Unfolding Piranesi’s Aqueduct: the Aqueduct Map from Le Antichità Romane, Volume I (1756)

Sarah Buck

The thirty-eighth print in the first volume of Giovanni Bat- of these objects provides the title for the print: at the upper tista Piranesi’s monumental tome Le Antichità Romane (4 left-hand corner, a cracked stone fragment bears an epitaph volumes, , 1756) probably astounded and delighted stating that the print is a topographic map of Rome showing the eighteenth-century reader (Figure 1).1 Piranesi used at the routes of the ancient aqueduct system as described by least two large metal plates to compose the overall image. Sextus Julius Frontinus, the boundaries of the city’s regions, Each half was printed on a separate sheet of paper; these and the ancient roads.4 were then attached together, folded, and bound by linen tape This paper will argue that the print’s extraordinary into the folio.2 The resulting print, measuring approximately format served to propel arguments put forth by Piranesi three by two feet (33 x 24 inches), encourages both distant in his description of the ancient hydraulic system. The ap- apprehension and close scrutiny. To fully view the print, the proach taken here differs from previous examinations of the reader must first unfold the sheet and then step back from the Antichità. Scholarship on Piranesi and on the Antichità has folio. Presented at this arm’s-length vantage point is a map, only cursorily considered the Aqueduct Map: most scholars depicted as if drawn on the surface of a massive slab of stone. appreciate its size and its ambitiousness, recognizing it as the Rome can be seen in the lower half of the image, positioned first comprehensive illustration of the eleven major ancient as if the heart at the center of a circulatory system: lines of aqueduct lines and the routes of their convergence into various widths snake towards the city from every direction. the city.5 Lacking in these studies is any investigation of the Placed on the surface of the map are several illusionistically degree to which Piranesi was aware of the stakes involved rendered items, comprehensible if examined up close.3 One in composing such an illustration, and the possibility that the

This paper furthers ideas explored in my MA thesis and in two humously—may have separated the two sheets: Jonathan Scott, for presentations given in the Fall of 2009 at the Southeast College Arts example, describes the map as in “two sections.” Jonathan Scott, Conference (SECAC) and the Southeastern Society of Architectural Piranesi (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), 120. Historians (SESAH). I thank Dr. Robert Neuman and Dr. Jack Freiberg for their guidance on this evolving project. I also thank the staff of 3 The other trompe l’oeil objects arranged on the slab are a compass Athanor and the Department of the History of Art at Florida State and four small slips of paper. Counterclockwise from the top left, these University for the opportunity to contribute to the current volume. In pieces of paper provide: a diagram comparing aqueduct heights; a key this paper, all translations are the author’s unless otherwise noted. explaining the types of graphic lines used for the various aqueducts; a landscape view of the extant ruins of the system; and finally, a cross- 1 Le Antichità Romane’s other volumes describe the ancient city’s tombs, section of the Acqua Marcia. funerary decoration, bridges, amphitheatres, and other structures. These four volumes contain over two hundred and fifty etchings; 4 Sextus Julius Frontinus was a Roman aristocrat active in the city’s Volume I additionally includes numerous text sections. The complex- administration at the end of the first century CE who oversaw the ity of the Antichità’s organization has been little considered in the renovation and management of Rome’s aqueducts. De aquaeductu scholarship on the artist, and is difficult to adequately express in a urbis Romae (also called De Aquis) was his official account of the his- single essay, but a recent attempt can be found in the first chapter of tory, extent, distribution, and condition of these aqueducts. This paper my thesis “Unfolding Rome: Piranesi’s Antichità Romane, Volume I adheres to the title used in the most recent presentation of the text (1756)” (master’s thesis, Florida State University, 2008). offered by R. H. Rodgers. See Sextus Julius Frontinus, De aquaeductu For reproductions of the Antichità’s individual images, see John urbis Romae, ed. with introduction and commentary by R.H. Rodgers Wilton-Ely, Giovanni Battista Piranesi: The Complete Etchings, 1st ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 2 vols. (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy, 1994); and Luigi Ficacci, Piranesi: The Complete Etchings (Cologne: Taschen, 2000). Arthur Maygar Hind 5 On the map as the first illustration of the eleven major aqueduct lines, offers a helpful but brief description of the work’s organization in see John Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Lon- Giovanni Battista Piranesi: A Critical Study with a List of His Published don: Thames and Hudson, 1978), 51. The significance of the Aqueduct Works and Detailed Catalogues of the Prisons and the Views of Rome Map in this respect seems to be appreciated only by Piranesian schol- (1922; repr., New York: Da Capo Press, 1967), 83-84. ars, as the illustration is never mentioned in the literature on Frontinus. All observations of this work are based on my study of an origi- With regard to the treatment of the map in the literature on the artist, nal edition kept in the University of Florida at Gainesville’s Special most scholars follow Wilton-Ely’s assertion that the print is a precedent Collections Department. I thank them for their generosity in allowing for Piranesi’s later and equally striking Ichnographia of the Campo Mar- me to examine the folios during two trips taken during the summer zio (1757), an imaginative reconstruction of the Campus Martius that of 2007. measures nearly five by four feet. According to Wilton-Ely, this gigantic print was composed with six plates. See Wilton-Ely, Mind and Art, 63 2 Other editions of the Antichità—particularly, those published post- for his discussion about Piranesi’s illustration of the Campo Marzio. ATHANOR XXVIII SARAH BUCK

