This article examines an early modern album of prints to understand how the medium of print facilitated the exchange of images and ideas between Rome and the Spanish court in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[1] The album once belonged to a larger collection of books on art and archeology assembled at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the bibliophile and art historian Count Leopoldo Cicognara (1767–1834).[2] Pope Leo XII (r. 1823-1829) bought the library from Cicognara in 1824 and transferred it to the Vatican, where it remains today. The album was assembled by an unknown compiler, but can be dated to the seventeenth century given the dates of the prints it includes, the tradition in which it was assembled, and the existence of a similar contemporary album.
The Cicognara album is dedicated to the study of Roman architecture and sculpture but, surprisingly, the final folio contains a perspectival view of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, the palace-monastery of King Philip II of Spain (r. 1557-1598) built outside of Madrid between 1563-1584 (Figure 1).[3]Philip II founded El Escorial as both a place of pious Christian retreat and as a splendid showcase of royal power, seemingly paradoxical functions that were, nevertheless, aligned with the priorities of the Spanish monarchy. The building commemorated the Spanish victory over Henry II of France (r. 1547-1559) in the Battle of St. Quentin (1557) on the feast day of San Lorenzo and housed the remains of deceased members of the royal family. The complex braided together three symbols of Spanish identity: Christian piety, Monarchy, and Catholic militance through its multiple functions as a royal residence, basilica, mausoleum, monastery, and college. By 1579 it was already described as the eighth wonder of the world.[4]
The bird’s-eye view that appears in the Cicognara album presents an all-encompassing perspective that communicates both the grandeur as well as the order and structure of the palace-monastery. The print was etched by Giovanni Maggi (1566-1618) and published in Rome in 1606 by Giovanni Orlandi (fl. 1590-1640). Maggi was a painter and etcher active in Rome from the pontificate of Sixtus V (r. 1585-1590) to the 1630s, best known for his etchings of Roman churches, architecture, and maps. He planned to write an architectural treatise, which was never published, but is known from manuscript versions.[5]Giovanni Orlando was a prolific print seller and publisher for the Roman market.[6]The etching carries a dedication offered by Orlandi to Cardinal Francesco Sforza (1562-1624).
The view of El Escorial in the Cicognara album draws on a rich tradition of representing the Spanish monument in print. It is a copy after an engraving published in Antwerp in 1591, which appeared in a version ofTheatrum orbis terrarum(Theater of the World)by Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598), widely considered the first modern atlas (Figure 2). The Ortelius print is itself a copy after a famous engraving by the Flemish printmaker Pieter Perret (1555-1625) that appeared as the seventh design in theEstampas,a series of twelve architectural drawings of El Escorial engraved in Madrid at the direction of Philip II’s architect Juan de Herrera (1530-1597) (Figure 3). The series was begun in 1583 and published in 1589. While the Ortelius engraving is well known, the Maggi etching has received almost no attention, perhaps because it has been dismissed as a copy of a copy.[7]But it differs from its models in important ways related to the context of Spanish Rome, as I will explore in this article. Viewing the etching in the context of the Cicognara album further enriches this analysis, as it highlights how the Roman print contributed new ideas to early modern views on El Escorial as a building that surpassed the achievements of the ancients and represented the strength of the early modern Catholic Church.
The Cicognara album contains 141 prints, some of which form parts of series, or even entire books, presented under one title page in a continuous progression. The compilation begins with Antonio Labacco’s (ca. 1495-1567) Libro appartenente a l'architettura,first published in Rome in 1552.[8]The Libro was reprinted by Antoine Lafréry (1512-1577), among others, and appeared in that publisher’s stock list in 1572. Labacco’s Librois followed by 114 plates illustrating Roman buildings and monuments, mostly ancient but also early modern, issued by leading publishers in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Rome. The album culminates in the final image of El Escorial.
Since the publication of Cicognara’s descriptive inventory of his collection in 1821, the album has been understood in the tradition of the Speculum romanae magnificentiae(Mirror of Roman Magnificence),a bespoke album of prints of Roman monuments and antiquities that buyers in sixteenth-century Rome could collect from the print shop of Lafréry.[9]In the mid-1570s, Lafréry issued a frontispiece under which such collections could be assembled. Every extant Speculumis different, owing to the individual tastes of collectors and to the fact that bound collections were often added to and rearranged over time. The Cicognara album is a late, looseexample of the Speculumtradition, including prints from Lafréry and other Roman publishers. Given the history of the Speculum,much scholarship on the topic has been devoted to the important work of documenting and describing examples.[10] My intention, instead, is to use the Cicognara album as an opportunity to analyze Maggi’s etching in the context of a larger Roman print tradition and to explore how the Roman image of El Escorial created a bridge connecting related discussions of architecture, antiquarianism, and sacred kingship unfolding between Madrid and Rome.
El Escorial is rarely included in collections assembled around the idea of the Speculum. However, the Ortelius engraving of the Spanish monument—the intermediary print between the Estampasand Maggi’s Roman engraving—can be found in another extended Speculumthat was once part of the collection of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) and is now disbound in six imperial boxes at the British Museum (Figure 2). A manuscript index in a seventeenth-century Italian hand is preserved with the collection and lists the plate of El Escorial among its contents.[11]Other excursions beyond Rome in that album include Constantinople, Venice, and a bird’s-eye view of the Temple of Solomon, published in Antwerp by Christophe Plantin (1519/21-1589).[12] Assembled as they were in the Sloane album, these images invited audiences to compare major political and religious centers of the Christian world, both historical and contemporary, as they traversed the city of Rome by way of the collected prints.
The comparative framework introduced by the prints in the Sloane albumis useful for understanding the Cicognara album. To that end, the second part of this article aims to answer a series of questions introduced by such a framing: what place does El Escorial, a modern Spanish building with no ancient Roman foundation, have in a collection of images of the built city of Rome? How does this Roman print of El Escorial contribute to the story of ancient architecture told in this album? What, in turn, can this album, and the narrative it constructs, tell us about the interest of El Escorial as a Spanish architectural site to viewers in seventeenth-century Rome?
As we shall see, the Cicognara album develops rhetoric used by the Spanish Habsburgs to explicitly link their right to rule to imperial Rome. Philip II was able to couple this perceived authority with the concept of sacred kingship, ideas that were powerfully communicated through the building of El Escorial.[13] The building was further associated with antiquity by way of its relationship to the Temple of Solomon. Although the association with the Temple was not part of the building’s conception, it became a part of its identity even while it was under construction.[14]The Temple was a potent analogy for El Escorial, since it was also a royal house of worship made for a legendarily wise ruler. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, illustrated projects by Spanish authors spread interest in the architecture of the Temple of Solomon, including the reconstruction of the Temple by Benito Arias Montano (1527-1598) published in the Biblia regia (1569-1572); the exegesis on the prophecy of Ezekiel as a description of the Temple by Jerónimo de Prado (1547-1595) and Juan Bautista Villalpando (1552-1608), published in three volumes in Rome between 1596 and 1604; and the discussion of the Temple in an architectural treatise written by Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1606-1682), published in 1678.
By tracing the way that the Cicognara album engages with early modern ideas about El Escorial and Spanish kingship, it becomes clear how print culture was not simply a medium for recording and disseminating knowledge of the built environment in the early modern period. Rather, it was also a medium in which that knowledge was actively produced. Prints continued to construct architectural knowledge as they were organized in albums and placed in libraries alongside other images and books. This article, therefore, complicates the notion of the copy. While the Maggi etching depends on its two prototypes, the relationship among these prints is more complex than a simple genealogy of plates. Scholars have observed that Herrera drew heavily on conventions established in Roman architectural prints in designing the Estampas.[15]Appreciating how the Maggi image, both as a single-sheet print and as a folio placed in the larger context of the Cicognara album, contributed a new perspective to the tradition of representing El Escorial in print will allow us to see how Herrera’s designs resonated in the city that had supplied architectural and graphic knowledge central to the original Spanish project.
Part I
Building Architectural Knowledge in Print: Perret, Ortelius, and Maggi
Though copying was common in the early modern period, printmakers rarely reproduced their models exactly. Instead, they adjusted their sources to make a print that would be successful in a particular market context. The three prints of El Escorial, published in Madrid, Antwerp, and Rome, build on one another, layering new interpretations onto the image of the Spanish monument through alterations and additions to their sources that would have been significant to viewers.
In 1589 Philip II’s architect Juan de Herrera published the twelve architectural prints of El Escorial alongside a Sumario, an accompanying description of the building complex,which worked alongside the images as a printed surrogate for the building.[16] The Estampas provide an outstanding example of the reciprocal nature of prints and buildings, as they came to stand for the building itself. The architects of El Escorial used classical architectural vocabulary to position Philip II specifically, and the Spanish Habsburgs more generally, as the inheritors of the culture and authority of the Roman Empire.[17]The prints furthered that mission.[18]The first architect on the project, Juan Bautista de Toledo, had assisted Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1484-1546) and Michelangelo (1475-1564) on the long and ongoing construction of the new Saint Peter’s in Rome before becoming head architect at the Spanish court.[19]Studying under Juan Bautista, Herrera learned not only Roman classicism but also the idea that an architect should perform the role of an intellectual.[20]After the death of Toledo in 1567, Herrera effectively took over the position of chief architect, a title he was officially granted in 1579. He continued working at El Escorial in the classicizing manner of his mentor and became increasingly interested in architectural theory, collecting a large library of books on mathematics and architecture.[21]Herrera’s drafting skills, evident in Perret’s printed translations of his drawings, demonstrate his training and values. For example, the Estampasdraw heavily on the orthogonal views used by Labacco and Étienne Dupérac (c. 1525-1604) to communicate designs for the new St. Peter’s by Sangallo and Michelangelo.[22]The engraved elevations and sections are carefully shaded to bring the building complex into relief, an effect that allows the print to stand in for the structure itself.
