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PANVINIO AND DESCRIPTIO: RENDITIONS OF HISTORY AND ANTIQUITY IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

William Stenhouse
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Abstract

This article argues that Onofrio Panvinio's 1571 study of the Roman triumph embodies a central innovation of sixteenth-century classical scholarship, the use of visual reconstructions alongside textual accounts to communicate the details of ancient ceremonies. Panvinio built on the work of predecessors, most notably Pirro Ligorio, to produce a densely-detailed image of the triumphal procession in the style of Roman bas-reliefs, using the evidence of coins, friezes and texts. This illustration can be seen as an alternative historical rendition, rather than as an accompaniment to a textual description of the triumph. More generally, it reveals the creativity of Renaissance antiquarianism, a movement usually seen as devoted to the dry accumulation of evidence about antiquity, not its imaginative interpretation.

Questo articolo deduce che lo studio di Onofrio Panvinio del 1571 del trionfo romano incarna un'innovazione centrale della tradizione classica del XVI secolo, ovvero l'uso della ricostruzione visiva lungo i resoconti testuali per comunicare i dettagli delle antiche cerimonie. Panvinio costruì sul lavoro dei predecessori, più in particolare di Pirro Ligorio, per produrre un'imagine densamente dettagliata della processione trionfale nello stile del basso-rilievo romano, usando l'evidenza delle monete, dei fregi e dei testi. Questa illustrazione può essere vista come una rappresentazione storica alternativa, piuttosto che un accompagnamento ad una descrizione testuale del trionfo. Più generalmente, rivela la creatività dell'antiquaria rinascente, un movimento usualmente visto come dedicato ad un accumulo arido di evidenza sull'antichità, non nella sua interpretazione immaginifica.

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Articles
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Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 80 , October 2012 , pp. 233 - 256
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Copyright © British School at Rome 2012

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Footnotes

1

I started working on Panvinio's triumphs when I was a fellow at the Italian Academy, Columbia University: I am grateful for the support of that wonderful institution, to audiences there and at the Rebirth of Antiquity conference at Princeton in 2007 (where I presented some of this material), and to Irina Oryshkevich, Tanya Pollard, the readers for the Papers, and the Editor for their comments on written versions of this article.

References

2 Weisbach, W., Trionfi (Berlin, 1919)Google Scholar remains a useful survey of adaptations of the triumph. For artistic responses, see, for example, Pinelli, A., ‘Feste e trionfi’, in Settis, S. (ed.), Memoria dell'antico nell'arte italiana, 3 vols (Turin, 1984–6), III, 281–350Google Scholar, and Starn, R., ‘Renaissance triumphalism in art’, in Martin, J. (ed.), The Renaissance World (New York, 2007), 326–46Google Scholar. The two editions were entitled Comentario dell'uso et ordini de' trionfi antichi and De Triumpho Commentarius. See Tinto, A., Annali tipografici dei Tramezzino (Venice, 1968), 84–5, 95Google Scholar, and Ferrary, J.-L., Onofrio Panvinio et les antiquités romaines (Rome, 1996), 212–13Google Scholar. The Italian version of Panvinio's work was reprinted in 1965 with useful notes. Michele Tramezzino and his brother, Francesco, published other works on the ancient world in both languages, including Lucio Fauno's guide to Rome: see Tinto, Annali tipografici (above), XX.

3 See Hall, M., After Raphael: Painting in Central Italy in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1999), 15–20, 73–6Google Scholar.

4 See Farinella, V., Archeologia e pittura a Roma tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento: il caso di Jacopo Ripanda (Turin, 1992), esp. pp. 137–8Google Scholar.

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6 See the rich discussion of Barkan, L., Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (New Haven, 1999), 119–69Google Scholar, who noted, however, that while ‘[r]enaissance observers generally believed in the existence of one true completion of fragmentary bodies’, in practice they ‘were faced with the near impossibility of realizing these true completions and of choosing among a plurality of iconographic claims’ (p. 128). On the potentialities of fragments and ruins, see also Heuer, C., ‘Hieronymus Cock's aesthetic of collapse’, Oxford Art Journal 32 (2009), 387–408CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Edited in Shearman, J., Raphael in Early Modern Sources (1483–1602), 2 vols (New Haven, 2003), I, 519–20Google Scholar: ‘havendomi Vostra Santità comandato che io ponessi in disegno Roma anticha, quanto conoscier si può per quello che oggidì si vede, con gli edificii che di sé dimostrano tal reliquie, che per vero argumento si possono infallibilmente ridurre nel termine proprio come stavano, facendo quelli membri che sono in tutto ruinati, né si veggono punto, conrespondenti a quelli che restano in piedi e che si veggono’. Translation from Hart, V. and Hicks, P., Palladio's Rome: a Translation of Andrea Palladio's Two Guidebooks to Rome (New Haven, 2006), 181Google Scholar. See Rowland, I., ‘Raphael, Angelo Colocci, and the genesis of the architectural orders’, Art Bulletin 76 (1994), 81–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Brothers, C., ‘Architecture, history, archaeology: drawing ancient Rome in the letter to Leo X and in sixteenth-century practice’, in Jones, L. and Matthew, L. (eds), Coming About — a Festschrift for John Shearman (Cambridge (MA), 2001), 135–40Google Scholar.

