Su una misconosciuta pianta per il tempio del Santissimo Crocifisso a Todi
In: Quaderni dell'Istituto di Storia dell'Architettura: 72, 2020
DOI: 10.48255/1232
On folio 2567 of the National Academy of St. Luke’s, there is a plan of an externally quadrangular and internally hexagonal church, which, up to now, has been scarcely investigated, if at all, by the historiography of architecture. It is an anonymous folio belonging to the Bolognese architect Octavian Mascarino (1536-1606) who donated it, shortly before his death, to the Academy of which he was a member. The typological features of the church, a document from 1589, and metrological analysis, enable the folio to be matched with a plan, hitherto unknown, for the Temple of the Ss. Crocifisso in Todi, a church of pilgrimage erected in 1589 and commissioned by Bishop Angelo Cesi. The geometry of the plan, its sources and derivations - such as the church, built soon after, of the Ss. Trinità in Turin (1598), which echoes many of its features - suggest a plan by the Bolsenese architect, Ascanio Vitozzi (1539-1615), documented to have been in Rome for a short stay in 1589, at the time Cesi himself was present in the city.