The Antiquarian and the Myth of Antiquity: The Origins of Rome in Renaissance Thought.

If the title of this fascinating and impressively erudite study aptly suggests the book's thematic axis, the sub-title more accurately indicates its compass. The main purpose Jacks intends his work to serve "is to see the imaging of Rome as part of a much larger historical narrative" (10), namely Renaissance humanist discourse about the image, idea, meaning, and significance of cities. Rome forms the focus, but Jacks effectively situates consideration of the Eternal City's origins and nascent development within the context of humanist debates about the historical foundations of other Italian cities, most notably Florence and Venice. A further strength of his approach is his embracing of what might be called the "long" Italian Renaissance, that is from Petrarch to the late sixteenth century.

The extraordinary abundance of source materials Jacks exploits consists of the steadily proliferating guidebooks, topographical studies, handbooks, treatises, polemical tracts, marginal notations, sketches, maps, and vedute - most lacking modern editions - that Renaissance humanists, antiquarians, and architects produced about ancient Rome. While some of these texts are reasonably well-known to Renaissance scholars - Flavio Biondo's Roma instaurata, Leon Battista Alberti's Descriptio urbis Romae, Annio da Viterbo's notorious forgeries - many more obscure works, such as Giovanni Bartolomeo Marliani's Topographia (1534) and Pompeo Ugonio's compendious Historia, left incomplete and unpublished on his death in 1614, prove even revealing in terms of their interpretive procedures and intellectual outlook. Even for the more familiar episodes, such as the Leto circle's antiquarian enthusiasms and their revival of the archaic festival of the Parilia, the birthday of the city, Jacks provides pertinent new findings and makes suggestive connections. A notable instance is his discussion of Fabio Calvo's Simulachrum (1527), a kind of historical gazette that was the end result of Raphael's project to provide a graphical reconstruction of the imperial city. Jacks points out that Calvo's seemingly naive depiction of Roma Quadrata actually had its source in the Codex Arcerianus, discovered at Bobbio by the humanist Giorgio Merula about 1492 and obtained for the Vatican Library by 1506 through "Fedra" Inghirami's efforts. This manuscript contained fragments of the texts of the ancient gromatici, which included depictions of military colonies that shared the same geometric figuration that Calvo used for his depiction of Rome.

It is interpreting such representations, as well as the many other sketches, plans, drawings, and views, aptly included as illustrations in this volume, that Jacks's expertise as an architectural historian comes to the fore. Less impressive is his overall conceptualization of the historical change and development in humanist representations of Rome's origins. While the book's chapter headings suggest a thematic approach to his subject, their actual contents trace an essentially chronological account of humanist antiquarian scholarship. Textual or archeological finds, such as the Constantinian regionary catalogues in the early fifteenth century, the Codex Farnesianus of the grammarian Festus in the 1470s, or the fragments of the consular and triumphal Fasti and of the Forma Urbis in the 1540s and '50s receive emphasis as principal influences on humanist perceptions. There is much less about how changing papal ambitions may have affected the myth and mystique of Rome. Further, there is the suggestion that by the beginning of the seventeenth century, Renaissance assumptions about the definition and meaning of cities were about to be overturned, but it is unclear how and why this was the case. "This book has really steered its own course" (xv), Jacks admits. Making sense of the many-layered complexities of Urbs Roma has proved a daunting subject for all who take on the challenge. Jacks's book is nonetheless a remarkable achievement and it makes an essential contribution to our knowledge about Renaissance Rome and its humanist culture.

Charles L. Stinger STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, BUFFALO