What Francesco di Giorgio Saw on the Capitoline Hill c. 1470 (with Kiel Moe)

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WHAT FRANCESCO DI GIORGIO SAW ON THECAPITOLINE HILL C. 1470

Jason Moralee and Kiel Moe

Papers of the British School at Rome / Volume 83 / October 2015, pp 149 - 173DOI: 10.1017/S0068246215000070, Published online: 16 September 2015

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0068246215000070

How to cite this article:Jason Moralee and Kiel Moe (2015). WHAT FRANCESCO DI GIORGIO SAW ON THECAPITOLINE HILL C. 1470. Papers of the British School at Rome, 83, pp 149-173 doi:10.1017/S0068246215000070

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WHAT FRANCESCO DI GIORGIO SAW ON THECAPITOLINE HILL C. 1470*

by Jason Moralee and Kiel Moe

Francesco di Giorgio, the Sienese architect and artist, visited Rome c. 1470. By looking at his plan ofthe ‘porticho del Champitolio’, it is possible to reconstruct not only what Francesco di Giorgio sawon the Monte Tarpeo, but also what Poggio Bracciolini, Flavio Biondo, Pietro del Massaio andothers saw there. It was apparently a notable site, an evocative ruin worthy of commentary,artistic representation and imaginative reconstruction. Whatever temple remains continued to bevisible, however, these were insufficient to suggest that they were originally part of the temple. Bythe end of the fifteenth century, the temple had been lost. None the less, Francesco di Giorgiounwittingly documented the last standing columns of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

Francesco di Giorgio, architetto e artista senese, visitò Roma attorno al 1470. Osservando la suaplanimetria del ‘porticho del Champitolio’ è possibile ricostruire non solo quello che Francesco diGiorgio vide sulla Rupe Tarpea, ma anche quello che Poggio Bracciolini, Flavio Biondo, Pietrodel Massaio e altri videro. Evidentemente la Rupe Tarpea era un sito rilevante, un rudereevocativo degno di nota, di rappresentazione artistica e di ricostruzione di fantasia. Qualsiasiparte residua fosse visibile, essa era comunque insufficiente per rendere possibile il riconoscimentodella sua originale pertinenza al tempio. Entro la fine del XV secolo, il tempio andòdefinitivamente distrutto. Ciononostante Francesco di Giorgio documentò involontariamente leultime colonne ancora in situ del tempio di Giove Ottimo Massimo.

The Sienese artist and architect Francesco di Giorgio (1439–1501) visited Rome c.1470. While there he sketched a number of locations, including the CapitolineHill. Though largely fantastic, his drawing of the ‘palazzo del Champitolio’documents a ‘porticho del Champitolio’ that the artist himself claimed he sawin ruins. This ‘porticho del Champitolio’ has been taken to be an otherwiseunattested ancient propylaeum attached to the Temple of Jupiter OptimusMaximus. In contrast, by reconstructing Francesco di Giorgio’s method ofdrawing the ‘porticho del Champitolio’, this article reveals that the artistunwittingly documented some of the last visible remains from the final phase ofthe Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. This reconstruction also elucidatesliterary passages from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century antiquarians as well asmaps that apparently all describe or depict standing columns on the CapitolineHill, before the stones were almost totally spoliated and legally sold forconstruction materials and artistic commissions.

* This article benefited from the generous comments of Pier Luigi Tucci, Jessica Maier, MarkBradley and an anonymous reviewer. We would especially like to thank the American Academyin Rome, where this collaborative project began.

Papers of the British School at Rome 83 (2015), pp. 149–73 © British School at Romedoi:10.1017/S0068246215000070

FROM ‘PORTICHO’ TO PROPYLAEUM

Francesco di Giorgio’s drawing of the ‘palazzo del Champitolio’ likely was basedon a sketch that was elaborated by the artist and his students in Siena in the1490s.1 Some of these finished drawings were published in the Monumentiantichi, a collection of 30 folios of drawings of mostly ancient monuments inRome and Tivoli. Francesco di Giorgio himself edited the Monumenti antichiand attached it to the end of a copy of his Trattato I (the first version of histext; Turin, Biblioteca Reale, Codex 148 Saluzzo, fols 71r–100v).2 In theMonumenti antichi, Francesco di Giorgio included two plans of buildings onthe Capitoline Hill. One is a structure from the northwestern summit of the hillthat he called ‘la sala del chonsilio di Cesari’ (fol. 88). The other is from thesouthwestern summit. Francesco di Giorgio called it the ‘palazzo delChampitolio’ (fol. 82).3 The latter (Fig. 1) depicts the Temple of JupiterOptimus Maximus (labelled ‘Tenpio di Giove’) as a rotunda surrounded by acolonnade. Inside the rotunda is a statue (‘simulacro’). The temple itself issurrounded by courtyards (‘chortile’) and reception halls (‘sala’). A circuit ofrooms and towers completes the structure. Francesco di Giorgio himself notedon the drawing that this plan was an imaginary reconstruction of a landscapefull of ruins: ‘In maggior parte ito inmaginando che per le molte ruine pochoconprendar se ne po’.4 Francesco di Giorgio’s drawing of the ‘palazzo del

1 Francesco di Giorgio’s sketchbook: P. Nerino Ferri, Indice geografico-analitico dei disegni diarchitettura civile e militare esistenti nella R. Gallerie degli Uffizi di Firenze (Florence, 1890–7).See the extensive codological description of the Uffizi sketch-book by G. Scaglia, Francesco diGiorgio: Checklist and History of Manuscripts and Drawings in Autographs and Copies from ca.1470 to 1687 and Renewed Copies (1764–1839) (Bethlehem (PA), 1992), 53–4 (no. 3).Description of the folios: A.S. Weller, Francesco di Giorgio 1439–1501 (Chicago, 1943), 259–68.For a general discussion of Francesco di Giorgio’s Uffizi sketch-book, see C.H. Ericsson, RomanArchitecture Expressed in the Sketches by Francesco di Giorgio Martini (CommentationesHumanarum Litterarum 66) (Helsinki, 1980). Now see H. Burns, ‘I disegni di Francesco diGiorgio agli Uffizi di Firenze’, in F.P. Fiore and M. Tafuri (eds), Francesco di Giorgio architetto(Milan, 1993), 330–57. It should be noted that if there had been an original sketch for a ‘palazzodel Champitolio’, it is not among those preserved in the Uffizi sketch-book.2 Codex 148 Saluzzo was edited first by C. Promis, Vita, catalogo dei codici e trattato di

