, “rarely represents itself” prior to the 1800s, Rome is a veritable Narcissus, enamored of its own image.1 Judging from the seemingly infinite va- riety of this corpus, there were as many ways to represent Rome as there were images of it. From the late 15th to the late 17th centuries, these works register shifting perceptions of the city along with its dramatic physical renewal. This chapter is a case study of four groundbreaking printed images that bear wit- ness to Rome’s transformation into a modern Christian capital, the seat of a papacy claiming global dominion: the woodcut in Hartmann Schedel’s Liber chronicarum [Book of Chronicles] of 1493, Leonardo Bufalini’s unprecedented monumental woodcut of 1551, Antonio Tempesta’s etched city view of 1593, and Giovanni Battista Falda’s etched aerial view of 1676.2 As prints, they were disseminated widely, transmitting a triumphalist view of Rome throughout western Europe and beyond. These four key works mark important stages in the evolution of city imag- ery, becoming increasingly comprehensive and accurate in their depiction of Rome’s distinctive topography and its urban and architectural growth. Despite this, they are by no means neutral records. While identifying actual structures and neighborhoods and delineating spatial relationships, they simultaneous- ly downplay the messy reality of impoverished zones, chaotic marketplaces, filthy byways, and a river teeming with offal and sewage. Instead, they depict the magnificent building projects of pontiffs, cardinal-princes, aristocratic families, the new Orders, and wealthy confraternities, thereby conveying cel- ebratory messages of architectural innovation and renovatio (renewal)—not simply ancient Rome reborn, but the modern Eternal City refashioned as tri- umphant Roma Sacra (Holy Rome). With figures of Fame blasting a trumpet, 1 V. Valerio, “Representation and Self-Perception: Plans and Views of Naples in the Early Modern Period,” in T. Astarita (ed.), A Companion to Early Modern Naples (Leiden, 2013), 63–86, esp. 63. 2 The images discussed here are a tiny selection of the many published during this period. Frutaz 1962 lists over 70, but that tally does not include numerous derivatives and copies. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:1�.1163/9789004391963_018 286 Maier victorious Roma in armor, and Ecclesia (the Church) enthroned at the deco- rated borders of the large, multisheet prints, they evince erudition and herald a new appreciation for great cities and travel.3 As I have written elsewhere, they became powerful testaments to the supremacy of Rome and of the Church with which the city had become synonymous. Like treatises and works of art, therefore, maps were increasingly deployed to proclaim Catholic beliefs as truth.4 In short, these works allow us to trace the development of early mod- ern cartography, printmaking, and visual rhetoric in the representation of the Eternal City. 1 Historiographical Considerations This chapter draws on a strong and growing body of literature on maps of Rome from antiquity to the present. The subject first gained traction in the decades after Rome became capital of united Italy in 1870—not coincidentally, a time when the city’s identity was undergoing a major renovation. Archaeologists, topographers, architectural historians, and papal librarians led the way.5 In the first decades of the 20th century, Franz Ehrle, prefect of the Vatican Library, published a series of groundbreaking monographs addressing the most im- portant printed maps of the city.6 In 1962, Amato Pietro Frutaz published his magisterial three-volume catalogue raisonné, Le piante di Roma [The Maps of Rome]. The pace has accelerated since the 1990s, with the appearance of nu- merous exhibition catalogs, monographs on individual maps, and interpretive studies.7 Moreover, new, interactive digital platforms allow detailed, compara- tive study of the maps themselves as well as the depictions of individual build- ings, neighborhoods, and the infrastructure.8 3 See the especially chapters by Carla Keyvanian, Katherine W. Rinne, Stephanie C. Leone, John Beldon Scott, and Jeffrey Collins, among others. 4 Maier 2015, 166. 5 G.B. de Rossi, Piante icnografiche e prospettiche di Roma: anteriori al secolo XVI (Rome, 1879); E. Rocchi, Le piante icnografiche e prospettiche di Roma del secolo XVI (Rome, 1902); D. Gnoli (ed.), Mostra di topografia romana ordinata in occasione del congresso storico inaugurato in Roma li 2 aprile del 1903 (Rome, 1903); and Hülsen 1915. 6 All published by the Vatican, these comprise foundational studies on maps by Du Pérac (1908), Bufalini (1911), Maggi (1915), Falda (1931), Tempesta (1932), and Nolli (1932). 7 E.g., see M. Bevilacqua, Roma nel secolo dei lumi: architettura, erudizione, scienza nella pianta di G.B. Nolli “celebre geometra” (Naples, 1998); Gori Sassoli 2000; Marigliani 2007; Bogen and Thürlemann 2009; Bevilacqua and Fagiolo 2012; and Maier 2015. 8 An increasing number of digital resources facilitate the close study of maps of Rome. The Biblioteca Hertziana’s CIPRO project is one such tool (http://fmdb.biblhertz.it/cipro/default.
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