Il vero sito di Roma il quale dimostra li Monti, Colli, et altre più notabili particolarita che hoggi di ui si trouano.

Description

Lafreri-School Plan of the Eternal City, Three Years Before the First Modern Atlas Existed.

This plan of Rome — Il vero sito di Roma, the true site of Rome — was engraved by Paolo Forlani and first published in Venice in 1567 in Il Primo Libro delle Città et Fortezze Principali del Mondo. The present example is the second issue, appearing in Giulio Ballino’s De’ Disegni delle Più Illustri Città et Fortezze del Mondo, published in Venice by Bolognino Zaltieri. It belongs to the Lafreri school of map publishing — the loose constellation of engravers and printers working in Venice and Rome in the mid-sixteenth century who assembled separately published maps and prints into composite bound volumes, inventing the atlas form three years before Ortelius gave it its definitive shape in the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1570.

The Map in Detail

The plan presents Rome as a topographic and monumental survey, its hills modeled in the pictorial convention of the period and its principal ancient and modern landmarks identified throughout. The Seven Hills are all named — Janiculum, Aventine, Capitoline, Palatine, Caelian, Viminal, and Quirinal — with the Collis Hortulorum and Testaceus also labeled. The Tiber (Tevere F.) curves through the composition, with Castel Sant’Angelo on its right bank and the Vatican complex — St. Peter’s, the Belvedere, the papal fortifications — on the far right. The Pantheon is shown with its dome, the Colosseum labeled Coliseo, the Roman Forum identified as For. Romanum, and Trajan’s Column and the Column of Antoninus both marked.

The great ancient baths — the Thermae Antonianae (Caracalla), the Baths of Titus, the Baths of Diocletian — appear with their ruins. The principal aqueducts are noted: the Aqua Julia and the Aqua Marcia. Churches and city gates punctuate the walls throughout, from San Pancrazio in the west to Santa Agnese in the east, with San Giovanni in Laterano, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, and San Paolo fuori le Mura anchoring the southern circuit. The cartouche in the lower right records the publication: In Venetia l’anno M D LXVII / Alla libraria della Colona in merzaria — at the bookshop of the Colona, in the Merceria, Venice’s principal commercial thoroughfare.

Historical Context

Rome in 1567 was a city in the midst of profound transformation. The Council of Trent had concluded two years earlier, in 1563, launching the Counter-Reformation program that would reshape the city’s churches, institutions, and urban fabric over the following century. Pope Pius V, elected the year before this plan was published, was among the most zealous of the Counter-Reformation popes, and the Rome Forlani mapped was already feeling the first pressures of the religious renewal that would, by 1600, make it a fundamentally different city. The plan’s claim to show the vero sito — the true site — reflects the empirical aspiration of mid-sixteenth-century Italian cartography, which was attempting to subject the ancient and modern city alike to measurable, reproducible survey. The Lafreri school in which Forlani worked was the primary vehicle for this cartographic ambition in the years before the great atlas publishers of the north — Ortelius, de Jode, Mercator — established the systematic atlas form that would dominate European map publishing for the following two centuries.

Publication History and Census

Engraved by Paolo Forlani; first published Venice, 1567, in Il Primo Libro delle Città et Fortezze Principali del Mondo. The present example is the second issue, published in Giulio Ballino’s De’ Disegni delle Più Illustri Città et Fortezze del Mondo, Venice: Bolognino Zaltieri, 1569. Rare.