Given that plans are not necessarily always to be taken literally - artistic licence and imagination can sometimes play a part - what can we learn from illustrations of the area from the 15th century onwards about the appearance of Piazza del Popolo before it reached its definitive (so far) form under Valadier in the early 19th century?
We shall see that, if no one plan superficially appears accurate, it may nevertheless be possible to collate several to achieve a more truthful result - that is, if we allow for one plan being in part copied from another.
The concept is important not only for the Piazza, but also for many of the frescoes within SM del Popolo, wherein the scenes are set against an idealised and perfect view of the ancient city of Rome which, as the centre of Western Christianity, was analagous to Jerusalem, as a new Christian city to be built by the Popes with the ideas and materials, and in triumphant conquest of, the ancient pagan city of Rome.
25.JPG: Alessandro Strozzi's drawing of 1474 shows the area as a large blank to the top of the church and the adjacent walls. There is a square-based ruin, presumably a tomb, nearby; but should we trust it when the Mausoleum of Augustus (Mauseolus Divi Augusti) is shown with a square base and arches? Behind the church, on the Pincio, are various tall arched ruins, but it is impossible to locate them closely to our piazza - they could be intended to be as far away as Villa Medici.
26.JPG: Hartmann Schedel in 1493 shows SM del Popolo with a central dome (!); he also shows ruins on the Pincio but, once again, it is impossible to gauge their exact location.
1.JPG: Lucio Fauno in 1548 is rough and abbreviated, although he does sketch the Msueoleum of Augustus with something near accuracy - but his representation shows only the main c monuments, and the hills - not Renaissance buildings nor yet ancient ruins.
31.JPG: Leonardo Buffalini in 1551 is more helpful. Directly adjacent to the church he labels Hic fuit sepulcru. Neronis. And he shows a circular monument (surely a tomb - for similar ones have survived in the vicinity) outside the Porta Flaminia, on the Via Flaminia, river side This whole area outside the walls is now given over to "vinea" - EXPLAIN.
32.JPG: Things begin to look up considerably when we come to Pirro Ligorios plan of the following year, 1552 - as different from Bufalini as chalk from cheese. But is it any more accurate? The Mausoleum of Augustus looks good (with an added, seated colossal statue!), and the Arco di Portogallo on the Corso (knocked down in WHEN because it blocked traffic) is also shown. SM del Popolos facade is shown in abbreviated fashion, but the Pincio has only the work NAVMACHIAE on it, and nothing illustrated.
33.JPG: Hugo Pinard in 1555 is useful for underlining just how rural the area was outside the walls: villas, trees and fields dot the hills. We can recognise the narrow lane leading up to the Villa Giulia and, further along on bthe same side, Sangallos little church with the its dome. Much has changed since, especially the carving out of the Via dei Belle Arti to make a whole valley - the Valle Giulia - between these two monuments.
NiccoloBeatrizet in 1557 (34.JPG) makes things easy by not including our church or piazza at all; while Giovanni Dosio 35.JPG in 1561shows the church, the trident of streets, and the rural life of the vigne outside tghe walls.
5.JPTG: Onofrio Panvinio in 1565, concerned only with the ancient monuments, shows a naumachia (see above) by the Pincio, sketches in the trident as dotted lines, and places the tomb of Nero up on the Pincio. Gregorovius (1972, 5.377) says that this is called the Tomb of Marcellus by archaeologists (not of the mother of nero), and that it was demolished by Paul III. Check with Lanciani.
36.JPG Giovanni Camoccio in 1569 also shows the villas and farms outside the walls, and the trident within it; but according to him there is a wall turning the piazza into a small triangular area, with another gate in it into the city
6.JPG Etienne du Perac's reconstructionn of ancient Rome, of 1574, lets imagination run riot. There are no ruins, only complete monuments, put together with an eye for splendourwhich makes one wonder whether he is any relation to Piranesi... His taste for square tombs with pyramids on top - there are three visible in this detail - helps give a context to the Chigi Chapel, without necessarily convincing us that there were such large quantities of tombs near our church Mario Cartaro 8.JPG in 1579 has different but equally impressive pyramidal monuments. But there were some nearby tombs, including the one near to the present site of S Maria dei Miracoli, known as la meta, which was topped by a pyramid (Gregorovius 1972 2.284, 5.336).
37.JPG: Braun and Hogenberg in 1575 have the same triangular space by the church as Camoccio, so either such a wall was there, or they copied his work.
39.JPG Mario Cartaro, also 1575, has no such triangular space, but a fountain instead, and the trident clearly marked.
40.JPG: Duperac and Lafrerys work of 1577 has a better view of the fountain, which is in operation, and has two superimposed basins. The inscription PLATEA POPVLI suggests the arfea had a formal name by now, and the streets of the trident are also named..
