Like the ‘discovery’ of the New World, that of subterranean Rome is still commonly, conveniently, pinned down to a set moment in time: excavations in the year 1578. But new discoveries need new heroes, and those can include poets and proto-archaeologists alike. This paper will shed new light on the Renaissance reception of the underground burial spaces of Late Antiquity by connecting the visual summary of Dante’s Divine Comedy created by Johannes Stradanus (c. 1595) with Antonio Bosio’s catacomb atlas Roma Sotterranea (1632-1671). The materiality of the early printed book helped Bosio to incorporate the 1578 finds into a seventeenth-century success story: Roma Sotterranea duly delivered ‘discovery,’ and in this process the Vatican created its own Columbus of the catacombs. Propagandistic print production thus became the privileged means to stage discoveries and symbolically conquer the catacombs, in a desire to triumph over the otherwise obscure worlds of death.
Speaker
Gloria Moorman, Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of Warwick
About Colloquium
Colloquium is a weekly series of talks featuring staff, fellows, and scholars who are working with the library’s vast collections. These events bring together experts from various fields to share their research on a wide range of topics, followed by an opportunity for the audience to ask questions and engage in conversation.
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