map’s design serves as a counter-argument to the existing thirty inches that are folded in half and bound by strips of studies. linen into the folio. Some etchings cover most of the entire The examination of this map begins by calling attention sheet of paper, whereas others are printed only on the facing to the map as a spectacle within the folio. The purpose of half of a sheet, the Aqueduct Map, by contrast, is printed on this discussion is multifold: it will establish the placement two of these standard sheets of paper, its expanse concealed of the map in the folio itself; it will demonstrate that the when folded.6 map was unquestionably designed as the showpiece of the As astonishing as the print’s size may be in comparison work’s first folio by explaining how the illustration differs with the folio’s other pages and prints, it shares similarities from the volume’s other content; and finally, it will show that in design and function with the second map of the volume, despite its marked difference from other images in the work, the Map of Ancient Rome at the folio’s beginning (Figure 2). the map is a carefully integrated element of the Antichità’s First, both stand on their own as compelling illustrations. Volume I. Following this overview will be an investigation of There is much to pore over in each map: each contains a the ways in which Piranesi’s map conscientiously rivals one plethora of detail and possesses intriguing spatial ambiguities contemporaneous work that sought to achieve a similar goal. in its design. Piranesi has designed them to simultaneously Finally, this paper will illustrate how the remarkable format resemble ancient and degraded artifacts, as cartographic of the print propels Piranesi’s archaeological conclusions illustrations, and as illustrations of illustrations. The details and perhaps disguises uncertainties the artist may have had of these maps continually fluctuate between the artificial about his findings. and the real. Second, both point to other material in the To begin, the placement of the map in the volume and volume. The Aqueduct Map purports to illustrate Frontinus’s its size suggest that Piranesi meant for the map to amaze descriptions of the ancient aqueduct system. It thus relates the viewer encountering it. A brief summary of the folio’s to the text that follows it. But it also concludes the series organization clarifies the map’s placement. The volume of landscape illustrations and in a sense offers a summary begins with front matter providing the title page, preface, of their depictions. Most of these landscape views offer frontispiece, and a list of Piranesi’s works up to the publica- grounds-eye elevations of what Piranesi has determined to tion of the Antichità. Next is a Map of Ancient Rome, three be the extant remains of the ancient aqueduct system. The prints illustrating fragments of the Severan Marble Map, and Map of Ancient Rome includes a map with three-hundred a two-page table (called an “index”) clarifying the partial and fifteen numbered details locating the extant ruins of the inscriptions on the fragments. Following this is a forty-page ancient city. These numbers correspond to the numbered index of three hundred and fifteen numbered entries printed entries in the index that follows several pages later. The in typeset text called the “Index to the Map of Ancient Rome.” Map of Ancient Rome also shows fragments of the Severan This text is followed by thirty pages of pairs of small etchings Marble Map. These too are numbered, and are discussed printed two to a page. The Aqueduct Map comes next and in further detail in subsequent pages through tabular indi- is followed by five pages of typeset text. These pages offer ces. Put simply, Piranesi’s conclusions are argued through a annotated excerpts from Frontinus’s first-century CE report sophisticated and complicated inter-referential system that on the aqueducts of Rome, De aquaeductu urbis Romae, requires his reader to constantly refer to images and texts in gathered in a section that Piranesi calls the “Explanation to various parts of the volume. the Aqueduct Map.” The map, therefore, serves as neither an The dramatic character of the Aqueduct Map in con- impressive opening nor dramatic conclusion to the volume, trast to other prints in the folio now established, the focus but is instead essentially embedded in the midst of the folio may turn to how Piranesi’s visual and textual presentation and relates to a specific section of text. By embedding it in of Frontinus’s De aquaeductu was carefully formulated to this way, Piranesi imbues the map with an element of the challenge contemporary interpretations of the text. Piranesi unexpected. This unexpectedness is further emphasized had at hand what is considered to be the most significant by its sheer contrast in size to the folio’s other pages. All of transcription of Frontinus’s text at the time: De aquaeductibus the prints in the volume, except for the Aqueduct Map, are urbis Romae commentarius (Padua, 1722) by Venetian-born printed on sheets of paper approximately twenty inches by mathematician and marquis Giovanni Poleni.7 Poleni’s pub-

