La Mostra    Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona lake

Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Piazza Navona, in: Id., Vedute principali e più interessanti di Roma, Roma 1799

Piazza Navona lake

Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Obelisco egizio in piazza Navona, in: Id., Degli edificj antichi e moderni di Roma: vedute in contorno disegnate e incise da Gio. Batt. Cipriani, vol. II, Roma 1817

Piazza Navona lake

Gaetano Cottafavi (engr.), [Veduta di Piazza Navona],in: Antonio Nibby, Roma nell’anno MDCCCXXXVIII..., vol. IV (Parte seconda moderna), Roma 1841

Notice of 28 July 1749, signed by vicar cardinal Giovanni Antonio Guadagni, announcing the "second mission" of Leonardo da Porto Maurizio

On 13 July 1749 father Leonardo from Porto Maurizio, summoned to Rome by Benedict XIV to "better dispose Roman citizens to acquire the jubilee", had started in Piazza Navona a series of "holy missions", fourteen days of articulate offices which included moments of preaching, catechesis, liturgy and penance. On 28 July, at the end of the "first mission", cardinal vicar Guadagni announced the start of a "second mission" for the next 3 August, to take place beyond the river, in piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere.

Vicariate of Rome, Seconda notificazione per le sante missioni (28 luglio 1749), Roma 1749

Bernini, Athanasius Kircher, the Fountain of the Rivers and the Pamphilj obelisk

Athanasius Kircher, Athanasii Kircheri e Soc. Iesu Obeliscus Pamphilius, hoc est interpretatio nova..., Roma 1650

Piazza Navona

Place Navonne, bâtie sur les ruines du Cirque Agonalis de l'empereur Alexandre Severe, avec la vue de ses magnifiques edifices et fontaines, embellie de la sainte memoire du pape Innocent X, in: François Jacques Deseine, Rome moderne, première ville de l'Europe, avec toutes ses magnificences et ses délices..., vol. II, Leiden 1713

Piazza Navona in 1773

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta di Piazza Navona sopra le rovine del Circo Agonale, in: Id., Vedute di Roma disegnate ed incise da Giambattista Piranesi Architetto veneziano, vol. II, Paris 1836

Piazza Navona before 1650

During the Middle Ages, the walls of the stepped seating around Domitian’s stadium, today known as Piazza Navona, were converted into homes, workshops, and even churches and religious institutions. Already the focal point of the city’s tourism and trade (it hosted the city’s biggest market), in the fifteenth century the piazza became more important still. It underwent initial refurbishment in the fifteen hundreds, when fountains were erected at either end of the square, along with a simple horse trough in the middle. Piazza Navona became a favourite place for people to meet, stroll, and watch spontaneous shows put on by jugglers and acrobats, as well as organized events sacred and profane. In the seventeenth century, a member of the Pamphilj family, Innocent X, was elected to the papal throne; the family palazzo looked out onto the piazza. In the run-up to the 1650 Jubilee, the Pope commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to make the Fontana dei Fiumi, which he designed as four white marble giants sitting on a central cliff-like plinth: the Nile, the Ganges, the Danube and the Rio della Plata. The Fountain also served as a rather sumptuous base for a Roman copy of an Egyptian obelisk unearthed near the Maxentius Circus in 1647.

Platea Agonalis, in: Pompilio Totti, Ritratto di Roma moderna..., Roma 1638

The obelisk and the new fountain at Piazza Navona

Pompilio Totti, Ritratto di Roma moderna... in questa nuova editione accresciuto, e migliorato in molti luoghi, Roma 1652

The "Ritratto di Roma moderna" by Pompilio Totti

Pompilio Totti’s guide to Rome had two new features compared with its predecessors: it is in two distinct volumes edited and published at different times, but which complement one another: the “Ritratto di Roma antica” (1627), and a Portrait of Modern Rome (1628). In addition to this, the guide’s illustrations were the first to systematically use the more refined chalcographic process. The volume dedicated to modern Rome dispensed with the standard guidebook approach of the day. Instead, it adopted itineraries organized into days and districts. Although obviously based on an earlier work by Panciroli, its description of churches combined architectural and artistic notes with information on the origins, history and administration of churches, as well as on the Companies and Confraternities to which they belonged. The two-volume Ritratto continued to be published anonymously for sixty years by the de’ Rossi publishing house. It also came out in German and Dutch translations. The specimen on display is a 1652 edition updated with information and images of works commissioned by Innocent X: the Fontana dei Fiumi in Piazza Navona, the Lateran refurbished for the 1650 Jubilee, and Pietro da Cortona’s recently-completed frescoes at Chiesa Nuova.

Pompilio Totti, Ritratto di Roma moderna... in questa nuova editione accresciuto, e migliorato in molti luoghi, Roma 1652

"Roma ricercata nel suo sito" by Fioravante Martinelli, published for the Jubilee of 1650

Fioravante Martinelli, Roma ricercata nel suo sito, et nella scuola di tutti gli antiquarii, e descritta con breve, e facil modo per visitare li luoghi antichi e moderni della città... Seconda impressione revista, corretta, & aggiunta dall’autore in molti luoghi, accresciuta dal modo di acquistare il giubileo dell’anno santo M. DC. L, Roma 1650