Rome fragmented, fragments of Rome. "Giambattista Priranesi" and its "vedute" of the "Urbs" and "Tibur", reflections

• Main Author: Diego Suárez Quevedo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 2014-02-01
• Series: Anales de Historia del Arte
• Subjects: forma urbis romae; fragmenta; bellori; museos capitolinos; grand tour; giambattista piranesi; vedute; ruinas; roma; tibur.
• Online Access: http://revistasculturales.ucm.es/index.php/ANHA/article/view/43607
• ISSN: 0214-6452; 1988-2491

We consider Forma Urbis Romae as a starting point and an example of this question. Made in marble, <em>Forma Urbis Romae</em>, is a map of the Ancient Rome from the end of the 2nd or beginning of the 3rd century; some of its fragments were found in 1562 and incorporated to the Farnesio Collection, studied and published in 1673, at the Fragmenta of Giovan Pietro Bellori, and solemnly deposited in 1742 by Pope Benedictus XIV, as memory that joined architecture, city and time respect to the Urbs, in which already was its real <em>umbilicus </em>-Capitoline Museums in Rome- attending to the three mentioned aspects. Giambattista Nolli, Giuseppe Vasi and Giambattista Piranesi were qualified witnesses immersed in the pontifical politics sponsored by Pope Lambertini which, in full development of the <em>Grand Tour </em>phenomenon, pretended to specified the primal condition of the Eternal City. Attending to certain piranesian vedute, of Rome as well as Tivoli, we reflect on the personal and intense contribution of Piranesi, also considered as fragments, in proposals to appreciate in its context, in the fertile theoretical-practical debate of architecture in the second half of the 18th century, which was the declining of the Modern Age and the beginning of the Contemporary Age, after having marked Renaissance and Baroque landmarks and keys -mainly in architecture and perspective applied to Rome and attempts, which some success, around the city planning of Ancient Rome and the nominated “first archaeology”- to conclude, in metaphor key time-ruin, in a way of returning to the spring of the Renaissance with Filippo Brunelleschi.