6 Like the work’s organization, Piranesi’s inclusion of such large-scale ventions for territorial illustration. Dianne Harris examines a series of prints in the Antichità has not yet been fully examined in the literature, prints by Marc’Antonio Dal Re that, like the above examples from the and it is worth mentioning that the other three volumes of the Antichità Antichità, engage the viewer in a performative process of unfolding. also include large-format prints. These, like the Aqueduct Map require See Dianne Harris, “Landscape and Representation: The Printed View the reader to unfold them to fully apprehend their illustrations. These and Marc’Antonio Dal Re’s Ville di delizia,” in Villas and Gardens in are the “Principal Parts of the Tomb of C. Publicius” (Volume II, Plate Early Modern and , ed. Mirka Běnes and Dianne Harris 5, 14.6 x 47.5 inches); the “Inscription of the Mausoleum of Gaius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 178-204, 386-391. Cestius,” (Volume III, Plate 41, 15.4 x 34 inches); the “Remains of the Many of the earlier prints of Dal Re’s series are comparable in size to mausoleum of Hadrian” (Volume IV, Plates 6, 16.2 x 55.12 inches); the print by Piranesi discussed in the current essay. and finally, the “Section of the mausoleum and bridge of Hadrian” (Volume IV, Plate 7, 16 x 54.33 inches). In incorporating large-format 7 As far as I have been able to determine, there does not yet exist any prints, Piranesi may have been drawing on contemporaneous con- academic study of Poleni’s transcription and commentary of Frontinus’s

30 UNFOLDING PIRANESI’S AQUEDUCT: THE AQUEDUCT MAP FROM LE ANTICHITÀ ROMANE, VOLUME I (1756)

lication was the first translation and analysis of the work in reader an abridged version of Frontinus: the passages he printed form.8 His version, in fact, is the first to number the includes are the essential descriptions elucidating the stun- different sections of Frontinus’s two books, a scheme adhered ning map they follow. to by scholars today.9 The last section of this paper proposes that Piranesi Piranesi used the project of the Antichità as an op- devised the map as not only a challenge to Poleni’s critical portunity to critique his predecessor’s work, and he did so edition of De aquaeductu, but also as a corrective to the in three ways. The first of these has been observed in the history of archaeological investigations of the ancient water- scholarship: Piranesi, Wilton-Ely notes, used the footnotes to works system. The presence of contrary opinions to earlier challenge many of Poleni’s conclusions in his “Explanation archaeological studies in Piranesi’s map has been noticed by of the Aqueduct Map” following the Aqueduct Map, and art historians, but none has considered the artist’s conclusions indeed some of the footnotes make reference to a “Signore as anything other than an indication of the artist’s naivety or Marchese.” The second method, which has not yet been lack of experience.10 Piranesi is revealed to be less naïve or noticed by Piranesi scholars, is equally subtle: the artist inexperienced than previously thought if one takes into ac- renumbered Poleni’s sections. Section 5 of Poleni’s transcrip- count the assertions he makes with the complicated reading tion of De aquaeductu becomes section 6 in Piranesi’s work, and viewing process he requires of his reader. for example; section 22 becomes section 19. Piranesi does The discussion to follow centers on one of Piranesi’s not reproduce Poleni’s transcription of Frontinus wholesale: surprising deductions illustrated in the Aqueduct Map: his he extracts those excerpts most relevant to his study, leaving location of the route and terminus of the Appian Aqueduct. out sections he finds extraneous. Compare Piranesi’s description of the Appian Aqueduct’s ter- The third and final way Piranesi’s presentation challenges mination to the modern deduction (Figure 3). Piranesi ends Poleni’s work is in the artist’s presentation of the visual and the aqueduct at the narrow bank of land running between the textual material. The Aqueduct Map and explanatory text Tiber River and the hill. Today scholars locate this terminus in the “Explanation to the Aqueduct Map” is emphatically just southwest of the Circus Maximus. This modern opinion more stunning, compact, and succinct than Poleni’s work. echoes conclusions drawn by scholars studying the ancient Poleni’s text alone is over four hundred pages long, and city’s topography in the preceding centuries. Piranesi’s de- often his footnotes run dozens of pages past the text they duction, therefore, is truly unique. Most intriguing, however, annotate. Compare this with the five pages containing the is the fact that Piranesi’s predecessors and modern archae- passages that Piranesi has extracted as relevant for his study, ologists have drawn from the same primary source material and his restraint in his annotations, which never crowd out used by the artist: Frontinus’s De aquaeductu. the original passages on a single page. He has translated the An examination of the information provided by Fronti- original Latin into Italian, whereas Poleni used Italian in the nus is essential before determining how Piranesi arrived at a footnotes only. Piranesi inverts the standard organization conclusion so different from earlier and later scholars. Three adopted by Poleni, whose supplementary tables, maps, el- statements made in Book I of De aquaeductu describe the evations, and other illustrations append the end of the text. location of the Appian Aqueduct’s distribution. Two are in In Piranesi’s volume, the image precedes the text. Finally, the fifth section and one in the twenty-second. Section 5 none of the maps devised by Poleni equal the size or scope states that “From the source to Salinae, a place near Porta of Piranesi’s Aqueduct Map. Poleni’s maps address the aq- Trigemina, the conduit has a length of 11,190 paces, of which ueduct systems across the countryside separately from those 11,130 paces are underground channels, and 60 paces of converging in the city, whereas Piranesi’s map is large enough substructure and arches are above ground near Porta Cap- to accommodate an expanded description of the territory ena.”11 The section continues to discuss other aqueducts, and surrounding the city. Piranesi, summarily, has provided his ends by noting that that “The distribution of Appia begins