architettura civile e militare di Francesco di Giorgio Martini: catologo analitico de’ codici scritti efigurati di Francesco di Giorgio Martini (Turin, 1841). See now the edition by C. Maltese andL. Maltese Degrassi, Trattati di architettura ingegneria e arte militare, 2 vols (Milan, 1967), I,275–89, figs 129–86 (for the Monumenti antichi). See also the important notes in Scaglia,Francesco di Giorgio (above, n. 1), 189–92 (no. 80).3 Maltese and Maltese Degrassi (eds), Trattati (above, n. 2), I, 285, with fig. 163 (‘la sala del

chonsilio di Cesari’) and 282, with fig. 151 (‘palazzo del Champitolio’). We thank Pier LuigiTucci for alerting us to the image of, and his forthcoming work on, ‘la sala del chonsilio diCesari’. The two images are separated in the manuscript and seem not to have been done with atotal conception of the hill in mind.4 Text: Maltese and Maltese Degrassi (eds), Trattati (above, n. 2), I, 282, with fig. 151. Here and

throughout we print the text of the Maltese and Maltese Degrassi edition. The drawing was firstpublished and discussed by R. Lanciani, ‘Tempio di Giove Ottimo Massimo’, Bullettino della

JASON MORALEE AND KIEL MOE150

Fig. 1. Turin, Codex 148 Saluzzo, Biblioteca Reale, fol. 82, 1480–1500. Francesco diGiorgio’s drawing shows a fantasy of the ‘palazzo del Champitolio’, at the centre ofwhich is a rotunda called the ‘Tenpio di Giove’. Below this structure, and attached toit, is the ‘porticho del Champitolio’ that the artist claimed he saw. Source: Malteseand Maltese Degrassi (eds), Trattati (above, n. 2), I, 282, fig. 151. (Reproducedcourtesy of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo,

Biblioteca Reale — Torino.)

Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 3 (1875), 165–89, tav. XVII–XVIII, again inR. Lanciani, Storia degli scavi di Roma, I (1000–1530) (Rome, 1902; reprinted 1989), 91–2, fig. 33.

WHAT FRANCESCO DI GIORGIO SAW ON THE CAPITOLINE HILL C. 1470 151

Champitolio’ as an imaginary palace was evidently a planned feature of theMonumenti antichi. Indeed, in the preface to the Monumenti antichi, Francescodi Giorgio stated that he wanted to depict the ruined structures as they wereoriginally constructed.5 In other drawings, Francesco di Giorgio likewise notedthat the buildings represented by his drawings were in ruins in his day, but theplans are nevertheless always complete — and almost completely imaginary.6

Though largely imaginary, Francesco di Giorgio’s drawing of the ‘palazzo delChampitolio’ did attract the interest of two of the most important Italianarchaeologists of late nineteenth-century Rome, Giovanni Battista de Rossi andRodolfo Lanciani. De Rossi, according to Lanciani himself, pointed Lanciani tothe drawing. In 1875, Lanciani published Francesco di Giorgio’s drawing, andthough he dismissed the rotunda and all the other structures as more or less afantasy, Lanciani thought that Francesco di Giorgio had none the less stumbledon the dimensions of the temple’s platform.7 The dimensions of Francesco diGiorgio’s ‘palazzo del Champitolio’, Lanciani pointed out, seem to preserve thedimensions of the platform of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, whichhad been revealed just partially, in 1865, through the archaeologicalinvestigations of the Germans and Italians, working largely independently ofone another.8 Lanciani’s main point, in adducing Francesco di Giorgio’sdrawing as evidence, was to cement his identification of the Capitolium on thesouthwestern summit of the Capitoline Hill, not on the northwestern summit,or Arx, where the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli has stood in its presentform since the fourteenth century.

Another feature of Francesco di Giorgio’s drawing interested Lanciani. Thedrawing places, on the western side of his imaginary ‘palazzo del Champitolio’,what the artist called the ‘porticho del Champitolio’. Francesco di Giorgio evenclaimed, in the inscription that also dates the drawing, that he himself ‘observedthe porticho del Champitolio from the Casa Savelli: the porta and portico hadbeen ruined and spoliated in the time of (Pope) Paul (II)’ (‘Rincontra a cchasaSavelli che ar tenpo di Pavolo la porta e ‘l portico ruinato et dispogliato fu’).9

In the pontificate of Paul II (1464–71), the Theatre of Marcellus was owned by

5 Codex 148 Saluzzo, fol. 71, Maltese and Maltese Degrassi (eds), Trattati (above, n. 2), I, 275:‘Unde mosso da huno aceso desiderio di volere quelle innovare’. Scaglia discussed Francesco diGiorgio’s motivations as revealed in this quotation, Francesco di Giorgio (above, n. 1), 53.6 See, for example, the drawing on the folio following the ‘palazzo del Champitolio’: Codex

Saluzzo 148, fol. 82v, Maltese and Maltese Degrassi (eds), Trattati (above, n. 2), I, 282–3, fig.152. This drawing is a plan of the ‘palatio Maggiore in Roma’. Though Francesco di Giorgioincluded measurements, presumably made on site, the plan is a fantasy of part of the imperialpalace on the Palatine Hill. Like the drawing of the ‘palazzo del Champitolio’, Francesco diGiorgio included the following notation: ‘In più parte chopiato et parte agionto a fantasia che perle molte ruine in tucto conprendar non si può’.7 Lanciani, ‘Tempio di Giove’ (above, n. 4), 174–6.8 P. Rosa, ‘Scavi capitolini’, Annali dell’Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica (1865), 382–6.9 Maltese and Maltese Degrassi (eds), Trattati (above, n. 2), I, 282. An anonymous reviewer

suggests that Maltese and Maltese Degrassi’s ‘ar tenpo’ should instead read ‘attenpo.’


the Savelli family, and so Francesco di Giorgio presumably had a suitable vantage-point from which to make his observations.10 The ‘porticho del Champitolio’consists of three intersecting circuits of columns, all of the columns linked bycentre lines. The lines suggest that Francesco di Giorgio was recording, orimagining, an elaborate colonnade that framed one of the approaches to the‘palazzo del Champitolio’. Lanciani took this information as evidence of anadditional ancient structure that was attached to the Temple of Jupiter OptimusMaximus, in his words, ‘traces of a magnificent propylaeum’.11 Lancianirepeated this interpretation as fact in the first volume of his Storia degli scavi diRoma, published in 1902. Francesco di Giorgio’s ‘porticho del Champitolio’was thereafter to be understood as a propylaeum: the plan ‘accenna allaesistenza di propilei nella fronte ovest della platea del tempio’.12