8 Shearman, Raphael in Early Modern Sources (above, n. 7), I, 520: ‘E benché io habbia cavato da molti auctori Latini quello che io intendo di dimostrare, tra gli altri nondimeno ho principalmente seguitato P. Victore’. ‘Publius Victor’ was a late fifteenth-century adaptation of the ancient regionaries, first published in 1503.

9 Jacks, P., ‘The Simulachrum of Fabio Calvo: a view of Roman architecture all'antica in 1527’, Art Bulletin 72 (1990), 453–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 The literature on Ligorio is increasingly large: important recent works on his antiquarian undertakings include Occhipinti, C., Pirro Ligorio e la storia cristiana di Roma da Costantino all'Umanesimo (Pisa, 2007), XXIX–XCIIGoogle Scholar, and Schreurs, A., Antikenbild und Kunstanschauungen des Neapolitanischen Malers, Architekten und Antiquars Pirro Ligorio (1513–1583) (Cologne, 2000)Google Scholar.

11 For Ligorio's interest in reliefs, see Dessau, H., ‘Römische Reliefs, beschreiben von Pirro Ligorio’, Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1883), 1,077–105Google Scholar, and more generally Herklotz, I., ‘Antike Sarkophagreliefs zwischen Mythenallegorese und Realienkunde. Hermeneutische Schulen in der Archäologie des 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Wrede, H. and Kunze, M. (eds), 300 Jahre “Thesaurus Brandenburgicus”: Archäologie, Antikensammlungen und Antikisierende Residenzausstattungen im Barock (Munich, 2006), 261–94Google Scholar. His reconstructions could take various forms: see, for example, Mandowsky, E. and Mitchell, C., Pirro Ligorio's Roman Antiquities: the Drawings in MS XIII.B.7 in the National Library of Naples (London, 1963), esp. pp. 62–3Google Scholar; Varro, Marcus Terentius, Gespräche über die Landwirtschaft, Buch 3, ed. Flach, D. (Darmstadt, 2002), 18–28Google Scholar; Siraisi, N., History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (Ann Arbor, 2007), 47–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, of fundamental importance, Burns, H., ‘Pirro Ligorio's reconstruction of ancient Rome: the Anteiqvae Vrbis Imago of 1561’, in Gaston, R. (ed.), Pirro Ligorio: Artist and Antiquarian (Milan, 1988), 19–92Google Scholar. For his style, see the comments of Burns (‘Pirro Ligorio's reconstruction of ancient Rome’ (above), 32): ‘Ligorio's on-the-spot researches may have contributed to the form the reconstruction took, but they have been overlaid with details derived from ancient representations, and the final result presented as if the artist were actually himself an ancient Roman’, and (35) ‘Ligorio … often dispenses with conventional Renaissance perspective, favoring instead … the compositional and spatial conventions of Roman reliefs’.

12 Velli, S. Tomasi, ‘Gli antiquari intorno al circo Romano. Riscoperta di una tipologia monumentale antica’, Annali della Scuola Normale di Pisa s. 3, 20 (1990), 61–168Google Scholar; Bell, S., ‘Responding to the antique. A rediscovered Roman circus sarcophagus and its renaissance afterlife’, Pegasus 7 (2005), 57–60Google Scholar; Tomasi Velli, S., ‘Pirro Ligorio, tra ricostruzione antiquaria e invenzione: i circhi e le naumachie di Roma’, in Carrara, E. and Ginzburg, S. (eds), Testi, immagini e filologia nel XVI secolo (Pisa, 2007), 225–46Google Scholar; and Burns, ‘Pirro Ligorio's reconstruction of ancient Rome’ (above, n. 11). For the impact, see, for example, Tomasi Velli, ‘Gli antiquari intorno al circo Romano’ (above, n. 12), 126: ‘L'idea stessa di restaurare visivamente un monumento ‘scomparso’ su basi per così dire filologiche non aveva, infatti, precedenti: per questo la sua ricostruzione del circo colpì molto i contemporanei'.

13 Examples from Rome include: the Epigrammata Antiquae Urbis, a catalogue of inscriptions (1521); essays in A. d'Alessandro's miscellany, the Dies Geniales (1522); and P. Leto, De Romanorum Magistratibus, Sacerdotiis, Iurisperitis et Legibus Libellus, published before May 1474.

