Published by Princeton Architectural Press A McEvoy Group company 37 East Seventh Street New York, New York 10003 www.papress.com © 2016 Princeton Architectural Press All rights reserved Printed and bound in China 19 18 17 16 4 3 2 1 First paperback edition ISBN 978-1-61689-483-2 No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. Princeton Architectural Press is deeply grateful to Mark Ferguson, Brian Connolly, and Peter W. Lyden of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art for their help and financial support. Special thanks to: Nicola Brower, Janet Behning, Erin Cain, Tom Cho, Barbara Darko, Benjamin English, Jenny Florence, Jan Cigliano Hartman, Lia Hunt, Mia Johnson, Valerie Kamen, Simone Kaplan-Senchak, Stephanie Leke, Diane Levinson, Jennifer Lippert, Sarah McKay, Jaime Nelson Noven, Rob Shaeffer, Sara Stemen, Paul Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Janet Wong of Princeton Architectural Press — Kevin C. Lippert, publisher The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Letarouilly, Paul Marie, 1795-1855. [Recueil des palais, maisons, églises, couvents, et autres monuments publics et particuliers les plus remarquables de la ville de Rome / dessinés, mesurés, et publiés par Paul Letarouilly. English.] Edifices de Rome moderne / Paul Letarouilly 3 v. in 1 (354 p. of plates) : chiefly ill., map ; 31 cm. ISBN 0-910413-00-2 1. Architecture—Italy—Rome. 2. Architecture, Renaissance— Italy—Rome. 3. Rome (Italy)—Buildings, structures, etc. I. Title. NA1120.L4 1982 (CStRLIN)ILAA85-B2244 98153987
I NT ROD UCT ION
Like any nineteenth-century student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Paul Letarouilly surely would have known Denis Diderot’s and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s epoch-making Encyclopédie, whose 3,129 engravings were published in twenty-eight volumes between 1751 and 1765. This ambitious project to document, catalog, and illustrate “all of the world’s knowledge” had a revolutionary effect on the intellectual culture not only of France, but of all Europe, and became the sine qua non of intellectual and artistic endeavors. Born in 1795 in Coutances, Normandy, Letarouilly was a student of Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine, two of the École’s most celebrated teachers and champions of an archeologically correct neoclassical architecture based on primarily Roman precedents. At the age of nineteen, Percier won the prestigious Prix de Rome, where he met Fontaine; together they authored Palais, maisons et autres édifices modernes dessinés à Rome (Palaces, Houses, and Other Modern Buildings Designed in Rome), published in 1798. This Encyclopédie-esque series of etchings of measured plans, sections, elevations, and perspectival views of many of Rome’s most famous buildings is instantly recognizable to any reader of Letarouilly’s work, and it’s likely that Percier and Fontaine encouraged their star pupil to continue their work when they helped him make his way to Rome in 1820. It was then that Letarouilly began the project of measuring and drawing the buildings of Renaissance Rome that was to become his life’s work, other than some minor, and sometimes titular, architectural assignments within the government (including inspector of the renovations at the Odéon-Théâtre, the Champs-Élysées, and, in 1834, the Collège de France). The first volume of Letarouilly’s masterpiece, Édifices de Rome moderne, appeared in 1840 from the publisher Didot, the firstfruits of years of his meticulous work. Letarouilly’s finely detailed engravings are still seen as the definitive drawn representations of Renaissance Roman architecture. The 354 plates demonstrated, and took advantage of, significant advances in steel engraving technology of the period. Steel rapidly replaced copper as the printing medium of choice in the nineteenth century, with its
sharper clarity, crisper lines, and more durable plates; the ruling machine, for example, allowed finely-spaced hatching, visible in most of Letarouilly’s plates. The second volume of the Édifices was published by the Parisian houses of Bance and Morel and the third by the Belgian publisher Bruylant-Christophe. A pirated edition of all three was lithographed in 1853 by Avanzon in Liège, news of which reportedly sent Letarouilly to an early grave in 1855. In the three volumes of the Édifices, Letarouilly exhaustively catalogs 167 houses and palazzos; ninety-four churches, convents, baptisteries, and chapels; two colleges; and two hospitals; all shown in plan, section, and elevation (exterior or interior or, often, both); along with dozens of details, including ceilings, doors, porticos, courtyards, tombs, mausoleums, fountains, nymphaeums, staircases, murals, statuary, and other ornament such as bas-reliefs. His drawings include not only the bestknown icons of Roman architecture (Villas Farnese, Giulia, Borghese, Madama, and Farnesina, among others), but also numerous lesser-known “vernacular” buildings that make up the inimitable urban fabric of the city. In addition to ignoring most of the city’s formal gardens, the book contains one seemingly glaring omission, St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican. But 243 plates of the Holy See were published separately (and posthumously) by the Parisian house Morel in 1882 in another three-volume set, The Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica of Rome. The Vatican granted Letarouilly unparalleled access to its architectural and artistic treasures, and his etchings of these are included with great detail in the additional set. Letarouilly’s Édifices has been called the “most beautiful book on Renaissance architecture ever published,” and its exhaustiveness, accuracy, and meticulous attention to detail also make it one of the most invaluable. The portrait it provides of the Eternal City, its monuments, and its streetscapes makes it both a joy to read and an essential cornerstone of any architectural library. Letarouilly himself suggested that studying the past awakens the imagination, offering “the first few happy facts in the immense field [one] is exploring.” Indeed, to leaf through the pages of this extraordinary book is to be instantly transported to another place and time, imagination wide awake and at full attention. — Kevin Lippert