Lanciani was, of course, correct in locating the Capitolium and the Temple ofJupiter Optimus Maximus on the southwestern summit of the hill. But he wasincorrect both in his understanding of what Francesco di Giorgio saw on the hillin the late fifteenth century and in what the architect attempted to represent inhis drawing. First, let us start with Lanciani’s suggestion that the structure thatFrancesco di Giorgio labelled the ‘palazzo del Champitolio’ essentially maps ontothe dimensions of the foundation of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. In1875, Lanciani thought that the temple platform was 58.6 m on each side — asquare — and so was able to place the temple platform, as he understood it,nicely on top of the precinct surrounding Francesco di Giorgio’s ‘Tenpio diGiove’.13 Lanciani evidently thought that Francesco di Giorgio’s plan of the‘palazzo del Champitolio’, which consists of a building essentially divided intothree distinct zones, mirrored the triple cellae of the Temple of Jupiter OptimusMaximus — one each for Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.14 Moreover, the northwestangle of Francesco di Giorgio’s structure fitted perfectly into the ‘attualetopografia del luogo’. Figure 2 models what Lanciani likely had in mind byshowing the platform layered on Francesco di Giorgio’s drawing. It is also easyto see that Lanciani was correct that the northwest angle of Francesco diGiorgio’s drawing does indeed match the site remarkably well.

There is little consensus, even now, on how large the platform was in antiquity.A few years later, in 1897, Lanciani realized that the platform was not 58.6 m oneach side, and revised his figures accordingly. Now, in Lanciani’s estimation, thetemple platform was 57.17× 61.52 m — a rectangle. Indeed, even though there isno agreement on the dimensions of the temple, all have agreed that the platform

10 P. Ciancio Rossetto, ‘TheatrumMarcelli’, in E.M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum UrbisRomae V (R–Z) (Rome, 1999), 32.11 Lanciani, ‘Tempio di Giove’ (above, n. 4), 175.12 Lanciani, Storia degli scavi (above, n. 4), I, 91–2.13 Lanciani, ‘Tempio di Giove’ (above, n. 4), 175. R.T. Ridley, ‘Unbridgeable gaps: the Capitoline

temple at Rome’, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 106 (2005), 83–104, has discussed the heated scholarly debates on the size of the temple platform.14 See A. Mura Sommella, ‘Le recenti scoperte sul Campidoglio e la fondazione del tempio di Giove

Capitolino’, Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia di Archeologia 70 (1997), 57–79, at p. 78 n. 48.


was rectangular.15 Neither Lanciani, nor anyone else, returned to Francesco diGiorgio’s drawing to revise Lanciani’s assumptions in the light of newhypotheses on the shape and dimensions of the temple platform. If Lancianihad, it would have been clear that a rectangular platform would not havealigned so perfectly with Francesco di Giorgio’s ‘palazzo del Champitolio’.Using Sommella’s dimensions of a 54× 74 m platform (52× 62 m plus anadditional 12 m of space behind the temple cellae), it is difficult to reconcileFrancesco di Giorgio’s ‘palazzo del Champitolio’ and the temple platform as itis currently understood (Fig. 3).16 Clearly, Francesco di Giorgio neither had the

Fig. 2. A model of Rodolfo Lanciani’s 1875 assertion that a 58.6× 58.6 m platformfor the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus could be accurately overlaid on

Francesco di Giorgio’s ‘palazzo del Champitolio’.

15 Ridley, ‘Unbridgeable gaps’ (above, n. 13), 102, has dated and listed the various scholarlyopinions on the platform’s dimensions.16 A. Mura Sommella, ‘‘La grande Roma dei Tarquini’: alterne vicende di una felice intuizione’,

Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma (2000), 7–26, at pp. 20–6. We baseall our plans of the temple platform on Sommella’s fig. 25, p. 25, and J. Hopkins, ‘The colossal


Fig. 3. Demonstration of insufficient correspondence between the ‘palazzo delChampitolio’ and a 54× 74 m platform for the Temple of Jupiter OptimusMaximus. (A) Temple foundation as the perimeter defensive wall. (B) Templefoundation as the outer wall of the palazzo complex. (C) Temple foundation asthe inner perimeter of the rooms labelled ‘sala’ and ‘cortile’. (D) Temple

foundation as the perimeter of six of the nine central spaces of the complex.

Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in archaic Rome’, in S. Camporeale, H. Dessales and A. Pizzo(eds), Arqueología de la construcción 2: procesos constructivos en el mundo romano: Italia yprovincias orientales (Siena, Certosa di Pontignano, 13–15 noviembre de 2008) (Archivo Españolde Arqueologia suplemento 57) (Madrid/Mérida, 2010), 15–33. G. Tagliamonte, ‘IuppiterOptimus Maximus Capitolinus, Aedes, Templum (fino all’a. 83 a.C.)’, in E.M. Steinby (ed.),Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae III (H–O) (Rome, 1996), 147, gives 53.5× 62.25m,similar to Sommella’s platform dimensions excluding the additional space behind the cellae.


dimensions of the platform in mind, nor did he draw his ‘palazzo del Champitolio’accordingly.

We can also rule out Lanciani’s interesting suggestion that Francesco diGiorgio’s ‘porticho del Champitolio’ was a propylaeum attached to the templeplatform. The structure that Francesco di Giorgio drew — three intersectingcircuits of columns, which would have been attached to the long side of anotherwise standard, if colossal, temple — has no analogue in Roman templearchitecture. In addition, it is worth mentioning that the precinct surroundingthe temple in antiquity, the Area Capitolina, was surrounded by a porticus inCapitolio and able to be closed off by at least one porta.17 These structureswere situated around the temple at a short distance from the temple platform,making the addition of a large propylaeum to the temple even less likely due tolack of space. However, if Lanciani was right that Francesco di Giorgiosketched a portico adjacent to the temple platform, it does remain at leastremotely possible that Francesco di Giorgio saw the remains of a porticus or aporta leading to the Area Capitolina, or indeed the remains of one of thetemples or other structures attested in the literary sources as standing in theArea Capitolina.18 The remote possibility that Francesco di Giorgio hadsupplied a plan of now lost ancient structures on the Capitolium led ChristianHülsen to attribute a drawing of a ‘porticho’ by Giuliano di Sangallo as thatseen by Francesco di Giorgio. This possibility also led Sommella to suggest thatthe columns indicated by Francesco di Giorgio’s ‘porticho del Champitolio’were related to the arcades of a portico surrounding the Area Capitolina, andthat these arcades, partly standing in fragmented ruins, were identified in thetwelfth-century Mirabilia as the porticus Crinorum.19