text. The observations offered here are drawn from my examination translation during the three centuries following its discovery at Monte of a digital scan of the work made available online by Princeton Uni- Cassino in the fifteenth century. versity. Some information about Poleni’s work can be surmised from other sources, however: Rodgers, in his introduction to De aquaeductu 9 Rodgers, introduction to De aquaeductu, 54. by Frontinus, offers a brief summary of Poleni’s contribution, 52-54. Harry B. Evans, in his book analyzing Raffaello Fabretti’s De aquis 10 See Wilton-Ely, Mind and Art, 63 for an example of scholarly skepti- et aquaeductibus veteris Romae (Rome and Paris, 1680), notes that cism of Piranesi’s conclusions. Wilton-Ely comments that in the artist’s Poleni’s later translation of Frontinus frequently references Fabretti’s 1757 Ichnographia of Il Campo Marzio, the Via Flaminia “is strangely earlier work. See Harry B. Evans, Aqueduct Hunting in the Seventeenth diverted from its accepted route direct from Pons Milvius (Ponte Molle) Century: Raffaello Fabretti’s De aquis et aquaeductibus veteris Romae to the Capitoline Hill in accordance with a statement from Strabo. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 11. This matter had already been introduced in the Antichità with the discussion of the aqueduct system as it related to the Campus Martius, 8 See Wilton-Ely, Mind and Art, 130 n. 21 and Rodgers, introduction and Piranesi had demonstrated this contrary opinion in his map of the to De aquaeductu, 52-54. Wilton-Ely makes brief mention of Poleni’s water system.” publication as the first printed edition of Frontinus’s text. Rodgers explains that Poleni’s publication was the most recent effort to re- 11 Frontinus, De aquaeductu, Book I, section 5. The translation used store clarity to Frontinus’s treatise, which had suffered corruptions in here and in the excerpts to follow are from R. H. Rodgers’s website