Like the architects of El Escorial, Perret, the engraver of the Estampas,was familiar with Roman discourses on architecture and the epistemic potential of architectural prints to bolster the authority of the architect, the patron, and the site.Originally from Antwerp, Perret worked as a printmaker in Rome from 1579 to 1583 before moving to Madrid to work for Herrera.Among other projects he completed in Rome, Perret engraved a series of ancient sculptures included in the Cicognara album on folios 76, 77, and 78.[23]His experience working in the context of Roman antiquarian printmaking directly prepared him to meet the ideological and graphic demands of Herrera’s project to publish the plans and views of El Escorial in the Roman style.
While it is true that the seventh design of the Estampasquickly became shorthand for representing Spanish imperial power and Christian kingship, the image also took on new resonances depending on the context in which it was published. This is the case for the copy of the print published in Antwerp shortly after the appearance of the Estampas. The Ortelius engraving of El Escorial is dated 1591, but it first appeared in one of his many editions of the Theatrum orbis terrarum in 1603.[24] Printed in Antwerp, a Spanish-controlled city, and dedicated to Philip II, the Theatrum placed the world on paper under the aegis of the Spanish monarch. The atlas made a powerful statement as the Eighty Years’ War (1566-1648) raged in the Habsburg Netherlands, challenging Spanish power in the Low Countries and promoting sovereignty, instead, under a local Protestant government. The Ortelius engraving includes a laudatory poem to Philip II, composed by Michael van der Hagen of Antwerp. The print, therefore, situates the palace-monastery complex within a trans-regional Spanish monarchy that extended across Europe and promotes both Van der Hagen and Ortelius as loyal Spanish subjects.
Where Herrera and Perret worked to visually present El Escorial in the style of Roman architectural prints, Van der Hagen strengthened the connection between the building complex and the translatio imperii through his text. Van der Hagen’s poem cast El Escorial as the eighth wonder of the world, and declared it to be the most magnificent building ever constructed, surpassing even the model of the ancients:
Let Latium or Greece no longer boast in jubilation about their imperial buildings and high royal palaces; let ancient Rome hide its pyramids and aqueducts, its marvelous amphitheaters and ancient circuses… for now in our days, they make what they did not make before, for there is one person in particular, the greatest ruler of the West, that famous Philip, who excels above all wonders, and who erected a building of colossal size. Something similar was never seen in antiquity, and in our time it will be without a peer… the unique defender of apostolical religion, the king, steadfast in his pious yearnings, now with this building finally achieves perpetual homage; in comparison with which this great globe has nothing more impressive to offer… This is the abode of the grandeur of a fearsome God… Who can match the king, and Spain?[25]
By claiming that Philip II erected a building that surpassed even the grandeur of ancient Greco-Roman structures, Van der Hagen created a paragonebetween classical antiquity and early modern Spain. El Escorial deserved praise, he argued, because the Spanish building was not just a palace for the king but was also a Christian temple that celebrated the Spanish monarch’s unparalleled commitment to the defense of the Catholic faith.
In his etching, Maggi reproduced Van der Hagen’s poem, but he updated the text to now address Philip III (r. 1598-1621), who had succeeded his father as King of Spain by the time Orlandi published the print in 1606. With the new address, Philip III becomes “that famous Philip" described by Van der Hagen. While the Spanish monarchy was less controversial in Rome than in the Low Countries, where its authority was more direct, it was still a subject of intense debate and factional strife. The reputation of the Spanish monarchy in Rome vacillated with each incoming pope, whose familial and political allegiances forced him to take the side of either the French or the Spanish.[26]The updated text in Maggi’s print creates continuity between Philip II, represented in the building, and his heir, newly addressed in the poem. Maggi also added insignia from the Spanish royal coat of arms, disassembled and transposed into decorative motifs, to the individual blocks of pavement before the building: a castle, a lion rampant, a fleur-de-lis, striped bands, a double-headed eagle, and the Jerusalem Cross. In Spanish heraldry, these devices are the emblems of Spanish-held territories across Europe, stretching east from the Iberian Peninsula to the Kingdoms of the Two Sicilies and north, across the Alps, to the Duchy of Brabant and the County of Flanders in the Low Countries. The double-headed eagle symbolizes the Habsburg dynasty itself, while the Jerusalem Cross represents the Spanish royal claim to sovereignty over the Holy Land and the monarch’s own connection to the crusades and military orders.[27]
Maggi doubled down on the Christian context for the building in his print. In Perret’s original engraving, the crosses topping the turrets of the building are often obscured by the contours of the surrounding landscape. In contrast, Maggi made these important, thin lines clearly visible against a clean white background. The dedication to Cardinal Sforza adds yet another layer to the print. The coat of arms of the cardinal now emblazons the image at bottom center, along an imaginary vertical axis created from the cupola of the basilica, down through the monumental interior courtyard of the patio de los reyes,across the main portico and through the opening in the exterior walls.[28]Sforza’s cardinal’s hat rests atop the arms of his family house, in which a lion rampant holds a quince branch, creating a visual analogy with the lions in the Spanish heraldry figured on the pavement above, and further emphasizing the alliance between the Cardinal and the King. This alliance had important political ramifications. As a member of a powerful family that had once ruled the Duchy of Milan, which became a territory of the Spanish Habsburgs in 1556, the Cardinal was a supporter of the Spanish faction in Rome. He had fought to defend Spanish power in the Low Countries and became a general captain of the Italian militia under Philip II.[29]In these ways, the Roman etching adds new material to the frame of reference established by Herrera and Ortelius, furthering the success of the image in presenting El Escorial as a modern Christian counterpart to an ancient Roman structure. But beyond this goal, the dedication to Sforza explicitly connects the building to contemporary Rome and the Catholic Church. This statement would have been especially relevant in 1606, the year the print was published. Cardinal Camillo Borghese (1550-1621) had been elected to the pontificate in 1605 as Paul V after the second conclave of that year. The tumultuous year at the Vatican was intensified by increased tensions between Spanish and French agents working to promote a favorable outcome in the conclaves. Though Cardinal Borghese had not been the favorite of the Spanish faction at the conclave in which he was elected, it was hoped that he would be loyal to Spain, given his connections to the crown, including a 2,000-ducat pension from Spain.[30]
Instead of retaining Herrera’s title, which also appears on the Ortelius engraving of 1591, Maggi gave the Roman etching a new label in the Italian vernacular: DISEGNO DI TVTTA LA FABRICA DI S. LORENZO IN ESCVURIAL DEL RE CATOLICO(Plan of the Whole Building of San Lorenzo de El Escorial of the Catholic King). Both Herrera and Ortelius had used the same title for their prints: SCENOGRAPHIA TOTIVS FABRICÆ S. LAURENTII IN ESCORIALI(Perspective of the Whole Building of San Lorenzo de El Escorial).By using the moniker los reyes católicos, a title officially granted to Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452-1516) and Isabel I of Castile (1474-1504) in a papal bull of 1496, Maggi not only oriented viewers of his single-sheet print, but also emphasized the reciprocal relationship between the Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown.
The first state of the Roman print included a printer’s address wedged neatly within the architectural walls of the building complex, at the right of the image just above the laudatory poem.[31] The inscription identifies the location of Orlandi’s print shop near a famous statue that served as a landmark in Rome: “GIOVANNI ORLANDI FORMIS ROMAE A PASQUINO" (Giovanni Orlandi published this in Rome at Pasquino).[32] Although this text was burnished out in the impression pasted into the Cicognara album, it is significant that, like several others in the print-and-bookseller’s district in Rome,[33]Orlandi’s shop, located near the ancient statue of Pasquino, was adjacent to Piazza Navona, where the important Spanish Confraternity of the Resurrection, founded in 1579 by the Spanish ambassador in Rome, met at the church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli. The dedication would have undoubtedly ingratiated Orlandi with his neighbors. The print offers important evidence, therefore, of how publishers in Rome used the conventions of printmaking to appeal to the Spanish community both locally and abroad.
Part II
Between Books and Buildings: The Cicognara Album and Architectural Prints
Understanding how Maggi’s etching of El Escorial drewon its prototypes to communicate ideas of the translatio imperiiwhile also introducingnew aspects that strengthen the ties between El Escorial and Rome, it is now possible to analyze the print in the larger context of the Cicognara album. As mentioned, the core of the album is formed by Labacco’s important architectural treatise, Libro appartenente a l’architettura. Labacco worked for Pope Clement VII (r. 1523-1534) and was a member of the workshop of the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. The Libroreconstructs ancient Roman ruins through highly finished intaglio prints. While books by Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) and Sebastiano Serlio (1475-c. 1554) had been illustrated with woodcuts, Labacco was part of a generation of architects and printmakers establishing a new graphic aesthetic for architectural prints through the use of intaglio. Though more labor-intensive and expensive to produce than woodcuts, intaglio prints could provide more precise visual aids than woodcuts, causing them to gain favor in technical publishing.
The title page of Labacco’s Librois pasted onto the first folio of the Cicognara album, serving as the portal into the compilation of prints (Figure 4). Two muses of architecture stand on either side of a Doric arch that opens onto a view of the ancient Roman city. A view of rubble composed of column bases and moldings extends beyond the structure. These architectural fragments come to life as the winding landscape recedes in space and time: a ruin rises in the middle ground and complete buildings stand tall near the horizon. At left, two diminutive figures in silhouette enter the landscape near an obelisk. The scene evokes a sense of hopeful anticipation in viewers, whose physical engagement with the album promises to bring the ruins to life as they turn the pages and become immersed in the mental recreation of the Roman landscape and its buildings.