What is more likely than a record of an otherwise unattested propylaeum or aportico known in the Middle Ages or Renaissance is that Francesco di Giorgio sawsomething different when he was in Rome c. 1470. In what follows, we suggestthat the spoliated ‘porticho del Champitolio’ that Francesco di Giorgio sawfrom the Theatre of Marcellus consisted of remnants of the temple platform

17 Velleius Paterculus 2.3.1: ‘porticus in Capitolio’.18 See discussion in C. Reusser, ‘Area Capitolina’, in E.M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum

Urbis Romae I (A–C) (Rome, 1993), 115.19 C. Hülsen (ed.), Libro di Giuliano di Sangallo, Codice Vaticano Barberiniano Latino 4424

(Leipzig, 1910), fol. 1v, pl. 1, discussed at p. 77 in a list of errata and corrigenda. Here, Hülsenadded the identification of Francesco di Giorgio’s portico as that drawn later by Giuliano diSangallo. This is puzzling. Giuliano di Sangallo’s portico bears almost no resemblance to the plansketched by Francesco di Giorgio. Porticus Crinorum: Mirabilia urbis Romae 23, R. Valentiniand G. Zucchetti (eds), Codice topografico della città di Roma, 3 (Rome, 1946), 51. Sommella,‘Le recenti scoperte sul Campidoglio’ (above, n. 14), 78. Most place the porticus Crinorum at thebase of the Capitoline Hill in the Forum Holitorium, for example, D. Kinney, ‘Fact and fiction inthe Mirabilia Urbis Romae’, in É. Ó Carragain and C. Newman de Vegvar (eds), Roma Felix:Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome (Aldershot, 2007), 235–52, at pp. 246–7. In theirnotes, the editors Corrado Maltese and Livia Maltese Degrassi stated that Francesco di Giorgio’s‘porticho del Champitolio’ perhaps could be identified as the Porticus Minuciae: Maltese andMaltese Degrassi (eds), Trattati (above, n. 2), I, 282.


itself — not the palace-fortress that Francesco di Giorgio himself admitted was afantasy.

THE LAST COLUMNS OF THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER OPTIMUSMAXIMUS

In the eleventh century, if not before, the monumentality of the Capitol wasfocused away from the precinct of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.Rather than on the Capitolium, the southwest summit of the hill, the Capitolwas now situated to the northwest of the hill.20 Surrounding the Asylum(present Piazza del Campidoglio) were built the Palazzo Senatorio on the‘Tabularium’ in the twelfth century and the Palazzo dei Conservatori in thefifteenth — the core of structures that made the Capitol the seat of the Romancommune. Beyond, in the direction of the Campus Martius, was the church ofSanta Maria in Ara Caeli (today’s Aracoeli), first identified as such in thetwelfth-century Mirabilia Urbis Romae.21 By the fifteenth century, the southernsummit of the Capitoline Hill, the Capitolium, was largely an open space, butnot an empty one.

A number of fifteenth-century sources describe and represent a similarstructure as standing on the Capitol. In the decades before Francesco diGiorgio’s visit to Rome, Poggio Bracciolini’s De Varietate Fortunae, publishedin 1448, described this part of the Capitol as full of ‘broken columns lyingabout here and there’ (‘plurimasque passim confractas columnas’). Curiously,Poggio Bracciolini also noted a ‘huge marble lintel of a porta of a temple’(‘ingens cuiusdam portae templi marmoreum limen’), in other words a structurepossibly consisting of at least two posts spanned by a transverse beam.22

Writing also in the middle of the fifteenth century, Flavio Biondo likewise noteda ‘porta Capitolii ingens’ at the termination of the Clivus Capitolinus, whichwas, in his time, buried half-way up in ruins (‘ruinis supra medietatemobruta’).23 Like Poggio Bracciolini and Flavio Biondo, Francesco di Giorgio sawa landscape of ruins on the southwestern summit of the Capitol dominated by a

20 C. Cecchelli, ‘Il Campidoglio nel medioevo e nella rinascita’, Archivio della Reale DeputazioneRomana di Storia Patria 67 (1944), 209–32, summarized the literary sources, suggesting thatChristian associations with the site of Santa Maria in Aracoeli influenced the move toward theArx. For the evolution of the hill as a place of justice, still useful is C. Re, ‘Il Campidoglio e lesue adiacenze nel secolo XIV’, Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma (1882), 94–125.21 M. Brancia D’Apricena, ‘L’abbazia benedettina di Santa Maria de Capitolio’, Benedictina 43

(1996), 153–71, provided a recent and useful survey of the origins of the church-monastery on theArx and its development into the thirteenth century.22 Poggio Bracciolini, De Varietate Fortunae, 1.1; J.-Y. Boriaud (ed.), Les ruines de Rome: De

Varietate Fortunae, Livre I (Paris, 1999), 11. Admittedly, it is equally possible that PoggioBracciolini used limen to mean a threshold and not a lintel.23 Flavio Biondo, Roma instaurata 52; R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti (eds), Codice topografico

della città di Roma, 4 (Rome, 1953), 299.


singular ruin, likely standing columns and a trabeated structure. It is possible,then, but by no means certain, that Francesco di Giorgio’s report of a ruined‘porticho del Champitolio’ from c. 1470, Poggio Bracciolini’s ‘ingens limen’,and Flavio Biondo’s ‘porta Capitolii ingens’ are the same.

