Possessing the Past through Print: Sixteenth-Century Engravings of Imagined Antiquities

• Published in: The Sixteenth century journal Vol. 55; no. 1-2; pp. 133 - 169
• Main Author: Fisher, Kylie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago University of Chicago Press 01.03.2024
• Subjects: 16th century; Artistic representation (Imitation); Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500-1558); Engraving; Historic artifacts; Looting; Prints and printmaking; Roman civilization; Rome Italy; Italy
• ISSN: 0361-0160; 2326-0726
• DOI: 10.1086/731062

In recounting the 1527 Sack of Rome when many antiquities were looted, damaged, and destroyed, the poet Antonio Tebaldeo warned, “if you come back, you will find Rome un-made.” As a result of the physical and psychological devastation caused by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s army, anxiety grew over the city’s capability to preserve the artistic remains of its illustrious past and subsequently maintain its stature as caput mundi. Once fertile ground for the discovery and display of antiquities, Rome lay barren in this regard, leaving inhabitants who longed to connect with the historical past to do so through other visual means. Printmakers in early sixteenth-century Rome capitalized on the desire among local antiquarians to cultivate a kind of spiritual bond with the ancient city by inventing antiquities in print. Three engraving series of all’antica vases and ewers by Agostino Veneziano, Leonardo da Udine, and Enea Vico from the 1530s and 1540s reveal how prints of pseudo-antiquities provided viewers with the opportunity to conceptually possess the past, and in turn, immortalize the ethos of antiquity in their memories. Through their classicizing ornamentation, perfectly intact condition, placement within illusionistic spaces, and accompanying inscriptions, the objects in these engravings functioned as examples of plausible fiction, that is antiquities believed to have once existed in pre-Sack Rome. These prints allowed local collectors to recuperate a lost, even if imagined, past, thereby contributing to Rome’s mythmaking as the Eternal City.