14 For Biondo's use of the language of ekphrasis and visualization, see Muecke, F., ‘Ante oculos ponere: vision and imagination in Flavio Biondo's Roma Triumphans’, Papers of the British School at Rome 79 (2011), 275–98, and esp. pp. 277–9 for the triumphCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 See, for example, the comments of Ginzburg quoted at the end of this article. Recently scholars have looked more sympathetically on this intellectual movement and its methodological insights, and particularly on the visual awareness of antiquities in early modern antiquarianism. See, for example, Miller, P., Peiresc's Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, 2000)Google Scholar; DaCosta Kaufmann, T., ‘Antiquarianism, the history of objects, and the history of art before Winckelmann’, Journal of the History of Ideas 62 (2001), 523–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grafton, A., Bring Out Your Dead: the Past as Revelation (Cambridge (MA), 2001), esp. pp. 113–17Google Scholar; Burke, P., ‘Images as evidence in seventeenth-century Europe’, Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003), 273–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This trend can be seen as a belated response to Arnaldo Momigliano's influential interpretation of antiquarian research, first presented in his ‘Ancient history and the antiquarian’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950), 285–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While Momigliano acknowledged the central importance of realia to early modern antiquarian scholarship, he did not explore the variety of responses that those objects inspired: see Herklotz, I., ‘Arnaldo Momigliano's ‘Ancient history and the antiquarian': a critical review’, in Miller, P. (ed.), Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences (Toronto, 2007), 127–53Google Scholar; Völkel, M., ‘Historischer Pyrrhonismus und Antiquarismus-Konzeption bei Arnaldo Momigliano’, Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert 31 (2007), 179–90Google Scholar.

16 Greene, T., ‘Resurrecting Rome: the double task of the humanist imagination’, in Ramsey, P.A. (ed.), Rome in the Renaissance: the City and the Myth (Binghamton, 1982), 43Google Scholar.

17 Fundamental to any appreciation of Panvinio's work on ancient Rome is Ferrary, Onofrio Panvinio (above, n. 2), to whose careful research this article is indebted. For Panvinio's work in context, see also Herklotz, I., Cassiano dal Pozzo und die Archäologie des 17. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1999), 219–26Google Scholar.

18 His work on medieval and Christian remains is an exception: see his posthumous De Praecipuis Urbis Romae Sanctioribusque Basilicis, quas Septem Ecclesias Vulgo Vocant (Rome, 1570)Google Scholar, with Herklotz, I., ‘Historia sacra und mittelalterliche Kunst während der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts im Rom’, in De Maio, R. (ed.), Baronio e l'arte: atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Sora, 10–13 ottobre 1984 (Sora, 1985), 24–39Google Scholar.

19 Panvinio, De Triumpho 1571 (above, n. 2), 2r. Biondo (De Roma Triumphante Libri Decem (Basle, 1531), 214)Google Scholar had argued explicitly that the depiction of the Arch of Titus gave a better impression of spoils taken from Jerusalem than did Josephus; see Tomassini, M., ‘Per una lettura della Roma Triumphans di Biondo Flavio’, in Tomassini, M. and Bonavigo, C. (eds), Tra Romagna ed Emilia nell'umanesimo: Biondo e Cornazzano (Bologna, 1985), 42Google Scholar. For other fifteenth-century uses of the arch, see, Pray Bober, P. and Rubinstein, R., with contributions by Woodford, S., Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, second edition (London, 2010), 220–1, 228–9Google Scholar.

20 Beard, M., The Roman Triumph (Cambridge (MA), 2007), 53–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has commented that Panvinio's work, ‘remains even today one of the most reliable and comprehensive collections of evidence for the ceremony’.

21 Panvinio, O., Fastorum Libri V a Romulo Rege usque ad Imp. Caesarem Carolum V… Eiusdem in Fastorum Libros Commentarii (Venice, 1558), 453–62Google Scholar.

22 Panvinio referred to the triumphs of Lucius Aemilius Paullus in 167 bc, Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus in 146, Pompey in 61, Julius Caesar in 46, Octavian/Augustus in 29, Vespasian and Titus in ad 71, and Trajan probably in 117–18.

23 Cassius Dio, Roman History 6.21; see, for example, Crawford, M.H., Roman Republican Coinage (Cambridge, 1974), 362–3 no. 348Google Scholar.

24 See Pray Bober and Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists (above, n. 19), 207–12, 216, 241–2, and for the last of these see Wrede, H., ‘Die Ara Casali — ein Monument der augusteischen Säkularspiele?’, in Rome et ses provinces. Genèse et diffusion d'une image du pouvoir: hommages à Jean-Charles Balty (Brussels, 2001), 259–80Google Scholar. Marin, L., On Representation (Stanford, 2001), 219–35Google Scholar (a translation of ‘Visibilité and lisibilité de l'histoire’, in Caesar Triumphans: rotoli disegnati e xilografie cinquecentesche da una collezione privata parigiana (Florence, 1984), 33–45Google Scholar), suggested that a series of late sixteenth-century drawings of Trajan's Column ‘can become ‘models’ for the modern representation of history' (p. 229), without, however, referring to Panvinio's earlier work.

