ABSTRACT
In this essay, I will trace visual expressions of the Renaissance concept of Roma renascens through a series of paradigmatic printed images dating from the 1540s to the 1570s by Bartolomeo Marliani (d. 1560), Pirro Ligorio (c.1513-83), Leonardo Bufalini (d. 1552) and Mario Cartaro (c.1540-1620). All of these works, which range in format from relatively small book illustrations to sumptuous multi-sheet prints, encapsulate the idea of rebirth through condensing, rearranging or effacing the dimension of time. Like portraits of individuals, these city portraits express a desire to make the absent present – in the case of Rome, a longing to see the past resurrected graphically and brought into direct dialogue with the present – but the mechanisms at work are unique. As a function of miniaturization, certain key elements are invested with totemic power, while others are literally wiped off the face of the map. For precisely this reason, the dynamic dialogue between past and present, a defining characteristic of the Roman Renaissance, finds its most vivid manifestation in imagery of the city: one of the most fertile areas of graphic experimentation, and certainly one of the most untapped, in an otherwise well-studied period of artistic innovation.