A bird’s-eye view of ancient Rome incised by Giacomo Lauro (1583-1645) follows Labacco’s title page (Figure 5). By interrupting the sequence of Labacco’s Libroas it is conventionally bound, the compiler of the album improved on the experience by providing readers with a plan for the imagined journey that unfolds in print in the subsequent folios. To the left and right of Lauro’s plan, a key to the numbered buildings and sites helps to make sense of the reconstructed city, which has been reassembled to form the foundation of a new Christian empire.A historiated border of alternating squares of image and text charts a triumphant, even divinely ordained journey through Roman history, beginning with Romulus and Remus suckling at the she-wolf and ending with Christian martyrs dying for their faith. The image carries a papal privilege—Cum privilegio summi pontificus (with the privilege of the pope)—invoking the modern Christian and commercial sphere in which the print was produced.
Following Lauro’s plan of ancient Rome, the pages of Labacco’s Libro continue in the album in numbered sequence, presenting floor plans, cross sections, and elevations of ancient Roman buildings. After the conclusion of the Libro, subsequent plates of mostly Roman architecture and sculpture by various artists build on the visual style and precepts of Labacco’s work.For example, there are two prints of Sangallo’s wooden model for the new St. Peter’s, also by Labacco but separate from his Libro, in lateral elevations and a section (folios 103, 104, 106) (Figure 6). The prints show the proposed plans as a built structure, solid and imposing against the white background of the page, giving authority to the architect’s designs in a visual language now familiar to a beholder who has just paged through Labbacco.[34]
Several prints in the album bridge the temporal gap between ancient and early modern Rome by positioning architecture with ancient origins at the background of early modern life.In folio 111r, for example, a crowd gathers for a papal benediction in front of Saint Peter’s under construction (Figure 7). This image is a standard print in Speculumcollections, and it is particularly effective at visualizing the architectural layers of the Christian city. The Pope blesses the crowd from the three-story Benediction Loggia built in the second half of the fifteenth century. To the left, we see the pediment of Old Saint Peter’s and the eastern wall and gabled roof of the new structure. The drum to support Michelangelo’s dome is complete, but the dome itself is still wanting.[35] Likewise, in folio 127, fireworks rain down on the Castel Sant’Angelo, the repurposed mausoleum of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (117-138). The print illustrates the girandola, a spectacle held annually in June on the festival of Saints Peter and Paul, as well as to celebrate papal coronations (Figure 8). Presented in the sequence of the album, prints like these, which show ancient structures central to the fabric of early modern life, lend visual support to Lauro’s plan: they build a composite picture of a vibrant Christian capital rising on ancient foundations.
A small group of prints in the album extends these discourses beyond Roman buildings while remaining clearly connected to the album’s main subject. Three prints of equestrian statues etched by Antonio Tempesta (1555?-1630), arranged sequentially on folios 67-69, illustrate this point. The ancient statue of Marcus Aurelius (121-180) performs its role as a visual prototype for the statues of Henry II of France by Daniele da Volterra (1509-1566), and of Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I de’ Medici (r. 1569-1574)[36]by Giambologna (1529-1608) (Figure 9). Through the progression of these single-sheet prints, the viewer gains a clear sense of how antique forms were repurposed as potent symbols of power that could create continuities between ancient emperors and early modern rulers.
The penultimate print in the album is a portrait of the city of Tivoli published in Rome in 1622 by Giovanni Antonio de Paoli (fl. 1589-1630) (Figure 10). It directly precedes Maggi’s etching of El Escorial. The print contains a view of the city surrounded by information, legends, and portraits of noteworthy figures, promoting the importance of the city in paleochristian history. The first portrait in the upper left shows Albunea, a Sibyl from Tivoli who had foretold the coming of Christ in a meeting with Caesar Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE). The legend was recounted in the popular Roman guidebook Mirabilia urbis Romae(Marvels of the City of Rome),[37]which circulated in manuscript form from the twelfth century until it was eventually printed in many editions.[38]At the center of the print, beneath the view of the city, a tablet describes the history of Tivoli. The text tells readers that the first inhabitants of the area were the Sicani—the ancient people of Sicily, which the ancient Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus described as being inhabited by Spanish people (genti Spagnuole[sic]). San Lorenzo (225-258) and Pope Alexander I (c. 75-80-c. 115) stand on either side of the tablet and are described in inscriptions as protectors of the city. The cathedral of Tivoli, like the palace-monastery of El Escorial, is dedicated to San Lorenzo. In these ways, the portrait of Tivoli sets the scene for Maggi’s etching of El Escorial, allowing it to slot seamlessly into this Speculum,this mirror of Rome.
The inclusion of El Escorial in the Cicognara album amplifies the message of the seventh design of Herrera’s Estampas,passed down through Ortelius and Maggi, in ways that we can now appreciate. Moreover, the placement of the print at the end of this extended Speculumcollection furthers the explicit references to Rome made in Maggi’s single-sheet etching. Understood from this perspective, one might begin to see the print of El Escorial on the final folio of the Cicognara album as less of a perplexing addition to the Speculumthan as the justification for the entire compilation of prints: progressing through a careful selection of images, the album builds to its final page, wherein the viewer encounters El Escorial as the Christian equivalent of Roman antiquity and an emblem of the early modern Catholic Church.
The Maggi print and the Cicognara album both construct a genealogy of Spanish architectural knowledge built in Rome. Recognizing this fact allows us to view Maggi’s single-sheet print in a broader context of Roman publishing, beyond the more limited realm of the printmaker’s direct sources. For example, the Spanish Dominican Alfonso Chacón (1530-1599) dedicated his spectacularly illustrated 1576 study of Trajan’s Column to Philip II.[39]In the dedicatory letter, Chacón drew parallels between the emperor Trajan (53-117), who was born in Hispania, and Philip II. Chacón’s volume would have primed viewers in Rome to understand the pro-Spanish messages of the Maggi etching, making it less reliant on the Ortelius and Perret prints to communicate Spanish imperial power and Christian kingship. In these ways, Maggi and Orlandi succeeded in producing a print that could stand on its own.
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Marías, Fernando. El monasterio de El Escorial. Madrid: Anaya, 1990.
Marías, Fernando, Agustín Bustamante García, María Jesús del Olmo García, and Natividad Sánchez Esteban. "El Escorial y la cultura arquitectónica de su tiempo." In El Escorial en la Biblioteca Nacional, 115-219. Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, Dirección General del Libro y Bibliotecas, 1985.
McDonald, Mark. The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: Architecture, Topography, and Military Maps. Series C: Part II. 3 vols. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2019.
McDonald, Mark P. "Pedro Perret and Pedro de Villafranca: Printmakers to the Spanish Hapsburgs." Melbourne Art Journal (2001): 37-51.
Morgan Nichols, Francis. The Marvels of Rome = Mirabilia urbis Romae. 2nd edition, with new introduction, gazetteer, and bibliography by Eileen Gardiner. New York: Italica Press, 1986.
Parshall, Peter. "Antonio Lafreri's Speculum romanae magnificentiae."Print Quarterly23, no. 1 (2003): 3-28.
Rivera Blanco, Jose Javier. Juan Bautista de Toledo y Felipe II.La implantación del clasicismo en España. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1984.
Sánchez Cantón, F. J. La librería de Juan de Herrera. Madrid: CSIC, 1941.
Steindl, Barbara. "Collecting Art Books: The Library of Leopoldo Cicognara and His Bibliographic System." Journal of Art Historiography, no. 26 (2022).
———. "The Early Years of Leopoldo Cicognara’s Book Collection." Journal of Art Historiography, no. 26 (2022).
Stijnman, Ad. Engraving and Etching, 1400-2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes. London: Archetype Publications, 2012.
Stinger, Charles L. The Renaissance in Rome. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.
Tanner, Marie. The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Tschudi, Victor Plahte. Baroque Antiquity: Archaeological Imagination in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Van den Broecke, Marcel. Ortelius Atlas Maps: An Illustrated Guide. 2nd edition. Leiden: Hes & De Graaf, 2011.
Van der Sman, Gert Jan. "Dutch and Flemish Printmakers in Rome, 1565-1600." Print Quarterly22, no. 3 (2005): 251-64.
Vicuña, P. Carlos. "Juan Bautista de Toledo, arquitecto segundo de la fábrica de San Pedro, de Roma."Archivo español de arte39, no. 153 (1966): 1-8.
Visceglia, Maria Antonietta. "International Politics, Factions, and Parties in the Roman Curia During the Late 16th Century." In A Europe of Courts, a Europe of Factions: Political Groups at Early Modern Centres of Power, 1550-1700, edited by Rubén González Cuerva and Alexander Koller, 64-87. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
Wilkinson-Zerner, Catherine (editor).Philip II and the Escorial: Technology and the Representation of Architecture. An Exhibition by the Department of Art, Brown University, January 27 through March 4, 1990, David Winton Bell Gallery, List Art Center, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Providence: Brown University, 1990.
———. Juan de Herrera: Architect to Philip II of Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Witcombe, Christopher L. C. E. Print Publishing in Sixteenth-Century Rome: Growth and Expansion, Rivalry and Murder.London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2008.
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[1] The album is preserved at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Its shelfmark is Cicognara.XII.541. This article began as a shoptalk at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, and I am grateful to Martin Raspe for his comments in that venue. Parts of this article appear in my doctoral thesis "Printmaking in the Rome of Philip II, 1556-1598"(Brown University, 2021). I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers, as well as Maria Elisa Navarro Morales, Evelyn Lincoln, Cristelle Baskins, Emily Friedman, Lora Webb, and Marica Antonucci for their feedback on this text.