25 On narrative in ancient reliefs, see Elsner, J., ‘Sacrifice and narrative in the Arch of the Argentarii at Rome’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 18 (2005), 83–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Hope, C., ‘The triumphs of Caesar’, in Martineau, J. (ed.), Andrea Mantegna (London, 1992), 355Google Scholar.

27 Armstrong, L., ‘The Triumph of Caesar woodcuts of 1504 and triumphal imagery in Venetian renaissance books’, in Silver, L. and Wyckoff, E. (eds), Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Dürer and Titian (New Haven, 2008), 53–71Google Scholar.

28 Massing, J., ‘The triumph of Caesar by Benedetto Bordon and Jacobus Argentoratensis: its iconography and influence’, Print Quarterly 7 (1990), 1–21Google Scholar.

29 This paragraph is indebted to Tomasi Velli, ‘Gli antiquari intorno al circo Romano’ (above, n. 12), and Ferrary, Onofrio Panvinio (above, n. 2), 23–38.

30 For Panvinio's attempts to publish this material with Plantin in 1567, see Bowen, K. and Imhof, D., Christopher Plantin and Engraved Book Illustrations in Sixteenth-century Europe (Cambridge, 2008), 60–1Google Scholar.

31 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 3439 (the so-called Codex Ursinianus). See Lurin, E., ‘Les restitutions de scènes antiques: Onofrio Panvinio iconographe et inventeur d'images’, in Hochmann, M., Kliemann, J., Koering, J. and Morel, P. (eds), Programme et invention dans l'art de la renaissance (Rome, 2008), 153–73Google Scholar, esp. pp. 161–7; Herklotz, Cassiano dal Pozzo (above, n. 17), 272.

32 For details of the map, see Frutaz, A., Le piante di Roma, 3 vols (Rome, 1962), I, 65 (cat. no. XX)Google Scholar, and Borroni Salvadori, F., Carte, piante e stampe storiche delle Raccolte Lafreriane della Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze (Rome, 1980), 70 no. 212)Google Scholar. Ciotto's publication was Panvinio, Onofrio, De Ludis Circensibus, Libri II. De Triumphis, Liber Unus. Quibus Vniuersa Fere Romanorum Veterum Sacra Ritusq. Declarantur, ac Figuris Aeneis Illustrantur (Venice, 1600)Google Scholar.

33 Panvinio, De Ludis Circensibus, Libri II (above, n. 32), plates V and X.

34 See Robertson, C., ‘Il gran cardinale’: Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts (New Haven, 1992), 220–3Google Scholar.

35 Panvinio, On, XXVII Pont. Max. Elogia et Imagines (Rome, 1568)Google Scholar, see Pelc, M., Illustrium Imagines: das Porträtbuch der Renaissance (Leiden, 2002), 74, 229Google Scholar.

36 See Muecke, ‘Ante oculos ponere’ (above, n. 14).

37 For this argument, see Parshall, P., ‘Antonio Lafreri's Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae’, Print Quarterly 23 (2006), 24Google Scholar: ‘The Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae established the centrality of prints as a common point of reference among antiquarians, thereby helping to promote a method of interpretation and a means of entertainment that lasted for centuries’; and Zorach, R., ‘The public utility of prints’, in Zorach, R. (ed.), The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: Printing and Collecting the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae (Chicago, 2008), 63–83, esp. pp. 66–7Google Scholar. The most impressive publication of ancient remains, at least in size, was Girolamo Muziano and Alonso Chacón's edition of engravings from Trajan's Column, published in 1576, although Muziano had received a papal privilege in 1569, shortly after Panvinio's death: see Bury, M., The Print in Italy 1550–1620 (London, 2001), 63–5Google Scholar, and Witcombe, C., Copyright in the Renaissance: Prints and the Privilegio in Sixteenth-century Venice and Rome (Leiden, 2004), 217–21Google Scholar.

38 Stenhouse, W., Reading Inscriptions and Writing Ancient History: Historical Scholarship in the Late Renaissance (London, 2005), 50–3Google Scholar, and Rubach, B., ‘Three prints of inscriptions — Antonio Lafreri and his contact with Jean Matal’, in Zorach (ed.), The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome (above, n. 37), 25–35Google Scholar. On the Speculum, see Parshall, ‘Antonio Lafreri's Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae’ (above, n. 37), and the online collection, with commentary, from the University of Chicago: http://speculum.lib.uchicago.edu/ (last consulted 07.06.2012). For Lafréry and his rivalry with the Tramezzini, see Witcombe, C., Print Publishing in Sixteenth-century Rome: Growth and Expansion, Rivalry and Murder (London, 2008), 143–55Google Scholar.

