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ANTE OCULOS PONERE: VISION AND IMAGINATION IN FLAVIO BIONDO'S ROMA TRIUMPHANS

2011; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 79; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0068246211000079

2045-239X

Frances Muecke,

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

This article examines two ekphrastic digressions from book 2 of Flavio Biondo's Roma Triumphans (1459), both occurring in the section on the festivals of ancient Rome. The first is an eye-witness account of a celebration mounted in Piazza Navona in Rome to mark the defeat of the Turks at Belgrade in 1456; the second is an imaginative recreation of the horse race at the Equirria, as Biondo envisions it taking place in the streetscape of ancient Rome. Both digressions serve one of Biondo's most important purposes, the linking of ancient and modern Rome. The aim of the discussion is to demonstrate the importance of visualization in Biondo's framing of Roma Triumphans as a whole. In this aspect he was a powerful model for later antiquarian writing.