[2]For the history of the sale, see: Elena Granuzzo, "Leopoldo Cicognara e la sua biblioteca: formazione e significato di una collezione (I)," Labibliofilía 114 (2012): 231-272; "Leopoldo Cicognara e la sua biblioteca: formazione e significato di una collezione (II)," La bibliofilía 114, no. 3 (2012): 371-412. For Cicognara’s book collection more generally, see Barbara Steindl, "The Early Years of Leopoldo Cicognara’s Book Collection," Journal of Art Historiography, no. 26 (2022); "Collecting Art Books: The Library of Leopoldo Cicognara and His Bibliographic System," Journal of Art Historiography, no. 26 (2022). The collection is currently the subject of an important digital project that has greatly increased accessibility to it and includes a digitized microfiche of the album: https://cicognara.org/catalog/541.
[3] The classic text on the building of El Escorial is George Kubler,Building the Escorial (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). Fernando Marías, El monasterio de El Escorial (Madrid: Anaya, 1990) is another valuable resource.
[4] The building is first described in these terms in 1579 as explained in John Bury, "Early Printed References to the Escorial," in Iberia: Literary and Historical Issues. Studies in Honour of H. V. Livermore, edited by R. O. W. Goertz (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1985), 89-90.
[5] Dizionario biografico degli italiani,Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, s.v. “Giovanni Maggi," accessed August 14, 2023, https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-maggi_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
[6] Dizionario biografico degli italiani,Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, s.v. “Guglielmo Facciotto," accessed August 14, 2023, https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/guglielmo-facciotto_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
[7] For the proliferation of copies of images of El Escorial, see: Pilar Chías Navarro, "La iconografía del monasterio de El Escorial. Tradición e innovación en cuatro siglos de imágenes impresas," EGA: Revista de expresión gráfica arquitectónica 21, no. 28 (2016): 32-43; Juan Manuel Magariños et al., "El Escorial, historia de una imagen," in El Escorial en la Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, Dirección General de Libro y Bibliotecas, 1985), 223-366.
[8]For the printing history of the Libroand its various editions,see: Thomas Ashby, "Il libro d'Antonio Labacco appartenente all'architettura," La bibliofilía 16, no. 7/8 (1914): 289-309; Franz Ehrle, Roma prima di Sisto V. La pianta di Roma Du Pérac-Lafréry del 1577, riprodotta dall'esemplare esistente nel Museo Britannico(Rome: Danesi, 1908), 59, line 600. The edition of Labacco in the Cicognara album is part of a group that was printed in Rome without a year or publisher’s name.
[9] Leopoldo Cicognara, Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità posseduti dal Conte Cicognara(Pisa: N. Capurro, co'caratteri di F. Didot, 1821), vol. 2, 220, entry 3886 describes a two-volume Speculum. The first volume has 93 plates and the second—the volume that is the topic of this essay—has 114 plates following the undated edition of Labacco. For the history of the Speculum, see: Christian Huelsen, "Das Speculum romanae magnificentiae des Antonio Lafreri," in Collectanea variae doctrinae Leoni S. Olschki, bibliopolae florentino, sexagenario (Germany: J. Rosenthal, 1921), 121-170; Peter Parshall, "Antonio Lafreri's Speculum romanae magnificentiae,"Print Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2003): 3-28; Mark McDonald, The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: Architecture, Topography, and Military Maps, 3 vols., Series C: Part II (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2019), vol. 2, 417-95.
[10] Huelsen, "Speculum," and Parshall, “Speculum," exemplify this tradition.
[11] The print is number 157 in the 17th-century manuscript index listing 173 prints (172 plus 1 duplicate entry of no. 138). The list is preserved in the first box of the collection at the British Museum (1947,0319.26). I am grateful to Sarah Vowles for checking the index for me. The only other print showing places outside of Rome in that Speculum isa view of the gardens of Heidelberg castle (1947,0319.26.163) by the German/Swiss printmaker Matthäus Merian I.
[12] British Museum (1947,0319.26.185).
[13] Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 162-182. For the way that the myth of the translatio imperiiresonated in early modern Rome, see Thomas James Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 1500-1700(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 79-83.
[14] Catherine Wilkinson-Zerner, Juan de Herrera: Architect to Philip II of Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993),104.
[15] Wilkinson-Zerner, Juan de Herrera, 48-50.
[16] Juan de Herrera, Sumario y breve declaración de los diseños y estampas de la Fábrica de San Lorencio el Real del Escorial…(Madrid: Widow of Alonso Gómez, 1589); Luis Cervera Vera, LasEstampasy elSumariode El Escorial por Juan de Herrera (Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 1954); Wilkinson-Zerner, Juan de Herrera, 108-15; Catherine Wilkinson-Zerner, Philip II and the Escorial: Technology and the Representation of Architecture: An Exhibition by the Department of Art, Brown University, January 27 through March 4, 1990, David Winton Bell Gallery, List Art Center, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island (Providence: Brown University, 1990); John Bury, "‘Philip II and the Escorial:’ Review of Technology and the Representation of Architecture, by C. Wilkinson-Zerner and C. P. M. Brown," Print Quarterly 8 (1991): 77-82.
[17] Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas.
[18] Wilkinson-Zerner, Juan de Herrera,108-115.
[19] For Juan Bautista de Toledo in Rome, see: P. Carlos Vicuña, "Juan Bautista de Toledo, arquitecto segundo de la fábrica de San Pedro, de Roma," Archivo español de arte 39, no. 153 (1966): 1-8.
[20] For Herrera’s training with Juan Bautista de Toledo see Wilkinson-Zerner, Juan de Herrera, 7-13. This study is also a good source for the importance of antique Roman and contemporary Italian architectural theory in the design of El Escorial. On this topic, also see: Jose Javier Rivera Blanco, Juan Bautista de Toledo y Felipe II. La implantación del clasicismo en España (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1984), 57, 359.
[21] Luis Cervera Vera, Inventario de los bienes de Juan de Herrera(Valencia: Albatros, 1977), nos. 461 through 1156, 158-92; F. J. Sánchez Cantón, La librería de Juan de Herrera (Madrid: CSIC, 1941).
[22] Wilkinson-Zerner, Juan de Herrera, 48-50.
[23] Gert Jan van der Sman, "Dutch and Flemish Printmakers in Rome, 1565-1600," Print Quarterly 22, no. 3 (2005): 251-264; Mark P. McDonald, "Pedro Perret and Pedro de Villafranca: Printmakers to the Spanish Hapsburgs," Melbourne Art Journal (2001): 11.For Perret’s subsequent career in Spain, see: Javier Blas et al., Grabadores extranjeros en la corte española del barroco (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional de España; Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2011), 87-182; Matilde López Serrano, "El grabador Pedro Perret," in El Escorial, 1563-1963(Madrid: Ediciones Patrimonio Nacional, 1963), vol. 2, 689-716; Blanca García Vega, El grabado del libro español: siglos XV, XVI, XVII (Valladolid: Institución Cultural Simancas, Diputación Provincial de Valladolid, 1984), 1: 86; 2: 270-21, 349-52; Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres profesores de las bellas artes en España, 6 vols. (Madrid: La Real Academia de S. Fernando: Imprenta de la Viuda de Ibarra, 1800), 4: 87-93.
[24] Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum (Antwerp: Jan Baptist Vrients, 1603); Marcel van den Broecke, Ortelius Atlas Maps: An Illustrated Guide, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Hes & De Graaf, 2011), 682.
[25] “Ne posthac Latium, aut Græcia iactet ouans;/ Pyramides, et aquæductus, mira Amphiteatra,/ Et Circos veteres Inclyta Roma premat;/…Nam faciunt nostra ad secula, prisca nihil;/ Unus enim Hesperiæ Rex Maximus ille Philippus/ Miracla exuperans omnia condit opus;/ Non opus; at Molem. qualem neque tota vetustas/ Vidit: et hæc ætas non habitura parem./…Relligionis Apostolicæ verum unicus ille/Defensor, voti Rex memor usque pij,/ Sancti operis dudum æternos molitur honores;/ Quo maius nihil hic Maximus Orbis habet./…Maiestate Dei terribilisque locus;/…Quis vero Regi par, atque secundus Ibero?..." Transcription and English translation from: Van den Broecke, Ortelius Atlas Maps, 682.
[26] For a general overview of the Spanish in Rome, see: Dandelet, Spanish Rome. Maria Antonietta Visceglia, "International Politics, Factions, and Parties in the Roman Curia During the Late 16th Century," in A Europe of Courts, a Europe of Factions: Political Groups at Early Modern Centres of Power, 1550-1700, edited by Rubén González Cuerva and Alexander Koller (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 64-87, is a good source on factional conflict.
[27] Chad and Ken Tully Leahy (editors), Jerusalem Afflicted: Quaresmius, Spain, and the Idea of a 17th-Century Crusade (New York: Routledge, 2020) describe connections between Jerusalem, the crusades, and Spanish culture in the Early Modern period.
[28] Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 138.
[29] Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 138.
[30] Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 101-102.
[31] The version of the print in the Cicognara album is the second state of the plate, republished by Henricus van Schoel (c. 1565–1622), who added his name to the plate but did not update the year.
[32] For terms in print addresses, see: Ad Stijnman, Engraving and Etching, 1400-2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes (London: Archetype Publications, 2012), 413-18, and the extended list available here: https://www.delineavit.nl/stijnmans-terms-in-print-addresses/.
[33] Printing in Rome was centered in the neighborhood, or rione,of Parione: Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, Print Publishing in Sixteenth-Century Rome: Growth and Expansion, Rivalry and Murder (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2008), 122.
[34]For the Sangallo/Labacco prints more generally, see: Gianni Baldini, "Di Antonio Labacco Vercellese, architetto romano del secolo XVI," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 37, no. 2/3 (1993): 352. Fernando Marías et al., "El Escorial y la cultura arquitectónica de su tiempo," in El Escorial en la Biblioteca Nacional, 161-70, discuss the prints and their correspondence to aspects of the architecture at El Escorial. On the correspondence between Perret’s engravings of El Escorial and the Sangallo/Labacco engravings, see: Wilkinson-Zerner, Juan de Herrera, 48-50.