This highly speculative coupling of literary reports and Francesco di Giorgio’sdrawing is supported by other evidence. Maps and sales contracts also attestvisible standing columns in the area of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximusfrom the fifteenth century until the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Drawnin 1469 and shortly thereafter, Pietro del Massaio’s maps of Rome(Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Lat. 4802, fol. 133r and Vat. Lat. 5699, fol.127r) show a structure consisting of two vertical lines linked at the top (twocolumns carrying a trabeation?) in the area of the temple (Fig. 4).24 Indeed, thisstructure seems to have been noted in at least four other fifteenth-centuryrepresentations of Rome (Figs 5–7). Whatever it was, this structure was a sight,like Santa Maria in Aracoeli and the Palazzo Senatorio, which was intimatelyassociated with the Capitol.25 However, shortly after Francesco di Giorgiorecorded having seen the ruins of a ‘porticho del Champitolio’ on the hill thestructure rather quickly disappeared. A view of Rome from the CodexEscurialensis 28-II-12 (fol. 56v), dated to c. 1491, clearly depicts thesouthwestern summit of the Capitol as almost completely vacant.26 In thefifteenth century, just as the monumentality of the hill was sliding tothe northwestern summit of the Capitol, the remnants left on the southwesternsummit were cut up and carted off. This was a massive effort. Henri Jordanreported, in the nineteenth century, finding large deposits of ‘chips’ (‘Splitter’)of marble in the area of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, thebyproduct, he surmised, of cutting large slabs of marble into more manageablepieces.27

24 A.P. Frutaz, Le piante di Roma, 3 vols (Rome, 1962), pianta LXXXVII, tav. 157 (described inI, 137–8); pianta XC, tav. 160 (described in I, 142–4). See J. d’Angiolo de Florence (ed.),Géographiede Ptolémée: reproduction réduite des cartes et plan du Mss latin 4802, Bibliothèque Nationale,Départment des Manuscrits (Paris, 1926), 23 and pl. LXIX. Discussion: G. Scaglia, ‘The origin ofan archaeological plan of Rome by Alessandro Strozzi’, Journal of the Warburg and CourtauldInstitutes 27 (1964), 137–63, at pp. 137–8 and n. 4, with further references.25 Frutaz, Piante di Roma (above, n. 24), piante LXXVI, LXXVII, LXXVIII, LXXXIII, tav. 148,

149, 150, 154 (described in I, 123–7, 133). These structures have been variously interpreted: Pietrodel Massaio’s lines form either a Renaissance gallows or ‘the last remains of the Capitoline Temple’.Gallows: E. Stevenson, ‘Di una pianta di Roma dipinta di Taddeo di Bartolo nella cappella internadel Palazzo del Comune di Siena ca. 1413–1414’, Bullettino della Commissione ArcheologicaComunale di Roma (1881), 74–105, at p. 95; E. Rodocanachi, The Roman Capitol in Ancientand Modern Times, trans. F. Lawton (New York, 1906), 98; Frutaz, Piante di Roma (above,n. 24), I, 124–6. Temple remains: F.M. Nichols, Mirabilia Vrbis Romae, The Marvels of Rome orA Picture of the Golden City (London, 1889), 190.26 M. Fernández Gómez (ed.), Codex Escurialensis 28-II-12: libro de dibujos o antigüedades

(Madrid, 2000), 115 and the accompanying facsimile volume at fol. 56v.27 H. Jordan, Topographie der Stadt Rom in Alterthum, 2 vols (Berlin, 1871–85), I.2, 73 and

n. 70.


Fig. 4. Pietro del Massaio’s 1469 plan of Rome depicting a trabeated structure standing on the southwestern summit of the Capitol. Left: Paris, BN Lat.4802, fol. 133r. (Reproduced by kind permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France). Right: Vatican City, Vat. Lat. 5699, fol. 127r. (Reproduced

by kind permission of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.)

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Documents of sale and contracts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuriesillustrate the intense interest in the Capitol as a source of valuable buildingmaterials, not only for use in the renovation of the Palazzo Senatorio, but alsofor the reconstruction of Saint Peter’s. In the years before Francesco diGiorgio’s visit to Rome the process was well under way. In October 1454,Jacopo da Varese was paid 32 ducats for the removal of stones from the site,perhaps for the renovation of the Palazzo Senatorio evident in other documentsfrom the same time.28 In the second half of 1461, contracts reported a numberof instances. In one, a certain Silvestro was named as using 36 ox-drawn ‘carts’(‘carecte’) to remove stones from the hill.29 To understand these figures, it isuseful to turn to the 1743 Castelli e ponti di Maestro Niccola Zabaglia. There,Niccola Zabaglia wrote that one cart-load (‘carrago/carrettata’) of volume is 30‘cubic palms of travertine or any other type of stone’ (‘palmi cubici/palmi

Fig. 5. Early fifteenth-century depiction of Rome showing a trabeated structurestanding on the southwestern summit of the Capitol. Chantilly, Musée Condé MS

65, fol. 141v, 1411–16. (Source: HIP/Art Resource, NY.)

28 Lanciani, Storia degli scavi (above, n. 4), I, 68. Documents illustrating renovations to thePalazzo Senatorio in the pontificate of Nicholas V (1447–55): E. Müntz, Les arts à la cour despapes pendant le XVe et le XVIe siècle, 3 vols (Paris, 1878–82), I, 146–50.29 Lanciani, Storia degli scavi (above, n. 4), I, 80.


cubi’). Using the ‘palmo cubo’ employed in the Papal States before 1870, a cart-load was one-third (0.33) of a modern cubic metre of stone. Thus, in 1461,Silvestro’s 36 carts removed about 12 (11.88) cubic metres of materials.Zabaglia also noted that a cartload was 3,000 ‘libbre’. By analogy, again, with‘libbra’ used before 1870, a cart could carry as much as 1,017 kg (0.339 kg per‘libbra’). Silvestro’s 36 carts could have carried away more than 36,000 kg ofstone in the course of one job.30 With this level of excavation happening on thehill, it is easy to imagine that the remains of the Temple of Jupiter OptimusMaximus were more exposed than they had been for centuries, mixing still-standing structures like Poggio’s ‘ingens limen’ and materials that had, untilrecently, been buried — the perfect set of circumstances, in other words, forFrancesco di Giorgio to make his observations of the ruined ‘porticho delChampitolio’ (Fig. 8).

Fig. 6. Early fifteenth-century depiction of Rome showing a trabeated structurestanding on the southwestern summit of the Capitol. Taddeo di Bartolo, Palazzo

Pubblico, Siena, 1414. (Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY.)

30 For Zabaglia, see S. Turriziani, ‘La Fabbrica di San Pietro in Vaticano: istituzione esemplare del‘saper fare’ nei secoli XVII–XVIII’, in A. Marino (ed.), Sapere e saper fare nella Fabbrica di SanPietro: Castelli e ponti di maestro Niccola Zabaglia 1743 (Rome, 2008), 107–24, at pp. 139 and143 using, apparently, the same figures as those reported in S. La Colla, ‘Metrici, sistemi’, inG. Gentile (ed.), Enciclopedia italiana, Appendice I (Rome, 1938), 844, 847.


