Geometric Survey and Urban Design: A Project for the Rome of Paul IV (1555–1559)

Abstract

The slow development of survey technology—from the first statement of its geometric principles in the mid-fifteenth century to its application in the administration of property and the design of urban spaces—spans an arc of almost two centuries. One of the landmarks of this progress is a drawing in the Uffizi collection, catalogued under the number 4180A. It is a large drawing, composed of 10 joined sheets, and measuring 117 cm by 133 at its widest points. It is a project for a large building complex on an urban site. The constituent elements identify it as a cloister: the cruciform space of a church, an atrium, and an arcaded court. A “rota” and “parlatoio”, located between the two latter spaces allow communication between the cloistered religious and lay visitors. This is not an ideal scheme, and it is the survey that makes it specific. The “Piazza del arco di camillo” to the right side and the “piazza di S. Ma(c)uto” at the bottom left, place the project in Rome, on the site occupied today by the late sixteenth-century structures of the Collegio Romano and the seventeenth-century church of Sant’Ignazio. The drawing represents a project for a convent of Franciscan nuns, or Poor Clares, sponsored by the Marchesa Vittoria della Tolfa and was executed in the period 1555–1559, during the pontificate of the marchioness’s uncle, Paul IV Caraffa.