Leonardo Bufalini

Leonardo Bufalini (active mid-sixteenth century) is known primarily through a single work of landmark importance: his Pianta di Roma, published in 1551 as a set of twelve woodcut sheets. It was the first true ichnographic plan of Rome — that is, the first to show the city’s buildings as ground-level footprints seen from directly above, rather than in the bird’s-eye or perspective views that had dominated Roman cartography since the fifteenth century.

In adopting the orthographic convention, Bufalini established the method that would define urban cartography for the next three centuries, and that Nolli would bring to its highest expression in his great plan of 1748. The 1551 plan depicted both the ancient and modern fabric of the city, based on careful ground survey, and was dedicated to Pope Julius III. Bufalini appears to have been a surveyor or military engineer by training and came from Città di Castello in Umbria; beyond this, his biography is largely obscure, his reputation resting entirely on the Rome plan. It is enough.