The Urban Development of Rome in the Age of Alexander VII.

Dorothy Metzger Habel. The Urban Development of Rome in the Age of Alexander VII.

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xxii + 424 pp. + 223 b/w pls. index. illus. bibl. $90. ISBN: 0-521-77264-8.

In her ambitious and thorough study of urban planning in Rome under Pope Alexander VII Chigi (1655-67), Dorothy Metzger Habel traces the evolution of six papal building projects from conception to fruition (or abandonment), revealing a unity between them that is not apparent in general-audience books on the subject. The pope and his designers utilized the ready example of classical antiquity, rich in august architectural forms and intrinsic meaning, to visually connect monuments across the physical space of the city and to link contemporary Rome to its imperial and early Christian past. Under Alessandro Chigi the Quirinal Palace, St. Peter's, and Via del Corso were reconceived as an ancient palace-temple-hippodrome complex, ripe with allusions to the classical past and to be linked visually through the shared architectural language of the portico. This element, which suggests a reference to the Eastern Roman Empire, is most strikingly employed by Bernini, whose colonnade encircling Piazza San Pietro alludes purposefully to the Forum of Constantine at Constantinople. By drawing on ancient Romano-Asiatic architectural forms, Habel asserts, Alexander VII argued for Rome's continuing political and spiritual power through allusion to the Christian Roman Emperor Constantine and the continuity of the Church he embraced.

Although Habel draws on the work of many scholars, her point of departure is Richard Krautheimer's The Rome of Alexander VII, 1655-1667 (1985). While acknowledging her debt to him and to other historians, Habel's stated goal is "to flesh out the pope's interventions in an effort to establish a more accurate and more complex record of what happened; when events occurred; when they occurred relative to each other; and in some instances why decisions were made when they were made" (3), endeavors met with resounding success through the kind of intensive archival research generally reserved for monographic studies on single monuments. The author investigates a multitude of primary documents, including papal chirographs, real estate contracts, payment records, memoranda, parish registers, drawings, and the pope's own diary, to reveal the pontiff's complex and thoughtful initiatives. This investigation generates new interpretations of drawings for Quirinal projects and of survey plans of Roman palaces considered for purchase by the Chigi. Alexander emerges as an erudite visionary with deft interpersonal skills and a financial acumen Krautheimer did not recognize. Habel provides a nuanced picture of the pontiff's urban planning, presenting his building campaign as a city plan in which each proposal was carefully considered against interventions at other sites, and where execution or abandonment of a scheme impacted other projects. This multivalent approach reveals the interconnectedness of the pope's projects, as a shifting stream of patrons, architects, funding, and designs affected each other in turn.

The first six chapters examine Palazzo Quirinale, the Popolo, San Pietro and San Marco piazze, Via del Corso, and the search for a Chigi family palace, while the seventh chapter, Roma Alessandrina, summarizes the book and makes meaningful connections between projects examined previously. Each chapter begins with a brief review of the site's history, outlining earlier architectural projects as a foil for Alexander's plans. Occasionally Habel provides a glimpse into the daily life of Alexander or of people moving through the space of the city. In December 1656, for example, the pope walked down the Corso from Porta del Popolo to Piazza San Marco, in order to evaluate the built environment of this thoroughfare and its likely effect on visitors to the city. Habel's suggestion that a pilgrim in Piazza del Quirinale might have glimpsed the pope as the pontiff gazed at the city through a window (60) is tantalizing. One wishes for more of this, and if there is any flaw in this masterful study, it is that there is little if any mention of how Alexander's urban spaces were actually used. The reader is left to wonder whether Roman citizens or visitors to the city even grasped the complex meanings of the rich and majestic forms they observed. Such a chronicle clearly was not Habel's goal, so its absence should perhaps not be counted as a defect; but a sprinkling of contemporary opinion about the effect of Alexander's projects would strengthen the author's argument for the pontiff's propagandistic intentions and the success of his designers in carrying them out.

SUZY SLOMINSKI

Rutgers University