Rome Measured and Imagined
Early Modern Maps of the Eternal City
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.
Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
"Icarus Spreading His Wings": The Early Modern City Brought to Life
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)
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
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)
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
Bartolomeo Marliani, Pirro Ligorio, and the "Memory of Ancient Things"
Stefano Du Perac, the Ancient Forma urbis, and the City Renewed
Mario Cartaro and the Paragone of Ancient and Modern
Roman Print Culture, Dissemination, and the Market
Chapter Five
"Before the Eyes of the Whole World": The City Writ Large, 1593-1676
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
Notes
Index
About the Author
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