41.JPG The anonymous fresco in the Salone Sistina in the Vatican, of 1588/90, now shows the obelisk in place, next to the fountain, and a large circular structure, perhaps the Tomb of Nero, on the hill directly to the east of our church.@AmbrogioBrambilla, 42.JPG, shows the same.
43.JPG: Antonio Tempesta's plan of 1593 is of a much higher quality than most of the material we have seen thus far. He shows the walls of Rome, the Porta del Popolo with a walkway between the towers - and vegetable gardens where the western hemicycle of Piazaza del Popolo now stands. Our Piazza currently looks little different from S Peters (cf. Tempesta 23.JPG), in that both have one obelisk and one fountain, not to mention a similarly triangular shape. Perhaps any self-respecting square (such as Piazza Colonna) needed a monument and a fountain (qalthough at this date Piazza Navona was lacking its obelisk, and Berninis attention to the fountains was far in the future). We still find the kitchen gardens - 70.JPG - for the houses and palazzi on the roads of the trident are backed by long gardens, none too different from those shown for the Villa Medici - 72.JPG: Vivarium magni ducis Hetruriae - with hills fields and ruins to the north of the fountain (which is still there - the most beautiful in Rome, even when in need of repair and levelling) Toward the Tiber, the garden-ends are banked up and galleried - a reminder of the serious flooding which only became less of a threat in the 19th century, with embankment work along the whole of the urban stretch of the river.
44.JPG Matthew Greuter in 1618 also provides good detail, from which it is clear how irregular the trident ends are, making nothing like the regulation French patte doie.
47.JPG Giovanni Maggi in 1625 shows the area becoming more and more pleasant, with tgrees planted in a line outside the walls, forming a kind of boulevard, and th4e south side of the piazzaa - next to the named Strada Paolini - provided with regular terraced houses. One wouldnt think it the same place as that delineated so scruffily by G. de Rossi 50.JPG in 1637 - which is no doubt why the Rossi-Tempesta publication of 1661/2 - 51.JPG - was necessary CHECK. This now shows the two churches in between the forks of the trident, shown also in plan in Matteo Gregorio de Rossis publication of 1668, 52.JPG. Now the piazza is beginning to take on an almost regular triangular shape, spreading out from the Porta del Popolo.
54JPG We can see this clearly in GB Nollis meticulous plan of 1736-44 Withy the two trident churches forming the beginnings of something lively and dynamic, to accompany the interesting ground plans of various churches visible down the Corso, the clustered obelisk and fountain look silly: nothing is being made of their potential. Is this a symptom of lack of funds? Lack of interest by the Papacy? The Papacys attention diverted elsewhere?
57.JPG: In Giuseppe Vasi's plan of 1781, the area is still not completely urbanised for, although most of the piazza now has housing faces, there is still the large garden on the west side. Ripe for development, one might say - and curious how this key area, and considered as such by Renaissance popes, seems to have languished somewhat after Bernini and Alexander VII, in favour of other schemes.
58.JPG Pietro Ruga in 1818 shows these works under way. The west side is still as it always was, but a hemicycle has been carved out to the east, and its present disposition is taking shape. In 61.JPG Tommaso Falcettis model of 1826, the new layout is in place, Tyhe fountain has gone from the centre, but the hemicycles with their fountains are in place, as are the promenade slopes of the Pincio, the layout of which is much cleqarer in Alessandro Uggeris plan 60.JPG of the same date.
67-73.JPG for panoramic views of 1870/8 of the whole area, from the Pincio on one side to the Tiber on the other.
For the current configuration of the area outside the walls, cf. 82.JPG for C. Scarpittis plan of 1916, marked at the top Esposizione 1911, and showing the structures of the Via delle Belle Arti, and the eponymous palazzo bulking large.These buildings, and the foreign academies which sprouted on the site, are visible in 89.JPG Vittorio Nistris aerial photograph of 1934, with the bosky Villa Borghese contrasting strongly with the serried ranks of apartment blocks from the western side of Via Flaminia down to the river.
How do the renaissance imagining of the classical monuments inside and outside the walls accord with the reality, in so far as it can be reconstructed? Giuseppe Luglis view 19.JPG of 1939 sketches in the Ara Pacis and the solarium, but does not do Piazza del Popolo in detail. Howevedr 20.JPG his 1949 revision (with Italo Gismondi) shows SEPULCRA marked under each of the two tridentine churches, and a cippus marked on the E side of Via Flaminia outside the walls Today there is also a circular mausoleum (still visible near the tennis courts): when was this discovered? Try Amandas book.