[35] Suzanne Boorsch, "The Building of the Vatican: The Papacy and Architecture," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin40, no. 3 (1982/1983): 15-18, charts the building of new St. Peter’s through prints and drawings.
[36] Cosimo was Duke of Florence from 1537-1569 before becoming the first Grand Duke of Tuscany.
[37] Francis Morgan Nichols (translator), The Marvels of Rome = Mirabilia urbis Romae, second edition with introduction, gazetteer, and bibliography by Eileen Gardiner (New York: Italica Press, 1986), 17-18.
[38]For more on how this legend and other prophecies of Christ’s coming were interpreted in the early modern period, see: Victor Plahte Tschudi, Baroque Antiquity: Archaeological Imagination in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 206-233; Charles L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 308-14.
[39]Alfonso Chacón, Historia utriusque belli Dacici a Traiano Caesare gesti(Rome, 1576).
[1] The album is preserved at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Its shelfmark is Cicognara.XII.541. This article began as a shoptalk at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, and I am grateful to Martin Raspe for his comments in that venue. Parts of this article appear in my doctoral thesis "Printmaking in the Rome of Philip II, 1556-1598"(Brown University, 2021). I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers, as well as Maria Elisa Navarro Morales, Evelyn Lincoln, Cristelle Baskins, Emily Friedman, Lora Webb, and Marica Antonucci for their feedback on this text.
[2]For the history of the sale, see: Elena Granuzzo, "Leopoldo Cicognara e la sua biblioteca: formazione e significato di una collezione (I)," Labibliofilía 114 (2012): 231-272; "Leopoldo Cicognara e la sua biblioteca: formazione e significato di una collezione (II)," La bibliofilía 114, no. 3 (2012): 371-412. For Cicognara’s book collection more generally, see Barbara Steindl, "The Early Years of Leopoldo Cicognara’s Book Collection," Journal of Art Historiography, no. 26 (2022); "Collecting Art Books: The Library of Leopoldo Cicognara and His Bibliographic System," Journal of Art Historiography, no. 26 (2022). The collection is currently the subject of an important digital project that has greatly increased accessibility to it and includes a digitized microfiche of the album: https://cicognara.org/catalog/541.
[3] The classic text on the building of El Escorial is George Kubler,Building the Escorial (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). Fernando Marías, El monasterio de El Escorial (Madrid: Anaya, 1990) is another valuable resource.
[4] The building is first described in these terms in 1579 as explained in John Bury, "Early Printed References to the Escorial," in Iberia: Literary and Historical Issues. Studies in Honour of H. V. Livermore, edited by R. O. W. Goertz (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1985), 89-90.
[5] Dizionario biografico degli italiani,Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, s.v. “Giovanni Maggi,” accessed August 14, 2023, https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-maggi_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
[6] Dizionario biografico degli italiani,Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, s.v. “Guglielmo Facciotto,” accessed August 14, 2023, https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/guglielmo-facciotto_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
[7] For the proliferation of copies of images of El Escorial, see: Pilar Chías Navarro, "La iconografía del monasterio de El Escorial. Tradición e innovación en cuatro siglos de imágenes impresas," EGA: Revista de expresión gráfica arquitectónica 21, no. 28 (2016): 32-43; Juan Manuel Magariños et al., "El Escorial, historia de una imagen," in El Escorial en la Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, Dirección General de Libro y Bibliotecas, 1985), 223-366.
[8]For the printing history of the Libroand its various editions,see: Thomas Ashby, "Il libro d'Antonio Labacco appartenente all'architettura," La bibliofilía 16, no. 7/8 (1914): 289-309; Franz Ehrle, Roma prima di Sisto V. La pianta di Roma Du Pérac-Lafréry del 1577, riprodotta dall'esemplare esistente nel Museo Britannico(Rome: Danesi, 1908), 59, line 600. The edition of Labacco in the Cicognara album is part of a group that was printed in Rome without a year or publisher’s name.
[9] Leopoldo Cicognara, Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità posseduti dal Conte Cicognara(Pisa: N. Capurro, co'caratteri di F. Didot, 1821), vol. 2, 220, entry 3886 describes a two-volume Speculum. The first volume has 93 plates and the second—the volume that is the topic of this essay—has 114 plates following the undated edition of Labacco. For the history of the Speculum, see: Christian Huelsen, "Das Speculum romanae magnificentiae des Antonio Lafreri,” in Collectanea variae doctrinae Leoni S. Olschki, bibliopolae florentino, sexagenario (Germany: J. Rosenthal, 1921), 121-170; Peter Parshall, "Antonio Lafreri's Speculum romanae magnificentiae,"Print Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2003): 3-28; Mark McDonald, The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: Architecture, Topography, and Military Maps, 3 vols., Series C: Part II (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2019), vol. 2, 417-95.
[10] Huelsen, "Speculum," and Parshall, “Speculum,” exemplify this tradition.
[11] The print is number 157 in the 17th-century manuscript index listing 173 prints (172 plus 1 duplicate entry of no. 138). The list is preserved in the first box of the collection at the British Museum (1947,0319.26). I am grateful to Sarah Vowles for checking the index for me. The only other print showing places outside of Rome in that Speculum isa view of the gardens of Heidelberg castle (1947,0319.26.163) by the German/Swiss printmaker Matthäus Merian I.
[12] British Museum (1947,0319.26.185).
[13] Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 162-182. For the way that the myth of the translatio imperiiresonated in early modern Rome, see Thomas James Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 1500-1700(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 79-83.
[14] Catherine Wilkinson-Zerner, Juan de Herrera: Architect to Philip II of Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993),104.
[15] Wilkinson-Zerner, Juan de Herrera, 48-50.
[16] Juan de Herrera, Sumario y breve declaración de los diseños y estampas de la Fábrica de San Lorencio el Real del Escorial…(Madrid: Widow of Alonso Gómez, 1589); Luis Cervera Vera, LasEstampasy elSumariode El Escorial por Juan de Herrera (Madrid:
Reception date: March 24, 2023. Acceptance date: August 2, 2023. Date of modifications: August 15, 2023.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25025/hart15.2023.04
Emily Monty
Holds a doctorate in the History of Art and Architecture from Brown University (2021) and a master’s in the History of Art from Tufts University (2012). Her research focuses on the history of print in early modern Europe with a focus on exchanges between Italy and the Iberian world, the history of collecting, and the idea of the copy. She has given courses on early modern art history and the history of print at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. She was a Fulbright Fellow at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; a Samuel H. Kress History of Art Institutional Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institut for Art History, Rome; and a Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. Currently, she is a joint postdoctoral fellow at the Museo Nacional del Prado and Villa I Tatti, The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.[/RAW_REF_TEXT]
This article analyzes an album of prints published in Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, organized in the tradition of the Speculum romanae magnificentiae. The album shows the various uses of architecture and sculpture, both antique and modern, in early modern Rome, and contains an engraving of El Escorial, published in 1606, on its last page. The plate reproduces the famous image realized in Madrid in 1589 for Juan de Herrera’s Estampas and is based on a plate published by Abraham Ortelius in Antwerp in 1591. The article analyzes the album from the point of view of the Roman print of El Escorial and argues that the album works, through its structure, to introduce the building to the print-buying public in Spanish Rome.[/RAW_REF_TEXT]
print, El Escorial, architecture, Rome, antiquity, album.[/RAW_REF_TEXT]
Resumen:
Este artículo estudia un álbum de estampas romanas publicadas durante los siglos XVI y XVII y organizado según la tradición del Speculum romanae magnificentiae. El álbum, además de mostrar los usos variados de la arquitectura y escultura antigua y moderna en Roma, contiene en el último folio una estampa de El Escorial publicada en Roma en 1606. Esta lámina, que reproduce la famosa imagen realizada en 1587 para las Estampas de Juan de Herrera en Madrid, está hecha a partir de la lámina publicada por Abraham Ortelius en Amberes en 1591. El artículo analiza el álbum desde el punto de vista de la lámina romana y argumenta que la manera en que las imágenes se desarrollan en él sirve para introducir el edificio herreriano a un ambiente romano-español.[/RAW_REF_TEXT]
estampa, El Escorial, arquitectura, Roma, antigüedad, álbum.[/RAW_REF_TEXT]
Resumo:
Este artigo estuda um álbum de gravuras romanas publicado durante os séculos XVI e XVII e organizado segundo a tradição do Speculum romanae magnificentiae. O álbum, além de mostrar os vários usos da arquitetura e da escultura antigas e modernas em Roma, contém na última página uma gravura do El Escorial publicada em Roma em 1606. Esta placa, que reproduz a famosa imagem feita em 1587 para as Estampas de Juan de Herrera em Madri, é baseada na placa publicada por Abraham Ortelius em Antuérpia em 1591. O artigo analisa o álbum do ponto de vista da placa romana e argumenta que a forma como as imagens são desenvolvidas nele serve para introduzir o edifício herreriano em um ambiente romano-espanhol.[/RAW_REF_TEXT]
impressão, El Escorial, arquitetura, Roma, antiguidade, álbum.[/RAW_REF_TEXT]
[/RAW_REF_TEXT]
Building Architectural Knowledge in Print: Perret, Ortelius, and Maggi
[/RAW_REF_TEXT]
Between Books and Buildings: The Cicognara Album and Architectural Prints
Understanding how Maggi’s etching of El Escorial drew on its prototypes to communicate ideas of the translatio imperii while also introducing new aspects that strengthen the ties between El Escorial and Rome, it is now possible to analyze the print in the larger context of the Cicognara album. As mentioned, the core of the album is formed by Labacco’s important architectural treatise, Libro appartenente a l’architettura. Labacco worked for Pope Clement VII (r. 1523-1534) and was a member of the workshop of the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. The Libro reconstructs ancient Roman ruins through highly finished intaglio prints. While books by Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) and Sebastiano Serlio (1475-c. 1554) had been illustrated with woodcuts, Labacco was part of a generation of architects and printmakers establishing a new graphic aesthetic for architectural prints through the use of intaglio. Though more labor-intensive and expensive to produce than woodcuts, intaglio prints could provide more precise visual aids than woodcuts, causing them to gain favor in technical publishing.[/RAW_REF_TEXT]
[/RAW_REF_TEXT]
Genealogies of Spanish Architectural Knowledge in Roman Print Reception date: March 24, 2023. Acceptance date: August 2, 2023. Date of modifications: August 15, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25025/hart15.2023.04 Emily Monty Holds a doctorate in the History of Art and Architecture from Brown University (2021) and a master’s in the History of Art from Tufts University (2012). Her research focuses on the history of print in early modern Europe with a focus on exchanges between Italy and the Iberian world, the history of collecting, and the idea of the copy. She has given courses on early modern art history and the history of print at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. She was a Fulbright Fellow at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; a Samuel H. Kress History of Art Institutional Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institut for Art History, Rome; and a Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. Currently, she is a joint postdoctoral fellow at the Museo Nacional del Prado and Villa I Tatti, The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
Abstract: This article analyzes an album of prints published in Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, organized in the tradition of the Speculum romanae magnificentiae. The album shows the various uses of architecture and sculpture, both antique and modern, in early modern Rome, and contains an engraving of El Escorial, published in 1606, on its last page. The plate reproduces the famous image realized in Madrid in 1589 for Juan de Herrera’s Estampas and is based on a plate published by Abraham Ortelius in Antwerp in 1591. The article analyzes the album from the point of view of the Roman print of El Escorial and argues that the album works, through its structure, to introduce the building to the print-buying public in Spanish Rome.