Fig. 7. Early fifteenth-century depiction of Rome showing a trabeated structurestanding on the southwestern summit of the Capitol. Turin, Biblioteca Reale Ms.

Varia 102, fol. 28r. (Source: Frutaz, Piante di Roma (above, n. 24), fig. 154.)

Fig. 8. Hypothetical view of what Francesco di Giorgio and other fifteenth-centuryartists saw of the remains of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximussuperimposed on today’s Campidoglio. Note the sightline from the Casa Savelli(Theatre of Marcellus) to these hypothetical ruins. Francesco di Giorgio claimed

that he saw them from this point of view.


None of the above-mentioned reports specify the removal of columns. Thatsome columns were still available, if not visible, is indisputable. In the 1540s,Pirro Ligorio mentioned having seen colossal columns of Pentelic marble on theCapitol, some of which were ‘carried off for the work of the most holy templeof San Pietro’.31 Two contracts confirm specifically that columns from theCapitol were transported to Saint Peter’s. One, dated to 1544–6, states that acolumn of marble was taken from the Campidoglio; the other, dated to 1548,records that a column was raised on the hill and designated to be made into astatue of the pope.32 It seems by the last half of the sixteenth century that anyremaining vestiges of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus could be foundonly by digging. Flaminio Vacca’s 1594 Memorie di varie antichità trovate indiverse luoghi della città di Roma contains the notice that ‘many columns ofmarmo statuale’ were excavated from the area ‘behind the Palazzo de’Conservatori’, some of which had enormous capitals — one Flaminio Vaccaused to sculpt a lion for the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Villa Medici (thelion now adorns the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence), and others were used byFlaminio Vacca’s teacher Vincenzo de Rossi for the Cappella di Cesi in Rome’sSanta Maria della Pace.33 The removal of stone from the temple was socomplete that only a handful of shattered fragments of marble were recoveredfrom the site in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.34

A NEW INTERPRETATION OF FRANCESCO DI GIORGIO’S‘PORTICHO DEL CHAMPITOLIO’

The ruined ‘porticho del Champitolio’ that Francesco di Giorgio projected in hisdrawing of the ‘palazzo del Champitolio’ and that Lanciani imagined was apropylaeum has a peculiar specificity — three intersecting circuits of columns

31 R. Lanciani, Storia degli scavi, 2 (1531–49) (Rome, 1903; reprint 1990), 99: ‘colonne erano dimarmo Pentellesio, ma come havemo veduti alcuni suoi fragmenti erano nove piedi grosse didiametro, portate per l’opera del santissimo tempio di san Pietro’.32 1544–6: G. Cascioli, ‘I monumenti di Roma e la Fabbrica di San Pietro’, Dissertazione della

Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, series II, vol. 15 (1921), 363–83, at pp. 372–3with n. 55: ‘E più la giornata e consumatura dj corda andata a tirar fuora la colonna di marmodel cafarello in campjdoglio monta in tutto Δ 20 b.-’. 1548: Lanciani, Storia degli scavi, 2 (above,n. 31), 146. See now D. Karmon, The Ruin of the Eternal City: Antiquity and Preservation inRenaissance Rome (Oxford/New York, 2011) for the increasing interest in the preservation ofancient monuments in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.33 F. Vacca, Memorie di varie antichità trovate in diverse luoghi della città di Roma scritte da

F. V. nell’anno 1594, 64, published first in 1704 and then by F. Nardini, Roma antica, fourthedition, vol. 4 (Rome, 1820), 28. Lanciani, ‘Tempio di Giove’ (above, n. 4), 187–8, was the firstto discuss Vacca’s ‘memoria’ in relation to the finds of fragments of colossal capitals from the site.34 S. De Angeli, ‘Iuppiter Optimus Maximus, Aedes (fasi tardo-repubblicane e di età imperiale)’,

in E.M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae III (H–O) (Rome, 1996), 153,discussed the sources and modern literature on the columns.


joined by centre lines, with stepped projections on the north and south sides thatnarrow from eight columns in width down to four columns at either end. Thisdesign is not attested in Roman architecture, and yet the artist claimed that he sawelements of the structure. So how did he come up with it? ReconstructingFrancesco di Giorgio’s method of drawing his ‘porticho del Champitolio’ willpossibly explain the peculiarities of his plan and reveal both what he did and didnot see.

Let us take Francesco di Giorgio at his word: he made his observations of theCapitol from the Casa Savelli (Theatre of Marcellus). From this vantage-point,Francesco di Giorgio would have been able only to see what Poggio Bracciolini andFlavio Biondo apparently described, and what maps and other images alsoapparently depict: at least one trabeated structure situated on the southwesternsummit of the hill. From this group of remnant columns, Francesco di Giorgioprojected a matrix of columns at regularly-spaced intervals. Figure 9 demonstrates

Fig. 9. A 54× 74 m platform for the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus with 9mlateral intercolumniations overlaid on Francesco di Giorgio’s ‘porticho del

Champitolio’.


that this field of columns quite closely maps onto the hexastyle portico, with 9 mintercolumniations, of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.35

As columns were spaced virtually always at regularly repeating intervals,Francesco di Giorgio’s column matrix admittedly would map onto the porticoof most prostyle temples.36 All that he needed to see was the trabeated structureand perhaps a few other column remnants. From a handful of columns, hecould have projected a colonnaded structure. But this observation, that two ormore columns could produce a matrix, does not explain why Francesco diGiorgio thought that he was drawing a ‘porta and portico’. Nor does it accountfor the peculiar design of the ‘porticho del Champitolio’ as having steppedprojections on its north and south sides. To understand how Francesco diGiorgio imagined this structure, it is important to know which of the columnshe used as the basis of his reconstruction and where his ‘porticho delChampitolio’ was situated on the Capitoline Hill.

There are two reasons for associating the ‘porticho del Champitolio’ withremains from the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. First, Francesco diGiorgio was precise in orienting the structures he imagined. He labelled eachside of the imaginary ‘palazzo del Champitolio’ with inscriptions indicating theorientation of the structure. The left side is labelled ‘diverso chasa de’Conservadori’ (‘in the direction of the Palazzo de’ Conservatori’), thus orientingthis side of the structure as facing north.37 Francesco di Giorgio’s ‘porticho delChampitolio’, as viewed from the Casa Savelli, is behind the Palazzo deiConservatori and oriented from north to south. This suggests that the ‘portichodel Champitolio’ was in the area of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.The second reason has to do with the design itself of the ‘porticho delChampitolio’. Like the temple platform, Francesco di Giorgio’s structure isessentially a rectangle with steps cut from the corners. One of the possible waysof accounting for its stepped projections on the north and south sides is toplace the structure on the site of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus andto imagine the materials and processes by which Francesco di Giorgio came upwith his reconstruction.

