Virginio Vespignani in Santa Maria in Trastevere: a new contribution to the reading of the excavations
The new test of the plan attributed to Virginio Vespignani, drawn up during the nineteenth-century
restoration of the building, completes previous readings of the topic with unknownpoint of reflection on the remains then unearthed in the church nave, mostly attributable to the intervention of Gregory
IV (827-44). Also with the start of a precise graphic restoration of the gregorian plutei, the image of an
imposing presbyterial scenography starts to delineate arranged in two sections: the path reserved for the
ceremonial entrance and exit of the bishop from the hall, stagging on solea; the spaces between the choir
and the bishop’s seat, defined with a pergula around the forepart of an apsed podium on confession,
connected to the nave by two short stairs. Some irregularities of the arrangement, perhaps an expression of
a difficult connection with the church of the IV century, seem to derive from a spatial research inspired by
the illusionistic language of antiquity, which introduce the perspective design of the innocentian basilica.
