Early Book Collections | Art and Architecture

Monuments & Martyrs: 1616 Roman Vedute

This very rare and unusual suite of Roman views by Aloisio Giovannoli (c. 1550-1618) encompasses 106 full-page etching-engravings that, in combination, uniquely blur the traditionally discrete genres of an ancient Roman architectural and archaeological vedute, early Christian martyrologies, and books of religious pilgrimage to the Eternal City. It is all the rarer for its preservation of the artist’s hyper-detailed, folding birds-eye view of Rome, which keys in the locations of the artist’s plates as an integral part of Giovannoli’s vision for his project.

Unlike more conventional Roman vedute illustrated collections of this period—mainly published as visual souvenirs for visitors and Grand Tourists interested in maintaining accurate, if also atmospheric and aestheticizing, details of the places they had visited—this plate book stands apart. Giovannoli’s etching sequence appeals to narrative sensibilities as well, imaginatively carrying the viewer not just back to the streets of ancient Rome, but also to important biblical and extra-biblical scenes of sacred events and early Christian martyrdom. The artist’s decidedly Baroque aesthetic is reflected in his deployment of eccentric angles and perspectives, idiosyncratic modeling of fauna, and of the plethora of subjects: ruined ancient walls, baths, archways, gardens, theaters, temples, domes, mausolea, and more. Despite the integration of early Christian events, Giovannoli also retains late-medieval architectural overlays and juxtapositions, engaging the viewer in spaces of temporal, as well as architectural, complexity. The just-erected obelisk before Santa Maria Maggione (1614) as well as Carlo Maderno’s just-completed St. Peter’s basilica facade (1615) bearing the prominent inscription of its patron Pope Paul V above the front entrance compel the viewer back from the ancient fabrics of the city, into the newest and latest achievements of Roma magnificenza.

Giovannoli incorporates small clusters of early Christians sitting at meals, standing, or processing through the foreground in many of the scenes. They are always dwarfed by exaggerations of the ancient built environment, however, which only enhances the feeling of Rome as a magical, if also historically remote, space. Each edifice, and early Christian scene is identified in engraved bi-lingual Latin/Italian caption texts below. In a handful of instances the artist populates the built environment with supernatural scenes, thunderbolts, and other mini-dramas. One vignette, recounting events from the apocryphal Acts of Peter, and the Acts of Peter and Paul, depicts the death of Simon Magus who flies through the air surrounded by demons as Sts. Peter and Paul pray for an end to his magic.

The role of martyrology is especially prominent, reminding readers why they make religious pilgrimages—whether real or imagined in the pages of this book—to the great relics of the first Christians among the first of Christian basilicas. And yet even these sacred rehearsals of scenes from the Book of Acts, the Legenda aurea, and all matter of New Testament and patristic apocrypha, are leavened by scenes of the mundane such as sheets hanging out to dry on laundry lines.

Giovannoli’s sequence of plates first appeared in print in 1616 as a suite of 143 etching-engravings arranged in seven books under the title Roma antica. By 1619, these 143 plates were republished eponymously, though rearranged into three separate groups rather than seven. The Hopkins example, which is quite similar to the copy at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., contains only 106 Giovannoli plates, which may have been printed possibly as late as the early-to-mid eighteenth century, and here in two parts, rather than seven or three, under the title of “Views of the Ancient Vestiges of Rome.” Above his folding plan of Rome, which is also specifically dated 1616, Giovannoli explains how his plates and plan were intended to guide the reader/viewer in a tour that spiraled outward, beginning with the vantage point of the Palatine Hill. His project may have been inspired by other popular platebooks of Rome such as Étienne Dupérac’s Vestigi dell’antichita di Roma (1575, a copy of which is held in JHU’s Fowler Collection of architectural books), Giacomo Lauro’s Antiquae urbis splendor (1612), and Giovanni Maggi’s Aedificorum et ruinarum Romae (1618).

Though the artist’s technique shows neither the precise elegance of a professional architectural engraver, nor the confident draught work of a fine artist bent on exuberant interpretations of Rome’s Baroque landscape, Giovannoli achieved a curious and charming tertium quid, one that is truly atmospheric, narratively sophisticated, and easily appealing.

—Earle Havens, assisted by Seyla Martayan