La Porta Borgiana di Civita Castellana (Viterbo, Italia), eretta alla fine del XV secolo in onore del cardinale Rodrigo Borgia, venne costruita grazie allo smantellamento di un monumento funerario romano, dal quale venne estratto un insieme di materiali marmorei per decorare l'arco. L'iscrizione sulla porta chiarisce l'origine di tali pezzi, i quali appartenevano alla tomba di Publius Glitius, uno dei protagonisti della congiura di Pisone. Sulla base dello studio dei materiali, spoliati e riutilizzati nella Porta Borgiana e in altri siti del comune di Civita Castellana, nei pressi della città di Falerii Novi, presentiamo un approccio al monumento funerario in questione, fornendo nuovi dati sull'identificazione del personaggio e sulla possibile ubicazione della tomba. Allo stesso tempo, l'analisi della costruzione della Porta Borgiana ha permesso di metterla in relazione con la propaganda politico-ideologica di Rodrigo Borgia, basata, in parte, sull'uso dell'antichità classica, quale strumento di legittimazione dinastica e territoriale.

It has been argued that a schola medicorum (i.e. a headquarters of physicians) existed in ancient Rome. According to this, the evidence supporting the existence of the schola is the plinth of a statue engraved with the text translata de schola medicorum, the epitaph of a scriba medicorum, and a Greek inscription dedicated by a δεκαδάρχης ἰατρῶν, but these sources present some problems when they are subjected to a critical examination. Moreover, the silence of ancient authors about this place is striking, and subsequent doubts emerge when considering that the schola medicorum is first documented in a manuscript by Pirro Ligorio. The aim of this paper is to re-examine the documentary sources that allude to the schola medicorum, assessing also the use of this expression in scientific literature from the sixteenth century, and try to determine if the written sources support the existence of such a place in ancient Rome.

The Pitti crystal column, preserved at the Uffizi Museum, is one of the most refined glyptic objects of the Renaissance age. Owing to its decorative system on a miniature scale, the significance of many of its scenes has remained unclear, and hence, as a consequence, so have its function, iconological message, the meaning of its all'antica style, and its intended recipient. Using detailed images of each engraved scene, this paper shows how the decorative system of the artefact (originally a mirror) is related to King Philip II of Spain (1527–1598). The entire decoration was designed to eulogize Philip II, and especially the Battle of Saint-Quentin (1557), and his consequent control over some Italian lands (Milan, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia) after the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559). The paper investigates the reasons why Trajan's Column was chosen as an inspirational model for the Pitti column and how such an ancient model was re-elaborated and renewed through the combination of other elements that came from a wider antiquarian all'antica repertoire. In this way, it is possible to show that this valuable artefact is a clear example of how the use of all'antica style in the Renaissance was not purely referencing a glorious past, but was adapted to the use of the object itself.

This paper aims to advance scholarly understanding of the intellectual significance of Ovid's Fasti during the European Renaissance by examining a number of early modern poetic calendars modelled on the Ovidian poem. Recent studies of Ovid's Fasti have noted that the poem's propensity to contest the meaning of a particular occasion facilitates a sustained examination of the relationship between the past and present of Rome, through which the poet disrupts the reorganization of the Roman calendar by Augustus. This paper suggests that a similarly politically charged operation underpins a number of Renaissance fasti poems. Using these poems’ remembrance of the Sack of Rome (1527) as a case study, this article argues, firstly, that the genre's commemorative function is mobilized competitively by its early modern authors to reflect on the history and status of Rome, particularly the city's role as the caput mundi since antiquity. Secondly, it will be shown that in the second half of the sixteenth century the genre of calendrical poetry — and Ovid's Fasti in particular — became an important medium through which Renaissance humanists critiqued the nature of power at a time when political and ecclesiastical schisms hardened across Europe.

The Janiculum Hill in antiquity was a place of noble villas, military triumphs, ancient burials and Christian martyrdoms, all of which were recorded and interpreted in various ways in the antiquarian maps and literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many of its associations had significance to the Pamphilj family, who bought a modest vigna there in 1630, not long after Giovan Battista Pamphilj (1574–1655) became cardinal. In the fourteen years that separated the purchase of the vigna and the elevation of Cardinal Pamphilj to the papal throne as Innocent X (1644–55) more land was acquired in the area, and the Casino del Bel Respiro, the Pamphilj's palazzo di rappresentanza at the Villa Pamphilj, was eventually built some distance from the original farmhouse, its entrance directly facing the dome of Saint Peter's. The villa played an essential role in constructing a public image for the Pamphilj that was inseparable from their claims to descend from the very founders of Rome, claims that were delineated by Niccolò Angelo Cafferri in his genealogy of the Pamphilj, a work initiated by Cardinal Girolamo Pamphilj (1544–1610) and published in 1662. This paper discusses how Cafferri's genealogy and antiquarian scholarship in Rome contributed to the selection of the Casino's site, design, decoration and iconology.

This article argues that Onofrio Panvinio's 1571 study of the Roman triumph embodies a central innovation of sixteenth-century classical scholarship, the use of visual reconstructions alongside textual accounts to communicate the details of ancient ceremonies. Panvinio built on the work of predecessors, most notably Pirro Ligorio, to produce a densely-detailed image of the triumphal procession in the style of Roman bas-reliefs, using the evidence of coins, friezes and texts. This illustration can be seen as an alternative historical rendition, rather than as an accompaniment to a textual description of the triumph. More generally, it reveals the creativity of Renaissance antiquarianism, a movement usually seen as devoted to the dry accumulation of evidence about antiquity, not its imaginative interpretation.

L'articolo mette insieme le evidenze grafiche e testuali di Pirro Ligorio e altri su un esempio straordinario di una columna caelata romana. Esso stabilisce senza ombra di dubbio che la colonna esisteva e che fu scavata dal fondo marino vicino a Misenum da Ludovico Montalto intorno al 1520. La colonna fu portata a Napoli ma langui sulla riva o sulla banchina al Castello dell'Ovo probabilmente fino alia metà del XVI secolo, da quando fu pesantemente esposta alle intemperie, dopo di che nulla si è più saputo di essa. Gli autori discutono le possibilità che la colonna possa essere stata parte di un arco di trionfo o di una colonna, o votiva o onorifica, non incassata, del tipo visto sul famoso paesaggio portuale di Stabiae, che verosimilmente rappresenta Misenum.