39 Patrizi, F., Della historia diece dialoghi (Venice, 1560), 14rGoogle Scholar: ‘Et che altro è in Roma scolpito nella colonna di Traiano, & d’ Antonino, & ne gli archi di Costantino, & di Severo, che le historie, delle vittorie & de trionfi loro? … Non solamente adunque, soggiunsi io, l'historia si scrive, ma & si scolpisce ella, & si dipinge, & saranno queste più propriamente Isorie [sic] per essere elleno oggetti della vista'. See Vasoli, C., ‘I Dialoghi della historia di Francesco Patrizi: prime considerazioni’, in Culture et société en Italie du Moyen-age à la renaissance: hommage à André Rochon (Paris, 1985), 329–52Google Scholar; and Grafton, A., What Was History?: the Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2007), 126–42Google Scholar. For contemporary ramifications of Patrizi's theme, see T. Cooper, ‘Prolegomenon to a quarrel of images’, in Jones and Matthew (eds), Coming About (above, n. 7), 141–8, from whose translation of Patrizi on p. 142 the version above is adapted.

40 Patrizi, Della historia diece dialoghi (above, n. 39), 14v: ‘queste son veramente narrationi delle cose’. Patrizi's words recall the better-known remarks of Manuel Chrysoloras, from 1411: ‘in these sculptures [displayed on houses in Rome] one can see all that existed in those days among the different races, so that it is a complete and accurate history — or rather not a history so much as an exhibition, so to speak, and manifestation of everything that existed anywhere at that time’ (translation from Baxandall, M., Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350–1450 (Oxford, 1971), 81Google Scholar). See, for example, Ginzburg, C., ‘Ekphrasis and quotation’, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 50 (1988), 3–18Google Scholar, and Miller, P., ‘Description terminable and interminable: looking at the past, nature, and peoples in Peiresc's archive’, in Pomata, G. and Siraisi, N. (eds), Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge (MA), 2005), 357–8Google Scholar. But whereas Chrysoloras had clear influence on the humanist tradition of describing, scholars had not explored the implications that images, by virtue of their completeness and accuracy, and, implicitly, their vividness, could rival or surpass the work of narrative historians.

41 Another scholar working along similar lines to Ligorio was the Lyons-based Guillaume Du Choul, who published three volumes on the Roman army, baths and religion from 1554 to 1546, all of which included illustrations of Roman figures, adapted from reliefs, particularly those on Trajan's Column. Du Choul's published work does not feature extended scenes like Ligorio's and Panvinio's, however, and it does not seem that he influenced Panvinio's use of illustrations directly. See Hacquebart-Desvignes, N., ‘L'illustration technique dans les livres militaires français de la Renaissance. L'exemple du Discours de la castramétation de Guillaume Du Choul’, Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance 67 (2008), 65–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with previous references. Panvinio mentioned Du Choul briefly as a numismatist: see Ferrary, Onofrio Panvinio (above, n. 2), 56, 99.

42 Crawford, M.H., ‘Benedetto Egio and the development of Greek epigraphy’, in Crawford, M.H. (ed.), Antonio Agustìn Between Renaissance and Counter-Reform (London, 1993), 133Google Scholar.

43 Burns, ‘Pirro Ligorio's reconstruction of ancient Rome’ (above, n. 11), 24–5 with 51 n. 41: ‘egli habbi robbate quasi tutte le sue cose dalla nostra opera dell'antichità, per la sua frettolosa avaritia del guadagno’; Schreurs, Antikenbild und Kunstanschauungen (above, n. 10), 366.

44 Ferrary, Onofrio Panvinio (above, n. 2), 119–20.

45 Tomasi Velli, ‘Gli antiquari intorno al circo Romano’ (above, n. 12), 157.

46 Ferrary, Onofrio Panvinio (above, n. 2), 33–4: Panvinio's map actually is based closely on Sebastiano Paciotto's 1557 map, which was in turn indebted to Leonardo Bufalini's 1551 plan.

47 Zerner, H., ‘Observations on Dupérac and the Disegni de le ruine di Roma e come anticamente erano’, Art Bulletin 47 (1965), 509Google Scholar; Ferrary, Onofrio Panvinio (above, n. 2), 37–8; and Lurin, E., ‘Un homme entre deux mondes: Étienne Dupérac, peintre, graveur et architecte, en Italie et en France (c.1535?–1604)’, in Zerner, H. and Bayard, M. (eds), Renaissance en France, renaissance française (Rome, 2009), 37–59Google Scholar, esp. pp. 45–8 for his work with Panvinio.

