La documentazione grafica della Forma Urbis tra XVI e XVIII secolo: approcci, metodi e finalità
In: Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma: 117, 2017
DOI: 10.1400/259542
Goal of the present paper is to analyse the graphic documentation of the Forma Urbis Romae from the years immediately following its unearthing in 1562 to the second half of the 18th century. The earliest drawings of the marble plan were executed in the 1560s on the initiative of Onofrio Panvinio, who was librarian of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and keeper of the fragments in the Farnese Palace in Campo dei Fiori. This set of drawings, incomplete but remarkably accurate, is included in the so-called Codex Ursinianus at the Vatican Library and constitutes the only source of knowledge for those fragments that got lost in the 17th century, when the plan slid into a condition of neglect. The rediscovery of the marble plan was triggered by the Fragmenta vestigii veteris Romae ex lapidibus Farnesianis financed by Cardinal Camillo Massimo and published by Giovanni Pietro Bellori in 1673; Bellori had to rely on the drawings of the Codex Ursinianus to supplement the lost originals. When in 1742 the Farnese fragments were transferred to the Capitoline Museum, Giovanni Battista Nolli based his arrangement of the pieces largely on the plates printed by Bellori.