Keywords: print, El Escorial, architecture, Rome, antiquity, album.
Genealogías del conocimiento arquitectónico español en la estampa romana Resumen: Este artículo estudia un álbum de estampas romanas publicadas durante los siglos XVI y XVII y organizado según la tradición del Speculum romanae magnificentiae. El álbum, además de mostrar los usos variados de la arquitectura y escultura antigua y moderna en Roma, contiene en el último folio una estampa de El Escorial publicada en Roma en 1606. Esta lámina, que reproduce la famosa imagen realizada en 1587 para las Estampas de Juan de Herrera en Madrid, está hecha a partir de la lámina publicada por Abraham Ortelius en Amberes en 1591. El artículo analiza el álbum desde el punto de vista de la lámina romana y argumenta que la manera en que las imágenes se desarrollan en él sirve para introducir el edificio herreriano a un ambiente romano-español.
Palabras claves: estampa, El Escorial, arquitectura, Roma, antigüedad, álbum.
Genealogias do conhecimento arquitetônico espanhol em gravuras romanas Resumo: Este artigo estuda um álbum de gravuras romanas publicado durante os séculos XVI e XVII e organizado segundo a tradição do Speculum romanae magnificentiae. O álbum, além de mostrar os vários usos da arquitetura e da escultura antigas e modernas em Roma, contém na última página uma gravura do El Escorial publicada em Roma em 1606. Esta placa, que reproduz a famosa imagem feita em 1587 para as Estampas de Juan de Herrera em Madri, é baseada na placa publicada por Abraham Ortelius em Antuérpia em 1591. O artigo analisa o álbum do ponto de vista da placa romana e argumenta que a forma como as imagens são desenvolvidas nele serve para introduzir o edifício herreriano em um ambiente romano-espanhol.
Palavras-chave: impressão, El Escorial, arquitetura, Roma, antiguidade, álbum.
This article examines an early modern album of prints to understand how the medium of print facilitated the exchange of images and ideas between Rome and the Spanish court in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[1] The album once belonged to a larger collection of books on art and archeology assembled at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the bibliophile and art historian Count Leopoldo Cicognara (1767–1834).[2] Pope Leo XII (r. 1823-1829) bought the library from Cicognara in 1824 and transferred it to the Vatican, where it remains today. The album was assembled by an unknown compiler, but can be dated to the seventeenth century given the dates of the prints it includes, the tradition in which it was assembled, and the existence of a similar contemporary album.
The Cicognara album is dedicated to the study of Roman architecture and sculpture but, surprisingly, the final folio contains a perspectival view of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, the palace-monastery of King Philip II of Spain (r. 1557-1598) built outside of Madrid between 1563-1584 (Figure 1).[3]Philip II founded El Escorial as both a place of pious Christian retreat and as a splendid showcase of royal power, seemingly paradoxical functions that were, nevertheless, aligned with the priorities of the Spanish monarchy. The building commemorated the Spanish victory over Henry II of France (r. 1547-1559) in the Battle of St. Quentin (1557) on the feast day of San Lorenzo and housed the remains of deceased members of the royal family. The complex braided together three symbols of Spanish identity: Christian piety, Monarchy, and Catholic militance through its multiple functions as a royal residence, basilica, mausoleum, monastery, and college. By 1579 it was already described as the eighth wonder of the world.[4]
The bird’s-eye view that appears in the Cicognara album presents an all-encompassing perspective that communicates both the grandeur as well as the order and structure of the palace-monastery. The print was etched by Giovanni Maggi (1566-1618) and published in Rome in 1606 by Giovanni Orlandi (fl. 1590-1640). Maggi was a painter and etcher active in Rome from the pontificate of Sixtus V (r. 1585-1590) to the 1630s, best known for his etchings of Roman churches, architecture, and maps. He planned to write an architectural treatise, which was never published, but is known from manuscript versions.[5]Giovanni Orlando was a prolific print seller and publisher for the Roman market.[6]The etching carries a dedication offered by Orlandi to Cardinal Francesco Sforza (1562-1624).
The view of El Escorial in the Cicognara album draws on a rich tradition of representing the Spanish monument in print. It is a copy after an engraving published in Antwerp in 1591, which appeared in a version ofTheatrum orbis terrarum (Theater of the World) by Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598), widely considered the first modern atlas (Figure 2). The Ortelius print is itself a copy after a famous engraving by the Flemish printmaker Pieter Perret (1555-1625) that appeared as the seventh design in theEstampas, a series of twelve architectural drawings of El Escorial engraved in Madrid at the direction of Philip II’s architect Juan de Herrera (1530-1597) (Figure 3). The series was begun in 1583 and published in 1589. While the Ortelius engraving is well known, the Maggi etching has received almost no attention, perhaps because it has been dismissed as a copy of a copy.[7]But it differs from its models in important ways related to the context of Spanish Rome, as I will explore in this article. Viewing the etching in the context of the Cicognara album further enriches this analysis, as it highlights how the Roman print contributed new ideas to early modern views on El Escorial as a building that surpassed the achievements of the ancients and represented the strength of the early modern Catholic Church.
The Cicognara album contains 141 prints, some of which form parts of series, or even entire books, presented under one title page in a continuous progression. The compilation begins with Antonio Labacco’s (ca. 1495-1567) Libro appartenente a l'architettura, first published in Rome in 1552.[8]The Libro was reprinted by Antoine Lafréry (1512-1577), among others, and appeared in that publisher’s stock list in 1572. Labacco’s Libro is followed by 114 plates illustrating Roman buildings and monuments, mostly ancient but also early modern, issued by leading publishers in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Rome. The album culminates in the final image of El Escorial.
Since the publication of Cicognara’s descriptive inventory of his collection in 1821, the album has been understood in the tradition of the Speculum romanae magnificentiae (Mirror of Roman Magnificence), a bespoke album of prints of Roman monuments and antiquities that buyers in sixteenth-century Rome could collect from the print shop of Lafréry.[9]In the mid-1570s, Lafréry issued a frontispiece under which such collections could be assembled. Every extant Speculum is different, owing to the individual tastes of collectors and to the fact that bound collections were often added to and rearranged over time. The Cicognara album is a late, loose example of the Speculum tradition, including prints from Lafréry and other Roman publishers. Given the history of the Speculum, much scholarship on the topic has been devoted to the important work of documenting and describing examples.[10] My intention, instead, is to use the Cicognara album as an opportunity to analyze Maggi’s etching in the context of a larger Roman print tradition and to explore how the Roman image of El Escorial created a bridge connecting related discussions of architecture, antiquarianism, and sacred kingship unfolding between Madrid and Rome.
El Escorial is rarely included in collections assembled around the idea of the Speculum. However, the Ortelius engraving of the Spanish monument—the intermediary print between the Estampas and Maggi’s Roman engraving—can be found in another extended Speculum that was once part of the collection of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) and is now disbound in six imperial boxes at the British Museum (Figure 2). A manuscript index in a seventeenth-century Italian hand is preserved with the collection and lists the plate of El Escorial among its contents.[11]Other excursions beyond Rome in that album include Constantinople, Venice, and a bird’s-eye view of the Temple of Solomon, published in Antwerp by Christophe Plantin (1519/21-1589).[12] Assembled as they were in the Sloane album, these images invited audiences to compare major political and religious centers of the Christian world, both historical and contemporary, as they traversed the city of Rome by way of the collected prints.
The comparative framework introduced by the prints in the Sloane album is useful for understanding the Cicognara album. To that end, the second part of this article aims to answer a series of questions introduced by such a framing: what place does El Escorial, a modern Spanish building with no ancient Roman foundation, have in a collection of images of the built city of Rome? How does this Roman print of El Escorial contribute to the story of ancient architecture told in this album? What, in turn, can this album, and the narrative it constructs, tell us about the interest of El Escorial as a Spanish architectural site to viewers in seventeenth-century Rome?