35 Though debated, the lateral intercolumniations of the temple’s portico are estimated to be 9–9.5 m. See Ridley, ‘Unbridgeable gaps’ (above, n. 13), 99–101; J.W. Stamper, The Architecture ofRoman Temples: the Republic to the Middle Empire (Cambridge, 2005), 24–32, has discussed theproblem of large interaxial spans and offers a new interpretation. Contra Stamper is Hopkins,‘The colossal Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus’ (above, n. 16). Our present study seems tosupport the standard scholarly view, represented by Sommella and Hopkins among others, thatthe lateral intercolumniations were indeed c. 9 m.36 For the sake of argument, the ‘Maison Carrée’ in Nîmes would fit Francesco di Giorgio’s

matrix, even though this hexastyle temple purportedly used the non-standard ‘Drusian foot’ as itsbasis of measurement. See J.C. Anderson, Jr, ‘Anachronism in the Roman architecture of Gaul:the date of the Maison Carrée at Nîmes’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60(2001), 68–79, at p. 72.37 Maltese and Maltese Degrassi (eds), Trattati (above, n. 2), I, 282. Lanciani, ‘Tempio di Giove’

(above, n. 4), 175–6, discussed the inscriptions as directional indicators.


Figure 10 imagines that Francesco di Giorgio saw five or six columns (orcolumn remnants) from the porch at the southwestern corner of the temple. Thethree southernmost columns at the corner were likely absent: they were mostvulnerable to spoliation and least stable structurally. His first inference would

Fig. 10. A possible explanation of how Francesco di Giorgio saw a group of five orsix column remnants emerging from the grade of the soil at the southwestern corner

of the temple platform.


have been to mirror his physical evidence along lateral line A–A (Fig. 11), thusproviding requisite symmetry to his ‘porta and portico’. Mirroring the remnantcolumn group in the southwestern corner of the temple platform on the

Fig. 11. A model for how Francesco di Giorgio projected his ‘porticho delChampitolio’ from a column group at the southwestern corner of the templeplatform. Francesco di Giorgio perhaps mirrored this column group along lineA–A for requisite symmetry. The constraints of topography at the northwestern

corner rationalized the unusual portico plan.


northwestern side placed three columns on the northwestern termination of thetemple platform and three columns beyond. Even if no such columns ever stoodon the northwest side of the temple, three of the five columns that Francesco diGiorgio imagined as once standing in this section of the platform do indeedmark the termination of the temple platform. In addition, the space beyond thenorth side of the temple, delimited in antiquity as it is now by a retaining wall,likely confirmed Francesco di Giorgio’s striking reconstruction of a stepped‘porticho del Champitolio’. If Francesco di Giorgio had seen all the columns inthe southwestern corner and attempted to mirror them on the northwesternside, three of the columns would not have fitted into the topography of thesite. Thus it seems that Francesco di Giorgio’s observation of a handful ofcolumns, when mirrored, fitted the limitations of space on the north side. Bothelements — the particularities of the space to the north and the column remainsto the south — mutually reinforced one another, resulting in the stepped designof the ‘porta and portico’.

Francesco di Giorgio’s next inference would have been to provide symmetryin the other direction, along longitudinal line B–B (Fig. 12). If so, the eighthand last row of columns in his projected reconstruction would have been thepilasters embedded into the wall of his palazzo complex. Francesco diGiorgio’s portico plan thus can be construed as a rationalization of whatmight have remained of the original temple through bilateral symmetry.Figure 9 shows how Francesco di Giorgio’s projected ‘porticho delChampitolio’ merges symmetrically with his imaginative reconstruction of the‘palazzo del Champitolio’. Everything beyond this row of pilasters is where the‘palazzo del Champitolio’ becomes pure fantasy.

If Francesco di Giorgio’s drawing suggests that he did see a few columnremnants, it also reveals what he did not see. In his reconstruction, Francesco diGiorgio did not see the 12 m intercolumniations of the centre bay of the temple.His columns were drawn as repeating at regular intervals. These regularlyrepeating intervals, in turn, suggest that any information about the columns oneither side of the centre bay of the temple would have been obscured, whileperhaps some column remnants on the northeastern side of the platformconfirmed the extent of the portico. Instead, Francesco di Giorgio imagined thattwo more closely spaced columns completed the portico.

This last point, namely that Francesco diGiorgio did not see evidence of the centrebay of the temple, helps us understand the peculiar configuration of the plan. Ourspeculative reconstruction of what Francesco di Giorgio did and did not seeprovides the strongest correspondence between the specificity of what he drew —

the ‘porticho del Champitolio’ consisting of three circuits of intersecting columns— and the physical evidence of the temple foundation and surrounding site as wenow know it. He likely saw five or six columns (or column remnants) from thesouthwestern corner of the temple portico. From these, using a series ofpredictable design and site inferences, he was able to draw his ‘porticho delChampitolio’, which, though a fantasy, nevertheless fairly accurately mapped thedimensions of the temple platform. But he did not see, or failed to measure


accurately, all the columns that originally stood across the southern face of theportico, thus further suggesting that only a handful of columns from one corner ofthe temple was visible in the latter half of the fifteenth century.

Fig. 12. Mirroring the south and west column groups along line B–B for bilateralsymmetry of the portico completed the stepped re-entrant corners of Francesco di

Giorgio’s portico plan.