48 Lurin (‘Les restitutions de scènes antiques’ (above, n. 31), 161–3) has distinguished three hands (Dupérac, Ercole Setti and an unidentified third artist), though Dupérac most likely coordinated the compositions. For Ligorio's work with Dupérac, see Bragaglia Venuti, C., ‘Etienne Dupérac and Pirro Ligorio’, Print Quarterly 23 (2006), 408–13Google Scholar, and Lurin, ‘Un homme entre deux mondes’ (above, n. 47), 40.

49 Quoted by Lurin, ‘Les restitutions de scènes antiques’ (above, n. 31), 158: ‘Quod a natura, quae nihil perpetuum esse patitur, nobis negatum, pictura praestat’. Lurin adds that, ‘Il semble que pour Panvinio, la valeur historique de la peinture ne soit pas simplement documentaire, mais qu'elle relève également du témoignage, c'est-à-dire de la transmission d'une vérité profonde’.

50 Herklotz, ‘Historia sacra und mittelalterliche Kunst’ (above, n. 18).

51 Panvinio, De Ludis Circensibus, Libri II (above, n. 32), 55–6: ‘Haec ut facilius intelligantur, & morem meum sequar in satisfaciendo avidis antiquitatum studiosis Romanarum rerum, duabus tabellis huius Circi topographiam, delineationem, & post ruinam quomodo nunc cernitur adiunxi’.

52 Herklotz, ‘Historia sacra und mittelalterliche Kunst’ (above, n. 18), 25–6, quoting Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 6783, fol. 113r: ‘his libris icones aereis subtilioribusque ligneis typis ex antiquis lapidum et nummorum monumentis expressas adiunximus, ut quae accuratus lector in libris legit, id quoque sub aspectum quasi rem ipsam cernat, pictura expressum habeat’.

53 For classical definitions of ekphrasis, see Webb, R., Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Farnham, 2009)Google Scholar, and for the inspiration of ancient descriptions on sixteenth-century artists, see Rosand, D., ‘Ekphrasis and the generation of images’, Arion 1 (1990), 61–105Google Scholar, and Cranston, J., ‘Longing for the lost: ekphrasis, rivalry, and the figuration of notional artworks in Italian Renaissance painting’, Word and Image 27 (2011), 212–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar with previous bibliography. Sixteenth-century poets composed ekphraseis of classical statues at Rome; see, for example, Clément, M., ‘Une ekphrasis paradoxale des statues du Belvédère dans les ‘Vingt-quatre sonnets romains' de Jacques Grévin’, Studi Francesi 49 (2005), 49–60Google Scholar, and Tucker, G., ‘Neo-Latin literary monuments to renaissance Rome and the papacy 1553–1557: Janus Vitalis, Joachim Du Bellay, and Lelio Capilupi — from ekphrasis to prosopopoeia’, in Schnur, R. (ed.), Acta Conventus Neo-latini Bonnensis: Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies (Tempe, 2006), 81–119Google Scholar, who has shown how poets explored the relationship between classical Rome and the Rome of the 1550s.

54 See Kusukawa, S., ‘Leonhart Fuchs on the importance of pictures’, Journal of the History of Ideas 58 (1997), 403–27CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Kusukawa, S., ‘The uses of pictures in the formation of learned knowledge: the cases of Leonhard Fuchs and Andreas Vesalius’, in Kusukawa, S. and Maclean, I. (eds), Transmitting Knowledge: Words, Images, and Instruments (Oxford, 2006), 73–96Google Scholar; Ogilvie, B., ‘Image and text in natural history, 1500–1700’, in Lefèvre, W., Renn, J. and Schöflin, U. (eds), The Power of Images in Early Modern Science (Basel, 2003), 141–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ogilvie, B., The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago, 2006), 192–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 See Chatelain, J.-M. and Pinon, L., ‘Genres et fonctions de l'illustration au XVIe siècle’, in Martin, H.-J. (ed.), La naissance du livre moderne (XIVe–XVIIe siècles) (Tours, 2000), 248–53Google Scholar. For Giocondo's work, see Rowland, I., ‘The Fra Giocondo Vitruvius at 500 (1511–2011)’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 70 (2011), 285–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with previous bibliography.

56 Panvinio, De Triumpho (above, n. 2), 1v–3r.

57 Bowen and Imhof, Christopher Plantin and Engraved Book Illustrations (above, n. 30), 76–7.

58 Dekesel, C., Biblioteca Nummaria II: Bibliography of 17th-century Numismatic Books, 3 vols (London, 2003), III, 2,057Google Scholar.