As we shall see, the Cicognara album develops rhetoric used by the Spanish Habsburgs to explicitly link their right to rule to imperial Rome. Philip II was able to couple this perceived authority with the concept of sacred kingship, ideas that were powerfully communicated through the building of El Escorial.[13] The building was further associated with antiquity by way of its relationship to the Temple of Solomon. Although the association with the Temple was not part of the building’s conception, it became a part of its identity even while it was under construction.[14]The Temple was a potent analogy for El Escorial, since it was also a royal house of worship made for a legendarily wise ruler. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, illustrated projects by Spanish authors spread interest in the architecture of the Temple of Solomon, including the reconstruction of the Temple by Benito Arias Montano (1527-1598) published in the Biblia regia (1569-1572); the exegesis on the prophecy of Ezekiel as a description of the Temple by Jerónimo de Prado (1547-1595) and Juan Bautista Villalpando (1552-1608), published in three volumes in Rome between 1596 and 1604; and the discussion of the Temple in an architectural treatise written by Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1606-1682), published in 1678.
By tracing the way that the Cicognara album engages with early modern ideas about El Escorial and Spanish kingship, it becomes clear how print culture was not simply a medium for recording and disseminating knowledge of the built environment in the early modern period. Rather, it was also a medium in which that knowledge was actively produced. Prints continued to construct architectural knowledge as they were organized in albums and placed in libraries alongside other images and books. This article, therefore, complicates the notion of the copy. While the Maggi etching depends on its two prototypes, the relationship among these prints is more complex than a simple genealogy of plates. Scholars have observed that Herrera drew heavily on conventions established in Roman architectural prints in designing the Estampas.[15]Appreciating how the Maggi image, both as a single-sheet print and as a folio placed in the larger context of the Cicognara album, contributed a new perspective to the tradition of representing El Escorial in print will allow us to see how Herrera’s designs resonated in the city that had supplied architectural and graphic knowledge central to the original Spanish project.
Part I Building Architectural Knowledge in Print: Perret, Ortelius, and Maggi
Though copying was common in the early modern period, printmakers rarely reproduced their models exactly. Instead, they adjusted their sources to make a print that would be successful in a particular market context. The three prints of El Escorial, published in Madrid, Antwerp, and Rome, build on one another, layering new interpretations onto the image of the Spanish monument through alterations and additions to their sources that would have been significant to viewers.
In 1589 Philip II’s architect Juan de Herrera published the twelve architectural prints of El Escorial alongside a Sumario, an accompanying description of the building complex, which worked alongside the images as a printed surrogate for the building.[16] The Estampas provide an outstanding example of the reciprocal nature of prints and buildings, as they came to stand for the building itself. The architects of El Escorial used classical architectural vocabulary to position Philip II specifically, and the Spanish Habsburgs more generally, as the inheritors of the culture and authority of the Roman Empire.[17]The prints furthered that mission.[18]The first architect on the project, Juan Bautista de Toledo, had assisted Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1484-1546) and Michelangelo (1475-1564) on the long and ongoing construction of the new Saint Peter’s in Rome before becoming head architect at the Spanish court.[19]Studying under Juan Bautista, Herrera learned not only Roman classicism but also the idea that an architect should perform the role of an intellectual.[20]After the death of Toledo in 1567, Herrera effectively took over the position of chief architect, a title he was officially granted in 1579. He continued working at El Escorial in the classicizing manner of his mentor and became increasingly interested in architectural theory, collecting a large library of books on mathematics and architecture.[21]Herrera’s drafting skills, evident in Perret’s printed translations of his drawings, demonstrate his training and values. For example, the Estampasdraw heavily on the orthogonal views used by Labacco and Étienne Dupérac (c. 1525-1604) to communicate designs for the new St. Peter’s by Sangallo and Michelangelo.[22]The engraved elevations and sections are carefully shaded to bring the building complex into relief, an effect that allows the print to stand in for the structure itself.
Like the architects of El Escorial, Perret, the engraver of the Estampas, was familiar with Roman discourses on architecture and the epistemic potential of architectural prints to bolster the authority of the architect, the patron, and the site. Originally from Antwerp, Perret worked as a printmaker in Rome from 1579 to 1583 before moving to Madrid to work for Herrera. Among other projects he completed in Rome, Perret engraved a series of ancient sculptures included in the Cicognara album on folios 76, 77, and 78.[23]His experience working in the context of Roman antiquarian printmaking directly prepared him to meet the ideological and graphic demands of Herrera’s project to publish the plans and views of El Escorial in the Roman style.
While it is true that the seventh design of the Estampas quickly became shorthand for representing Spanish imperial power and Christian kingship, the image also took on new resonances depending on the context in which it was published. This is the case for the copy of the print published in Antwerp shortly after the appearance of the Estampas. The Ortelius engraving of El Escorial is dated 1591, but it first appeared in one of his many editions of the Theatrum orbis terrarum in 1603.[24] Printed in Antwerp, a Spanish-controlled city, and dedicated to Philip II, the Theatrum placed the world on paper under the aegis of the Spanish monarch. The atlas made a powerful statement as the Eighty Years’ War (1566-1648) raged in the Habsburg Netherlands, challenging Spanish power in the Low Countries and promoting sovereignty, instead, under a local Protestant government. The Ortelius engraving includes a laudatory poem to Philip II, composed by Michael van der Hagen of Antwerp. The print, therefore, situates the palace-monastery complex within a trans-regional Spanish monarchy that extended across Europe and promotes both Van der Hagen and Ortelius as loyal Spanish subjects.
Where Herrera and Perret worked to visually present El Escorial in the style of Roman architectural prints, Van der Hagen strengthened the connection between the building complex and the translatio imperii through his text. Van der Hagen’s poem cast El Escorial as the eighth wonder of the world, and declared it to be the most magnificent building ever constructed, surpassing even the model of the ancients:
Let Latium or Greece no longer boast in jubilation about their imperial buildings and high royal palaces; let ancient Rome hide its pyramids and aqueducts, its marvelous amphitheaters and ancient circuses… for now in our days, they make what they did not make before, for there is one person in particular, the greatest ruler of the West, that famous Philip, who excels above all wonders, and who erected a building of colossal size. Something similar was never seen in antiquity, and in our time it will be without a peer… the unique defender of apostolical religion, the king, steadfast in his pious yearnings, now with this building finally achieves perpetual homage; in comparison with which this great globe has nothing more impressive to offer… This is the abode of the grandeur of a fearsome God… Who can match the king, and Spain?[25]
By claiming that Philip II erected a building that surpassed even the grandeur of ancient Greco-Roman structures, Van der Hagen created a paragone between classical antiquity and early modern Spain. El Escorial deserved praise, he argued, because the Spanish building was not just a palace for the king but was also a Christian temple that celebrated the Spanish monarch’s unparalleled commitment to the defense of the Catholic faith.
In his etching, Maggi reproduced Van der Hagen’s poem, but he updated the text to now address Philip III (r. 1598-1621), who had succeeded his father as King of Spain by the time Orlandi published the print in 1606. With the new address, Philip III becomes “that famous Philip” described by Van der Hagen. While the Spanish monarchy was less controversial in Rome than in the Low Countries, where its authority was more direct, it was still a subject of intense debate and factional strife. The reputation of the Spanish monarchy in Rome vacillated with each incoming pope, whose familial and political allegiances forced him to take the side of either the French or the Spanish.[26]The updated text in Maggi’s print creates continuity between Philip II, represented in the building, and his heir, newly addressed in the poem. Maggi also added insignia from the Spanish royal coat of arms, disassembled and transposed into decorative motifs, to the individual blocks of pavement before the building: a castle, a lion rampant, a fleur-de-lis, striped bands, a double-headed eagle, and the Jerusalem Cross. In Spanish heraldry, these devices are the emblems of Spanish-held territories across Europe, stretching east from the Iberian Peninsula to the Kingdoms of the Two Sicilies and north, across the Alps, to the Duchy of Brabant and the County of Flanders in the Low Countries. The double-headed eagle symbolizes the Habsburg dynasty itself, while the Jerusalem Cross represents the Spanish royal claim to sovereignty over the Holy Land and the monarch’s own connection to the crusades and military orders.[27]
Maggi doubled down on the Christian context for the building in his print. In Perret’s original engraving, the crosses topping the turrets of the building are often obscured by the contours of the surrounding landscape. In contrast, Maggi made these important, thin lines clearly visible against a clean white background. The dedication to Cardinal Sforza adds yet another layer to the print. The coat of arms of the cardinal now emblazons the image at bottom center, along an imaginary vertical axis created from the cupola of the basilica, down through the monumental interior courtyard of the patio de los reyes, across the main portico and through the opening in the exterior walls.[28]Sforza’s cardinal’s hat rests atop the arms of his family house, in which a lion rampant holds a quince branch, creating a visual analogy with the lions in the Spanish heraldry figured on the pavement above, and further emphasizing the alliance between the Cardinal and the King. This alliance had important political ramifications. As a member of a powerful family that had once ruled the Duchy of Milan, which became a territory of the Spanish Habsburgs in 1556, the Cardinal was a supporter of the Spanish faction in Rome. He had fought to defend Spanish power in the Low Countries and became a general captain of the Italian militia under Philip II.[29]In these ways, the Roman etching adds new material to the frame of reference established by Herrera and Ortelius, furthering the success of the image in presenting El Escorial as a modern Christian counterpart to an ancient Roman structure. But beyond this goal, the dedication to Sforza explicitly connects the building to contemporary Rome and the Catholic Church. This statement would have been especially relevant in 1606, the year the print was published. Cardinal Camillo Borghese (1550-1621) had been elected to the pontificate in 1605 as Paul V after the second conclave of that year. The tumultuous year at the Vatican was intensified by increased tensions between Spanish and French agents working to promote a favorable outcome in the conclaves. Though Cardinal Borghese had not been the favorite of the Spanish faction at the conclave in which he was elected, it was hoped that he would be loyal to Spain, given his connections to the crown, including a 2,000-ducat pension from Spain.[30]
Instead of retaining Herrera’s title, which also appears on the Ortelius engraving of 1591, Maggi gave the Roman etching a new label in the Italian vernacular: DISEGNO DI TVTTA LA FABRICA DI S. LORENZO IN ESCVURIAL DEL RE CATOLICO (Plan of the Whole Building of San Lorenzo de El Escorial of the Catholic King). Both Herrera and Ortelius had used the same title for their prints: SCENOGRAPHIA TOTIVS FABRICÆ S. LAURENTII IN ESCORIALI (Perspective of the Whole Building of San Lorenzo de El Escorial). By using the moniker los reyes católicos, a title officially granted to Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452-1516) and Isabel I of Castile (1474-1504) in a papal bull of 1496, Maggi not only oriented viewers of his single-sheet print, but also emphasized the reciprocal relationship between the Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown.