We can conclude that Lanciani’s assertion that Francesco di Giorgio’s drawingattests an ancient propylaeum associated with the Temple of Jupiter OptimusMaximus is not tenable. Instead, Francesco di Giorgio’s ‘porticho del Champitolio’possibly could be another attestation of a structure on the Capitol noted by PoggioBracciolini and Flavio Biondo respectively as an ‘ingens cuiusdam portae templilimen’ and ‘ingens porta’. This structure was likely the one depicted in earlyfifteenth-century maps and drawings: two columns supporting a transverse beam.When Francesco di Giorgio visited the city c. 1470, this ‘porta’ was therefore anoteworthy site. In his drawing, he restored the ruined structure as an elaborate‘porticho’ attached to a wholly imaginary ‘palazzo del Champitolio’, in the centreof which stood a round ‘Tenpio di Giove’. The peculiar design of this porticomakes most sense if the structure that Francesco di Giorgio saw and documentedwas located on the site of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The steppedprojections on the north and south sides of the portico emerged from the artist’simagination based on his observation of a few columns or column remnants in thesouthwest corner of the temple’s portico. The mirroring of these columns on thenorthwest side nestled the whole structure into the topography of the site (Fig. 13).Francesco di Giorgio and his fifteenth-century contemporaries thereforeunwittingly recorded the last remains of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximusbefore these remains virtually disappeared through the planned excavation andsale of salvaged marble and travertine from the site in the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies. By looking again at Francesco di Giorgio’s drawing of the ‘palazzo delChampitolio’ and his plan of the ‘porticho del Champitolio’, it is possible toreconstruct not only what Francesco di Giorgio saw on the Monte Tarpeo, butalso what Poggio Bracciolini, Flavio Biondo, Pietro del Massaio and others sawthere. It was apparently a notable site, an evocative ruin worthy of commentary,artistic representation and imaginative reconstruction. Whatever temple remainscontinued to be visible, however, these were insufficient to suggest that they wereoriginally part of the ‘Tenpio di Giove’ to viewers like Francesco di Giorgio.

The fact that Francesco di Giorgio imagined that the ‘Tenpio di Giove’ stood atthe heart of a massive structure, a ‘palazzo’, likely is rooted in legends originatingin the Early Middle Ages that imagine the Capitolium as an immense manmadestructure that contained within it unbelievable power (Fig. 14). In lists of the‘Seven Manmade Wonders of the World’ that circulated in the eighth century,the Capitolium is described as ‘bigger than a city’ (‘major quam civitas’) and a‘huge building’ (‘ktisma mega’).38 By the twelfth century, this structure, like themonumentality of the hill itself, shifted to the northwestern summit of the hill.In the Mirabilia Urbis Romae, the Arx held a ‘palace’ (‘palatium’), which wasdecorated with amazing works of art and ornamented with gold, silver, bronze

38 Ps.-Bede,De SeptemMundiMiraculis, J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina(Paris, 1844–55) 90, cols 961–2; Cosmas of Jerusalem, Commentarii in Sancti Gregorii NazianzeniCarmina, J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, series Graeca (Paris, 1857–66) 38, col. 546.See J. Moralee, ‘A hill of many names: the Capitolium from late antiquity to the Middle Ages’, Acta adArcheologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 26 (2013), 47–70, at pp. 59–60.


and precious stones. The Mirabilia relates that it was at ‘the summit of the Arx’(‘in summitate arcis’) that the ‘Temple of Juno and Moneta’ stood.39 Using theMirabilia and other sources, the thirteenth-century Graphia Aureae Urbis adds

Fig. 13. Francesco di Giorgio’s projected ‘porticho del Champitolio’ mergingsymmetrically with his imaginative reconstruction of the ‘palazzo del Champitolio’.

39 Mirabilia Urbis Romae 23, Valentini and Zucchetti (eds), Codice topografico della città diRoma, 3 (above, n. 19), 51.


Fig. 14. Francesco di Giorgio’s projected ‘porticho del Champitolio’ and the impossibly immense scale of the ‘palazzo del Champitolio’ overlaid onGiovanni Ioppolo’s plan of the Capitoline Hill. Plan adapted from W. von Sydow, ‘Archäologische Funde und Forschungen im Bereich der

Soprintendenz Rom, 1957–1973’, Archäologischer Anzeiger (1973), 521–647, fig. 34.

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that ‘a gold statue of Jupiter sitting on a gold throne’ (‘aurea statua Iovis sedens inaureo trono’) was inside the ‘Temple of Juno and Moneta’.40 Both of these texts,the Mirabilia and the Graphia, as well as others related to them, were known inFrancesco di Giorgio’s day.41 This is not to assert that Francesco di Giorgio drewupon them for inspiration; but the artist was drawing on a way of knowing andseeing the Capitol that had crystallized already in the Middle Ages andcontinued to be articulated thereafter.42 Indeed, Jessica Maier has shown that inthe decades after Francesco di Giorgio visited Rome cartographers likeLeonardo Bufalini tended toward ‘imaginative exuberance’ when faced withfragments of Roman monuments.43 In collective memory, the Temple of Jupitercould be nothing less than an almost unimaginable structure. In reality, thestructure and its platform were smaller than the Basilica Nova (100× 65 m) atthe other end of the Forum Romanum, a building that Francesco di Giorgioand his contemporaries understood as the ‘Tenplum Pacis’ and whose planhe included in the Monumenti antichi.44 Perhaps that is why Francesco diGiorgio’s observation of ruins on the Capitol and his reconstruction of the planof the ‘porticho del Champitolio’ failed to suggest to him the necessary, butimaginary, immensity of Rome’s most celebrated temple. It was simply not bigenough and it was not situated on the northwestern summit of the hill. Thus,by the end of the fifteenth century, the Roman Imperial Temple of JupiterOptimus Maximus had been lost, almost imaginarily detached from its physicallocation and disassociated from its valuable marble remains.

Addresses for correspondence:Professor Jason MoraleeDepartment of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA 01060, [email protected]

Professor Kiel MoeHarvard Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02139, [email protected]

40 Graphia Aureae Urbis 31, Valentini and Zucchetti (eds), Codice topografico della città diRoma, 3 (above, n. 19), 89.41 Valentini and Zucchetti (eds), Codice topografico della città di Roma, 3 (above, n. 19), 3–196.42 R.L. Benson, ‘Political renovatio: two models from Roman antiquity’, in R.L. Benson and

G. Constable (eds), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge (MA), 1982),339–86, esp. pp. 351–5; S. Diefenbach, ‘Beobachtungen zum antiken Rom im hohen Mittelalter:städtische Topographie als Herrschafts- und Erinnerungsraum’, Römische Quartalschrift 97(2002), 40–88, at pp. 64–8.43 J. Maier, ‘Leonardo Bufalini and the first printed map of Rome, ‘The Most Beautiful of All

Things’’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 56–7 (2011–12), 243–70, esp. pp. 255–63.44 Maltese and Maltese Degrassi (eds), Trattati (above, n. 2), I, 278, tav. 139. See T. Buddensieg,

‘Die Konstantinsbasilika in einer Zeichnung Francescos di Giorgio und der MarmorkolossKonstantins des Grossen’, Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst 13 (1962), 37–48.


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What Francesco di Giorgio Saw on the Capitoline Hill c. 1470 (with Kiel Moe)

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