59 Panvinio, O., Veterum Rom. Ornatissimi Amplissimique Thriumphi, ex Antiquissimis Librorum, Lapidum, & Nummorum Monumentis Desumpti (Antwerp, 1596)Google Scholar, ad lectorem, ‘iungendo auctoris Commentarium, tum demum me plenam studiosis satisfactionem daturum, ac absolutum plane fore laborem, existimavi’. See Zorach, ‘The public utility of prints’ (above, n. 37), 69, and Zorach (ed.), The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome (above, n. 37), 135. Gerard de Jode's engravings make clear the ‘philological’ nature of his undertaking. Beneath the figures he added the following note: ‘In case anyone should question the truth of this picture or think that it is invented, or dreamed up from someone's fancy, I thought it worthwhile to add here the names of the writers from whom this is taken’. There follows a list of narrative sources, the same names that Panvinio had included in his original textual account from 1558. On the engraver, see Mielke, H., ‘Antwerpener Graphik in der 2. Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts: der Thesaurus Veteris et Novi Testamenti des Gerard de Jode (1585) unde seine Künstler’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 38 (1975), 37–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 On the basis of an attribution of the drawings to Maarten van Heemskerck, this book has been dated to the 1550s. Given de Jode's responsibility, however, and the absence of any interest in illustrations on Panvinio's part until the early 1560s, it is highly implausible that this book pre-dated the 1565 engravings and the 1571 publication of the book. See Ferrary, Onofrio Panvinio (above, n. 2), 212–13; Dekesel, C., Biblioteca Nummaria: Bibliography of 16th-century Numismatic Books (London, 1997), 709Google Scholar; Dekesel, Biblioteca Nummaria II (above, n. 58), III, 2,060.

61 The Illustrated Bartsch 35, Antonio Tempesta, ed. Buffa, S. (New York, 1984), 348 no. 618Google Scholar; Leuschner, E., Commentary to the Illustrated Bartsch 35 (New York, 2007), 247–8 no. 567Google Scholar.

62 Boulenger, J., Liber de Spoliis Bellicis, Trophaeis, Arcubus Triumphalibus, & Pompa Triumphi. Cui Accessit Liber Onuphrii Panvini Veronesis de Triumpho & de Ludis Circensibus (Paris, 1601)Google Scholar.

63 For a useful summary of judgements including these, see Hankius, M., De Romanarum Rerum Scriptoribus Liber (Leipzig, 1669), 226Google Scholar.

64 Russell, S., ‘Pirro Ligorio, Cassiano dal Pozzo and the republic of letters’, Papers of the British School at Rome 75 (2007), 239–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for seventeenth-century interest in and references to Panvinio's work on triumphs and circuses, see Herklotz, Cassiano dal Pozzo (above, n. 17), 158–9, 212.

65 Ferrary, Onofrio Panvinio (above, n. 2), 214; Herklotz, Cassiano dal Pozzo (above, n. 17), 222.

66 Panvinio, De Triumpho (above, n. 2), 1v: ‘Ego autem, quo ab antiquitatum studiosis gratiam aliquam ineam, hic apponere eius generis triumphorum, quos sumptuosissimos fuisse refert Dionysius, descriptionem institui, quam ex Iosepho, Plutarcho, Appiano, Zonara, & aliis plerisque scriptoribus excerptam hac ratione concinnavi’. Anthony Grafton has shown how the term historia could refer to ancient relief sculpture in the early fifteenth century: see his ‘Historia and istoria: Alberti's terminology in context’, I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 8 (1999), 37–68Google Scholar; and on the varieties of application for the term, Pomata and Siraisi (eds), Historia: Empiricism and Erudition (above, n. 40).

67 See van Miert, D., ‘Philology and the roots of empiricism: observation and description in the correspondence of Joseph Scaliger (1540–1609)’, in van Miert, D., Observation in Early Modern Letters, 1500–1650 (London, forthcoming)Google Scholar. For the rarer late fifteenth-century use, see Rizzo, S., Il lessico filologico degli umanisti (Rome, 1973), 181Google Scholar.

68 As Anthony Miller noted, Panvinio's account is not without its literary merits, despite the reputation for aridity that antiquarian writing has: ‘Panvinio's virtuoso description of a triumph evokes its emotions, its sounds, and especially its sights more fully and richly than any of its predecessors; it is a version that invites the visual illustration it duly received’ (Roman Triumphs and Early Modern English Culture (New York, 2001), 48)Google Scholar. For Renaissance theories of description and ekphrasis, see, for example, Biagini, E., ‘Ecfrasi, dipintura. Sguardo sulle teorie della descrizione nei trattati del Cinquecento’, in Venturi, G. and Farnetti, M. (eds), Ecfrasi: modelli ed esempi fra medioevo e rinascimento, 2 vols (Rome, 2004), II, 405–19Google Scholar.

69 For example, Ortelius, A., Epistulae, ed. Hessels, J. (Cambridge, 1887), 429Google Scholar, a letter of 30 March 1590 from Ortelius to Montano referring to ‘illam enim Hispaniae veteris a te elaboratam descriptionem’.