The first state of the Roman print included a printer’s address wedged neatly within the architectural walls of the building complex, at the right of the image just above the laudatory poem.[31] The inscription identifies the location of Orlandi’s print shop near a famous statue that served as a landmark in Rome: “GIOVANNI ORLANDI FORMIS ROMAE A PASQUINO” (Giovanni Orlandi published this in Rome at Pasquino).[32] Although this text was burnished out in the impression pasted into the Cicognara album, it is significant that, like several others in the print-and-bookseller’s district in Rome,[33]Orlandi’s shop, located near the ancient statue of Pasquino, was adjacent to Piazza Navona, where the important Spanish Confraternity of the Resurrection, founded in 1579 by the Spanish ambassador in Rome, met at the church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli. The dedication would have undoubtedly ingratiated Orlandi with his neighbors. The print offers important evidence, therefore, of how publishers in Rome used the conventions of printmaking to appeal to the Spanish community both locally and abroad.
Part II Between Books and Buildings: The Cicognara Album and Architectural Prints Understanding how Maggi’s etching of El Escorial drew on its prototypes to communicate ideas of the translatio imperii while also introducing new aspects that strengthen the ties between El Escorial and Rome, it is now possible to analyze the print in the larger context of the Cicognara album. As mentioned, the core of the album is formed by Labacco’s important architectural treatise, Libro appartenente a l’architettura. Labacco worked for Pope Clement VII (r. 1523-1534) and was a member of the workshop of the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. The Libro reconstructs ancient Roman ruins through highly finished intaglio prints. While books by Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) and Sebastiano Serlio (1475-c. 1554) had been illustrated with woodcuts, Labacco was part of a generation of architects and printmakers establishing a new graphic aesthetic for architectural prints through the use of intaglio. Though more labor-intensive and expensive to produce than woodcuts, intaglio prints could provide more precise visual aids than woodcuts, causing them to gain favor in technical publishing.
The title page of Labacco’s Libro is pasted onto the first folio of the Cicognara album, serving as the portal into the compilation of prints (Figure 4). Two muses of architecture stand on either side of a Doric arch that opens onto a view of the ancient Roman city. A view of rubble composed of column bases and moldings extends beyond the structure. These architectural fragments come to life as the winding landscape recedes in space and time: a ruin rises in the middle ground and complete buildings stand tall near the horizon. At left, two diminutive figures in silhouette enter the landscape near an obelisk. The scene evokes a sense of hopeful anticipation in viewers, whose physical engagement with the album promises to bring the ruins to life as they turn the pages and become immersed in the mental recreation of the Roman landscape and its buildings.
A bird’s-eye view of ancient Rome incised by Giacomo Lauro (1583-1645) follows Labacco’s title page (Figure 5). By interrupting the sequence of Labacco’s Libro as it is conventionally bound, the compiler of the album improved on the experience by providing readers with a plan for the imagined journey that unfolds in print in the subsequent folios. To the left and right of Lauro’s plan, a key to the numbered buildings and sites helps to make sense of the reconstructed city, which has been reassembled to form the foundation of a new Christian empire.A historiated border of alternating squares of image and text charts a triumphant, even divinely ordained journey through Roman history, beginning with Romulus and Remus suckling at the she-wolf and ending with Christian martyrs dying for their faith. The image carries a papal privilege—Cum privilegio summi pontificus (with the privilege of the pope)—invoking the modern Christian and commercial sphere in which the print was produced.
Following Lauro’s plan of ancient Rome, the pages of Labacco’s Libro continue in the album in numbered sequence, presenting floor plans, cross sections, and elevations of ancient Roman buildings. After the conclusion of the Libro, subsequent plates of mostly Roman architecture and sculpture by various artists build on the visual style and precepts of Labacco’s work. For example, there are two prints of Sangallo’s wooden model for the new St. Peter’s, also by Labacco but separate from his Libro, in lateral elevations and a section (folios 103, 104, 106) (Figure 6). The prints show the proposed plans as a built structure, solid and imposing against the white background of the page, giving authority to the architect’s designs in a visual language now familiar to a beholder who has just paged through Labbacco.[34]
Several prints in the album bridge the temporal gap between ancient and early modern Rome by positioning architecture with ancient origins at the background of early modern life. In folio 111r, for example, a crowd gathers for a papal benediction in front of Saint Peter’s under construction (Figure 7). This image is a standard print in Speculum collections, and it is particularly effective at visualizing the architectural layers of the Christian city. The Pope blesses the crowd from the three-story Benediction Loggia built in the second half of the fifteenth century. To the left, we see the pediment of Old Saint Peter’s and the eastern wall and gabled roof of the new structure. The drum to support Michelangelo’s dome is complete, but the dome itself is still wanting.[35] Likewise, in folio 127, fireworks rain down on the Castel Sant’Angelo, the repurposed mausoleum of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (117-138). The print illustrates the girandola, a spectacle held annually in June on the festival of Saints Peter and Paul, as well as to celebrate papal coronations (Figure 8). Presented in the sequence of the album, prints like these, which show ancient structures central to the fabric of early modern life, lend visual support to Lauro’s plan: they build a composite picture of a vibrant Christian capital rising on ancient foundations.
A small group of prints in the album extends these discourses beyond Roman buildings while remaining clearly connected to the album’s main subject. Three prints of equestrian statues etched by Antonio Tempesta (1555?-1630), arranged sequentially on folios 67-69, illustrate this point. The ancient statue of Marcus Aurelius (121-180) performs its role as a visual prototype for the statues of Henry II of France by Daniele da Volterra (1509-1566), and of Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I de’ Medici (r. 1569-1574)[36]by Giambologna (1529-1608) (Figure 9). Through the progression of these single-sheet prints, the viewer gains a clear sense of how antique forms were repurposed as potent symbols of power that could create continuities between ancient emperors and early modern rulers.
The penultimate print in the album is a portrait of the city of Tivoli published in Rome in 1622 by Giovanni Antonio de Paoli (fl. 1589-1630) (Figure 10). It directly precedes Maggi’s etching of El Escorial. The print contains a view of the city surrounded by information, legends, and portraits of noteworthy figures, promoting the importance of the city in paleochristian history. The first portrait in the upper left shows Albunea, a Sibyl from Tivoli who had foretold the coming of Christ in a meeting with Caesar Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE). The legend was recounted in the popular Roman guidebook Mirabilia urbis Romae (Marvels of the City of Rome),[37]which circulated in manuscript form from the twelfth century until it was eventually printed in many editions.[38]At the center of the print, beneath the view of the city, a tablet describes the history of Tivoli. The text tells readers that the first inhabitants of the area were the Sicani—the ancient people of Sicily, which the ancient Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus described as being inhabited by Spanish people (genti Spagnuole [sic]). San Lorenzo (225-258) and Pope Alexander I (c. 75-80-c. 115) stand on either side of the tablet and are described in inscriptions as protectors of the city. The cathedral of Tivoli, like the palace-monastery of El Escorial, is dedicated to San Lorenzo. In these ways, the portrait of Tivoli sets the scene for Maggi’s etching of El Escorial, allowing it to slot seamlessly into this Speculum,this mirror of Rome.
The inclusion of El Escorial in the Cicognara album amplifies the message of the seventh design of Herrera’s Estampas, passed down through Ortelius and Maggi, in ways that we can now appreciate. Moreover, the placement of the print at the end of this extended Speculum collection furthers the explicit references to Rome made in Maggi’s single-sheet etching. Understood from this perspective, one might begin to see the print of El Escorial on the final folio of the Cicognara album as less of a perplexing addition to the Speculum than as the justification for the entire compilation of prints: progressing through a careful selection of images, the album builds to its final page, wherein the viewer encounters El Escorial as the Christian equivalent of Roman antiquity and an emblem of the early modern Catholic Church.
The Maggi print and the Cicognara album both construct a genealogy of Spanish architectural knowledge built in Rome. Recognizing this fact allows us to view Maggi’s single-sheet print in a broader context of Roman publishing, beyond the more limited realm of the printmaker’s direct sources. For example, the Spanish Dominican Alfonso Chacón (1530-1599) dedicated his spectacularly illustrated 1576 study of Trajan’s Column to Philip II.[39]In the dedicatory letter, Chacón drew parallels between the emperor Trajan (53-117), who was born in Hispania, and Philip II. Chacón’s volume would have primed viewers in Rome to understand the pro-Spanish messages of the Maggi etching, making it less reliant on the Ortelius and Perret prints to communicate Spanish imperial power and Christian kingship. In these ways, Maggi and Orlandi succeeded in producing a print that could stand on its own.
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