In the 15th century, Florence was the most important center of architecture and art in Italy. Here, a new style was born based on the idea of humanism - Renaissance. It radiated throughout Italy, and other cities tried to keep up with it - Urbino, Milan, Mantua or Bologna, to name only a few. At that time, Rome after almost a century of the Avinio pontiffs captivity (1309-1377), years of chaos during the so-called great Western schism (1378-1417) and the tragic* sacco di Roma* (sacking the city by the army of Emperor Charles V in 1527), was recovering very slowly. However, in the 16th century, it was Rome that came to the avant-garde of Italian cities and began to set new trends in the development of art and architecture. The popes and cardinals from aristocratic families spared no resource for large sacral and private investments, employing some of the most outstanding artists from all over Italy and abroad. This is where the architectural creativity of the greatest masters fully blossomed: Rafael Santi, Donato Bramante, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and a number of others who laid the foundation for further development of modern architecture.
At the same time, around the middle of the 15th century, a major breakthrough in history of European civilization took place - a true revolution in the way texts were copied was introduced by Johannes Gutenberg, who was the first in Europe to use printing with movable fonts. Thanks to this invention books could be reproduced in hundreds of copies and the written word could reach a growing number of recipients, contributing to the dissemination of knowledge, ideas, art and artistic creation. The spread of the printed book was accompanied by the growing need for illustrations, which were prepared using a relatively young, but dynamically developing art - graphics, in its different varieties (woodcutting, copperplate, etching, as well as watercolors in more “luxurious” publications). Printed books grew not only in numbers, but also in variety: chronicles and atlases, architectural treatises, albums with views of cities and individual buildings were published more and more often.
In Italy, it was Rome that became the second (next to Venice) most important publishing center in the 16th century. There were more and more publishing houses, printing houses and bookshops founded by native Romans, as well as draftsmen, engravers and printers coming to the Eternal City from other regions of Italy (Vincenzo Luchino from Bologna, Giovanni Battista de’Cavalieri from Trento or Antonio Tempesta from Florence), as well as from abroad (Antonio Lafrery, Francesco and Claudio Duchetti, Stefano Duperac and Nicolas Dorigny from France, Antonio Salamanca from Spain, Giovanni Alto from Sweden and Nicolaus van Aelst from Flanders). These great masters created works of architecture, sculpture and painting but also mapped and published the ruins or reconstructions of ancient Roman buildings using graphic techniques. Many of these valuable engravings are now found in museums; among them is the Museum of Architecture in Wroclaw with its considerable collection.
The exhibition presents 56 copperplates and etchings from our collection, created in the 16th-18th century, including those based on Italian Renaissance masterpieces, and made by magnificent draftsmen and engravers working for well-known publishing houses. The exhibits take us on a journey around Renaissance Rome, as well as Milan, Loreto and Vicenza. We start with the old Rome - the city panorama of the from the end of the 15th century and the plan from the end of the next century - which, when we look closely enough, allow us to see the changes that took place in the city within the century. The views of Roman antiquity - also in the form of careful drawing reconstructions - so carefully studied by all Renaissance artists, remind us that this was an important source for their inspiration. We will visit Milan and Loreto thanks to one of the most eminent architects of mature Renaissance – Donato Bramante. A true gem of the exhibition is his only drawing in Polish collections, probably depicting a theater set design, created at the end of the Milan period of the artist’s activity. The collection of graphics relating to the designs of the St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome (which, after being dismantled by Bramante on the order of Pope Julius II, started to be built from scratch in 1505) is also extremely valuable. Two of the graphics show the unrealized design by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, reconstructed graphically based on a wooden model. Other three present designs by Michelangelo, developed based on the originals by an eminent illustrator and engraver Stefano Duperac, who also recorded the Michelangelo’s design for the development of the Capitoline Hill in the copper engraving technique combined with etching. Other copperplates depict another Michelangelo’s design (not preserved in the original) of the last structure built during his lifetime - Porta Pia, the Roman city gate and views of the Farnese palace, also partially designed by the architect. This part of the exhibition ends with the interior view of the first modern theater building - Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, designed by Andrea Palladio.
The second part of the exhibition takes viewers to a Renaissance Italian villa - a new type of residence connected with a garden. It was first created in the 15th century, and in the next one hundred years dominated the hills of Rome and its surroundings. These breathtaking palace and garden complexes were a frequent theme of various graphics. The exhibition presents the plan and view of nimfeum in Villa Giulia - one of the most important structures for the development of modern residential architecture (designed by a team of excellent architects led by Giorgio Vasari), a 16th century copper engraving depicting Villa Medici, by an eminent illustrator and engraver based in Florence - Antonio Tempesta, 17th century etchings from the album published in 1693 and Giardini di Roma, with views of Villa Medici, adjacent Villa Borghese, both situated on Monte Pincio, as well as Villa Mattei located on Monte Celio. Furthermore, the copper engravings from the late 18th century by Domenico Prontiego, showing the famous Renaissance terrace gardens - Orti Farnesiani on the Palatine and the gardens of princes Colonna on Quirinal. A small print by Giacomo Lauro from the album Antique Urbis Slendor published in 1641 is truly a unique part of the collection. It meticulously describes one of the most interesting garden assumptions, Villa Lante in Bagnaia near Viterbo - the pearl of Mannerism designed by Jacop Barozzi da Vignola. At the end - a real feast for the eyes: engravings from two graphic cycles that were created on the basis of wonderful painting decorations by Rafael and his students. The first one is the enchanting love story of Amor and Psyche illustrated in the form of frescos by Rafael on the vault of the garden loggia at Villa Farnesina, here masterfully reproduced in etching by Nicolas Dorigny. The second one is based on the wonderful ornamental, grotesque scenery of the Raphael Loggia in the Vatican Palace. The authors of these excellent graphic interpretations of Rafael’s frescoes are eminent Roman artists working in the second half of the 18th century: Pietro Camporese, Gaetano Savorelli and Giovanni Ottaviani.
These beautiful prints displayed on the exhibition allow us to admire the talent or, should we say, genius of the creators of Renaissance architecture, garden designs and painting decorations. Moreover, it gives the viewers a chance to appreciate the technique of the artists who have preserved the masterpieces as drawings, masterfully copied to copper plates, through which we can observe the design background of the great Renaissance architects.
CURATOR: Beata Fekecz-Tomaszewska
GRAPHIC: Matylda Tomaszewska-Naumowicz
Honorary Patronage of the President of Wroclaw