31 ATHANOR XXVIII SARAH BUCK

at the foot of the clivus Publicius, near the Porta Trigemina, deductions, and as the last section of this paper will argue, at the place designated as the Salinae.”12 Later in the book, the map’s visual convincingness and physical unwieldiness section 22 states that “The conduit of Appia, running along are crucial factors in the presentation of his deduction. In the base of the Caelian and Aventine, emerges . . . at the the Aqueduct Map, Piranesi shows the route of the aque- foot of the clivus Publicius.”13 From Frontinus’s descriptions, duct beginning at the lower right-hand side of the slab-map. it appears that the location of the Appia’s terminus is near Moving to the left, it makes a sharp turn to the south, curves three landmarks: a road called the clivus Publicius (sometimes around the Baths of Caracalla, and proceeds northwest. From translated as the Publican Way), the Porta Trigemina, one there it moves across the two hills comprising the Aventine. of the gates of the old Servian Wall, and finally the salinae It bisects the northwestern hill and ends near the southern (city saltworks).14 area of the Aventine’s Tiber-side slope. To the right of the By the time Frontinus’s treatise was discovered in the line’s termination, Piranesi has written the word saline. A fourteenth century, two of the four geographical features little farther to the left, he has written the word “Porta Tri- defining the location of the Appian Aqueduct’s terminus no gemina” next to a dashed line with a small gap indicating a longer existed: the terminus itself, and the Porta Trigemina. passage in the city wall. Note that Piranesi does not indicate Despite the paucity of archaeological data, humanists used the location of the clivus Publicius on the map. This can De aquaeductu to hypothesize the locations of long-gone perhaps be explained by the map’s schematic program: it is monuments. Evidence of this is found in two maps devised meant as an illustration of the ancient aqueduct system, not by Renaissance antiquarian Pirro Ligorio. Ligorio’s maps of the minor roads threaded throughout the city. His omis- demonstrate an adherence to Frontinus by his identification sion seems strange, however, considering that this road is a of two of the salient landmarks mentioned in the excerpt crucial landmark, mentioned in the artist’s primary source. presented above. In each, he locates the clivus Publicius and If he does not include it in the map, does he indicate it ancient salinae at the northern-most corner of the Aventine anywhere else in the volume? Hill, in an area southwest of the Circus Maximus. The answer is yes, numerous times, and in fact the artist Ligorio probably located the clivus Publicius at the directs the reader via the footnotes to the excerpts from De Aventine’s north corner because of the existence of several aquaeductu to the Map of Ancient Rome at the beginning of ruins along the hill’s Tiber-side bank considered to be the the volume, its accompanying detailed index, to a landscape remnants of the ancient salinae. Although Ligorio’s investiga- view in the middle of the volume, back to the Aqueduct tion was not concerned with the aqueduct system per se, it Map and to De aquaeductu excerpts all over again.16 This can be assumed that he and other believed the process obligates the reader to refold the map and rely on aqueduct to terminate in the vicinity of the Forum Boarium, other visual descriptions. As the overview of the Aqueduct the open space west of the Circus Maximus, in part because Map provided above explained, the map’s size is anomalous of the proximity of the salinae. Ligorio’s identification of the within the work’s first volume. Thus as comparatively more clivus Publicius at this area was probably indicative of the succinct yet comprehensive as Piranesi’s translations and prevailing belief during Piranesi’s time, although documen- illustration of De aquaeductu may be, it is not necessarily tation confirming this is elusive. The legitimacy of Ligorio’s easier to correlate Piranesi’s visual illustration to textual de- claim as a representative of a commonly held belief, however, scription. The map is supposed to illustrate the portions of may be suggested by the fact that scholars today echo his Frontinus’s text that Piranesi has provided, but its unfolded conclusion: currently, the ancient clivus Publicius is believed size makes it quite impossible to easily compare one to the to be one of two roads on the Aventine Hill, but both at its other. Piranesi, in other words, “traps” his reader, who is northern corner as described by Ligorio.15 provided with two options: accept his conclusions in the Piranesi’s belief in the location of the aqueduct’s end- map and forgo correlating its details to the textual (and other point is completely different from these earlier and later visual) material in the volume, or else trace his conclusions

supplementing his 2004 critical edition of De aquaeductu. See R. H. conda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2004), 290-291. Rodgers, trans., “Sextus Julius Frontinus: On the Water-Management of the City of Rome” [De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae], University of 16 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, “Index to the Map of Ancient Rome,” Le Vermont, www.uvm.edu/~rrodgers/Frontinus.html (accessed Febru- Antichità Romane, Volume I (Rome: 1756), 22. This entry states the ary 16, 2010). following: “176. Continuation of the ruins of the same saltworks along the Tiber, beneath the Priorato. From 1749, at the precise location 12 Frontinus, De aquaeductu, Book I, section 5. noted by letter B of this figure, the ancient specus of the Appian Aqueduct’s conduit has been visible; this aqueduct terminates at the 13 Ibid., Book I, section 22. foot of the Clivus Publicius, in the place by the saltworks near the Porta Trigemina, as shown in the Aqueduct Map, and in my commentary 14 See Samuel Ball Platner (as completed and revised by Thomas Ashby), related to passages 6 and 19 of Frontinus. In this year, Monsignor A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (London: Oxford Uni- Casoni, the president of the district at this time, in order to utilize versity Press, 1929), 418 (Porta Trigemina) and 350-355 (the Servian this specus to access water from inside the depths of the Aventine, Wall). renovated the specus, and restored it in the form of a small fountain, shown in part in Plate 23, figure I of this volume at letter C.” 15 Peter Aicher, Rome Alive: A Source Guide to the Ancient City (Wau-