70 Alpers, S., ‘The mapping impulse in Dutch art’, in Woodward, D. (ed.), Art and Cartography (Chicago, 1987), 69Google Scholar (a version of her The Art of Describing (Chicago, 1983), ch. 4Google Scholar). On the importance of ideas about the function of description in this period, see also Marin, On Representation (above, n. 24), 64–84 (a translation of his ‘Mimésis et description: ou de la curiosité à la méthode de l'âge de Montaigne à celui de Descartes’, in Cropper, E., Perini, G. and Solinas, F. (eds), Documentary Culture: Florence and Rome from Grand-Duke Ferdinand I to Pope Alexander VII (Bologna, 1992), 23–47Google Scholar).

71 This is clearest in maps of sites with a variety of remains, as Montaigne noted of maps of Rome: see Ammerman, A., ‘Adding time to Rome's imago’, in Haselberger, L. and Humphrey, J. (eds), Imaging Ancient Rome: Documentation — Visualization — Imagination (Portsmouth (RI), 2006), 303Google Scholar; for the practice, see Maier, J., ‘Mapping past and present: Leonardo Bufalini's plan of Rome (1551)’, Imago Mundi 59 (2007), 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Goffart, Walter (Historical Atlases. The First Three Hundred Years, 1570–1870 (Chicago, 2003))CrossRefGoogle Scholar has preferred to call such maps historical geographies to distinguish them from later maps of the land at a particular time; cf. Black, J., Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past (New Haven, 2000), 7–12Google Scholar.

72 Couzinet, M.-D., Histoire et méthode à la renaissance: une lecture de la Methodus de Jean Bodin (Paris, 1996), 227–67Google Scholar.

73 For example, Tinto, Annali tipografici (above, n. 2), XXIV–XXV, and Borroni Salvadori, Carte, piante e stampe (above, n. 32), XXII–VI.

74 See Shalev, Z., ‘Sacred geography, antiquarianism and visual erudition: Benito Arias Montano and the maps in the Antwerp polyglot bible’, Imago Mundi 55 (2003), 56–80, esp. p. 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘in early modern Europe, the scholarly map enabled a primary mode of antiquarian expression. The map was both an apt means of displaying detailed synchronic knowledge … Geography in early modern Europe was far more than just the ‘eye of history’, as Ortelius phrased it. It served as a model for arranging historical and antiquarian knowledge'.

75 See Ginzburg, ‘Ekphrasis and quotation’ (above, n. 40), 18–19, referring to Manuel Chrysoloras's comments on the relief sculpture of ancient Rome: ‘The belief in the possibility of exhibiting the past as a whole, by means of literary virtuosity, was going to be superseded by the conscience that our knowledge of the past is a necessarily disconnected enterprise, full of gaps and uncertainties, based on fragments and ruins’.

76 See Grafton, A., The Footnote: a Curious History (London, 1997), 148–89Google Scholar.

77 Beltramini, G., ‘Palladio and Polybius' Histories’, in Beltramini, G. (ed.), Andrea Palladio and the Architecture of Battle with the Unpublished Edition of Polybius' Histories (Venice, 2009), 12–77Google Scholar.

78 Macgowan, M., The Vision of Rome in Late Renaissance France (New Haven, 2000), 107–21Google Scholar.

79 Shalev, ‘Sacred geography, antiquarianism and visual erudition’ (above, n. 74); Melion, W., ‘Bible illustration in the sixteenth-century Low Countries’, in Clifton, J. and Melion, W. (eds), Scripture for the Eyes. Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century (London/New York, 2009), 41–2Google Scholar.

80 Papy, J., ‘An antiquarian scholar between text and image? Justus Lipsius, humanist education, and the visualization of ancient Rome’, Sixteenth Century Journal 35 (2004), 97–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Papy, ‘An antiquarian scholar between text and image?’ (above, n. 80), 115–17. On the work, see Enenkel, K., ‘Strange and bewildering antiquity: Lipsius's dialogue Saturnales Sermones on gladiatorial games (1582)’, in Enenkel, K., de Jong, J. and de Landtsheer, J. (eds), Recreating Ancient History (Leiden, 2001), 74–95, esp. p. 94 n. 70Google Scholar.

82 Ginzburg, C., Il giudice e lo storico (Turin, 1991), 8–9Google Scholar: ‘Al pari di un avvocato, lo storico doveva convincere attraverso un'argomentazione efficace, che fosse in grado eventualmente di comunicare l'illusione della realtà: non attraverso la produzione di prove o la valuatazione di prove prodotte da altri. Queste ultime erano attività proprie degli antiquari e degli eruditi; ma fino alla seconda metà del '700 storia e antiquaria costituirono ambiti intellettuali del tutto indipendenti, frequentati di norma da individui diversi’ (translation adapted from The Judge and the Historian, trans. Shugaar, A. (London, 2002), 12–13Google Scholar).

83 See also Ginzburg's ‘Ekphrasis and quotation’ (above, n. 40), 13, where he proposed the annalistic tradition as a genre that ‘creat[ed] a potential bridge between history and antiquarian research’.