Book review: Francesco Ceccarelli and Nadja Aksamija, eds. La Sala Bologna nei Palazzi Vaticani (original) (raw)
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Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2006
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In the late sixteenth century, a canon of the Basilica of St. Peter's by the name of Tiberio Alfarano began to craft a monument that is truly remarkable in the history of architecture, literally a paper version of St. Peter's, superimposing the plan of the old basilica on that of the new and marking it with letters referring to the holy sites-altars, chapels, tombs and so on-that once filled the church, and which were expanded upon in an accompanying text. In 1590 the plan, with further lists and notes, was rendered in an etching by Natale Bonifacio. The resulting visual-verbal amalgam represents an extraordinary act of intermedial thinking, even though we have often taken it for granted as a mere repository of data. The number of sites and objects whose identity might otherwise have remained unknown after the old basilica was torn down eventually ran up to 174 (with over three dozen places also marked and explained by letters), making the paper St. Peter's an indispensible (although not entirely indisputable) guide. Thus weighty and magniloquent architecture became portable-an amazing turn of events-and it did so in a form that was not only informative but robustly beautiful. The combined work of Alfarano and Bonifacio, which was authoritatively published by Michele Cerrati in 1914, stands as a kind of last word in the present volume, where it is appended in reproduction as an insert pasted against the back cover of the book. As the introduction states, the plan also served as the "basis" for the diagrams that form the frontispieces to the various chapters, which seem rather anemic by comparison and sometimes fail to communicate key points.
Papstreisen im Mittelalter. Organisation – Zeremoniell - Rezeption, 2024
Among the research topics related to the papacy and the Roman curia, the mobility of the papal curia in the thirteenth century has caused growing interest starting with the pioneering works of Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, followed at the beginning of the twenty-first century by collective works about Lazio and Umbria. The historiography, by now solid, and a quantitative analysis have made it possible to reconstruct the single itineraries of the pontifical journeys. On this basis the present work aims to provide some interpretative cues regarding the effects of thirteenth-century papal mobility on the host cities. Specifically, we will try to understand the reasons, contexts and the immediate and long-term consequences of the papal stays on the cities of the Patriminio.