32 UNFOLDING PIRANESI’S AQUEDUCT: THE AQUEDUCT MAP FROM LE ANTICHITÀ ROMANE, VOLUME I (1756)

through the argument carried by this other material and forgo his first-hand observations; he makes a convincing argu- unfolding the map. Whichever method is chosen, the reader ment through a complicated web comprised of a number is obligated to accept the artist’s assertions. of textual explanations, two maps, and a landscape view, In order to follow Piranesi’s reasoning behind his particu- all placed in diverse sections of the volume that obligates lar conclusion, the reader is soon tangled within a circular the reader to continually move back and forth throughout argument continually leading to verbal and visual declara- the folio’s pages. tions that communicate the artist’s beliefs: with regard to Piranesi’s Aqueduct Map is a spectacular print in a spec- the end of the Appian Aqueduct, Piranesi directs the reader tacular work. The map is an integral element that engages to his conclusion that he had personally identified the end the viewer visually and didactically. The remarkable map, of the aqueduct. By the time the reader returns to the Aq- like the other imagery of the volume, reveals itself through ueduct Map, Piranesi has convincingly argued through text a process of entry and exit, drawing the reader into its vi- and image the validity of his discovery. Piranesi’s deduction sual complexity. Its monumental size served the purpose of is not entirely unreasonable: as the index entry to the de- establishing its creator’s position in antiquarian studies: it is noted area on the Map of Ancient Rome explains, the artist simultaneously expansive, providing the first comprehensive had been privy to recent excavations on the Aventine near description of Frontinus’s ancient text, and succinct, offer- a steep path at the southern corner of the hill, the primary ing the viewer in a single plate the entirety of the ancient access to the Priory of the Knights of Malta. In order for civilization’s engineering feats. The print’s format directs this excavation to “become” the aqueduct’s terminus, he the reader’s adventure through the work: to understand its renamed a nearby ascent the clivus Publicius. This enabled detailed descriptions, the reader is led into and through the him to authoritatively reroute the commonly accepted path rest of the volume. By means of the print’s extraordinary of the Appian Aqueduct. Underscoring the authenticity of composition, size, and investigative depth, Piranesi was able his claim is a landscape view describing the hillside and to communicate the enormity of his endeavor and express carefully numbering the remains of the salinae and re-des- the depth of his knowledge. ignating the route of the hill as the clivus Publicius (Figure 4). Piranesi therefore combines Frontinus’s descriptions with Florida State University

33 ATHANOR XXVIII SARAH BUCK

Figure 1. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Aqueduct Map, plate 38 from Le Antichità Romane, Volume 1, 1756, etching, 33 x 24 inches. Courtesy of Special Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville. 34 UNFOLDING PIRANESI’S AQUEDUCT: THE AQUEDUCT MAP FROM LE ANTICHITÀ ROMANE, VOLUME I (1756)

Figure 2. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Map of Ancient Rome, plate 2 from Le Antichità Romane, Volume 1, 1756, etching, 18 x 27 inches. Courtesy of Special Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville.

35 ATHANOR XXVIII SARAH BUCK

-B-----j,.._ ------,-, ______"_,

~.REG-IO.HE XIF. ,:; .7hz,,~ev-ere, ·

Figure 3. Detail of Piranesi’s Aqueduct Map. The left-hand circle denotes Piranesi’s location for the termination of the Appian Aqueduct and the clivus Publicius. The right-hand circle marks the location of these landmarks according to the deductions by sixteenth-century and modern scholars. 36 UNFOLDING PIRANESI’S AQUEDUCT: THE AQUEDUCT MAP FROM LE ANTICHITÀ ROMANE, VOLUME I (1756)

Figure 4. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, View of the Ancient Ruins on the Aventine along the Marmorata, plate 23 of Le Antichità Romane, Volume 1, 1756, etching, 5 x 8 inches. The area circled at the center marks Piranesi’s location for the termination of the Appian Aqueduct and the clivus Publicius. The left-hand circle marks the location of these landmarks according to the deductions by sixteenth-century and modern scholars. Courtesy of Special Col- lections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville.

37