# Palladio, Descritione de le chiese, stationi, indulgenze, 1554

**Titolo bibliografico:** Descritione de le chiese, stationi, indulgenze & reliquie de corpi sancti, che sonno in la citta de Roma, brevemente raccolta da M. Andrea Palladio et nuovamente posta in luce

**Autore:** Palladio Andrea

**Dati editoriali:** In Roma, appresso Vincentio Lucrino (Rome, Vincenzo Luchino), 1554

**Codice archivio:** 198

**Prezzo:** 7000.00 USD

**Stato commerciale:** Disponibile

**Link ufficiale:** https://www.govirarebooks.com/products/palladio-descritione-chiese-roma-1554

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## Descrizione accademica e analisi

8vo (150×100 mm). Two parts in one volume. [34]; [16] leaves, including the two final blanks. Collation: A-C8 D10; +8 A8. The second part with a separate title-page: Le stationi indulgentie, & gratie spirituali, che sono in le chiese di Roma, si per tutta la quadragesima, come per tutto l’anno nouamente poste in luce. Da M. Andrea Palladio. Publisher’s woodcut device, with the motto Fortes fortuna adiuvat, on both title-pages; woodcut historiated initials. A ten-year privilege is stated on the main title-page. Later limp vellum. Italian manuscript annotations on two pages. Occasional light foxing; some wormtracks neatly repaired, occasionally affecting the text. A good copy. Very rare first edition of Palladio’s guide to the churches, relics, indulgences and stational observances of Rome, one of the first two books published under his name. Its companion, L’antichità di Roma, appeared in the same year at Rome with Luchino and at Venice with Matteo Pagan. The two guides preceded I quattro libri dell’architettura (1570) by sixteen years. They belong to the period of Palladio’s collaboration with Daniele Barbaro on the illustrated Italian edition of Vitruvius published in 1556, and mark his emergence in print as a writer on Rome. The relationship between the two guides is explicit in the prefatory address. Having described the ancient city in another book, Palladio now proposes to record its sacred places “in quel modo che hora si trovano”. Earlier accounts, he explains, had become unreliable through warfare, fires, destruction, new foundations and the movement of religious institutions and sacred objects. The undertaking is therefore conceived as an updating of Rome’s devotional topography for the visitor. Beginning with the seven principal churches, the guide proceeds through the other churches in a geographical sequence. The Tiber Island, Trastevere and the Borgo receive their own sections, followed by divisions of the city on the opposite bank. The separately titled Le stationi supplies the calendar of station churches and their indulgences through Lent and the rest of the year. The volume thus combines information about where to go with information about when particular churches were to be visited and what spiritual benefits were associated with them. The book’s principal concerns are relics, indulgences and the history of the sacred sites. Its declared sources include papal bulls, ecclesiastical histories and inscriptions. The account of Constantine and early Christianity also depends closely on the older Cose maravigliose tradition, including the Venetian edition of 1544. The guide retains much inherited devotional material while enlarging and reorganising the itinerary (Daly Davis, 2009, pp. 75-77). There are also occasional notices of contemporary art. Schudt draws attention to the references to Michelangelo’s Moses at San Pietro in Vincoli and Sebastiano del Piombo’s Flagellation at San Pietro in Montorio. Such passages give the guide additional interest as a record of what a visitor to Rome might be directed to see in the middle of the sixteenth century (Schudt, 1930, p. 28). The annotations in the present copy document a reader’s critical response to two of the legends transmitted by the text. Beside the account of Constantine’s leprosy and the proposed cure of bathing in the blood of infants, the reader writes “non dice vero” (“this is not true”), and questions the story’s authority. A further note on the same page sets Constantine within a chronology reckoned from the foundation of Rome and the creation of the world. A second intervention addresses the story associated with the porphyry chairs at the Lateran: the supposed examination of the testicles of newly elected popes following the alleged accession of a woman to the papacy. The annotation concludes “nessuna femina è stata papa” (“no woman has ever been pope”). The printed passage itself introduces the story with “per quanto si dice” and observes that Platina gives a different account. The reader therefore engages with a passage in which the guide already signals disagreement between received tradition and a written authority.

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## Bibliografia di riferimento

Edit16, CNCE 35841; OCLC 407094724; L. Schudt, Le guide di Roma. Materialien zu einer Geschichte der Römischen Topographie unter Benützung des handschriftlichen Nachlasses von Oskar Pollak, Vienna-Augsburg, 1930, pp. 26-28; p. 198, no. 57; A. Palladio, The Churches of Rome, translated and edited by Eunice D. Howe, Binghamton, NY, 1991, especially pp. 32-40; A. Palladio, Descritione de le chiese, stationi, indulgenze & reliquie de corpi sancti, che sonno in la città de Roma, introduction by L. Puppi, Vicenza, Centro internazionale di studi di architettura Andrea Palladio, 2000; A. Palladio, Palladio’s Rome: A Translation of Andrea Palladio’s Two Guidebooks to Rome, edited and translated by V. Hart and P. Hicks, New Haven-London, 2006, pp. 95-176; A. Palladio, L’Antichità di Roma (Rome 1554), edited, introduced and annotated by M. Daly Davis, Heidelberg, 2009, especially pp. 75-77, “The Chiese di Roma”, and p. 85, notes 59-63; G. Beltramini, “Palladio, Andrea”, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 80, Rome, 2014, s.v.; D. Ruggerini, “Luchino, Vincenzo”, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 66, Rome, 2006, pp. 317-318.

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