1704 Halma / Ligorio View of Ancient Rome, Italy

Bird's-eye reconstruction of ancient Rome in all its imperial glory.

This is a 1704 François Halma bird's-eye view of ancient Rome, based on Pirro Ligorio's influential 1561 reconstruction. Ligorio restores Rome to its ancient glory, with its temples, baths, theaters, circuses, and imperial monuments rising above a dense fabric of streets and houses. Side panels identify 269 monuments and sites, giving the pictorial detail an antiquarian framework. Published in connection with Johann Georg Graevius' Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum, the view carried a Renaissance conception of Rome into the scholarly publishing world of the early 18th century.

A Closer Look

The city is presented in an elevated oblique perspective, with the Tiber sweeping across the foreground and the principal urban mass extending toward the surrounding walls and countryside. Bridges connect the monumental center with the districts on the opposite bank, while roads, aqueducts, gardens, and funerary monuments continue beyond the densely built interior. Individual buildings are rendered in elevation rather than reduced to footprints, allowing the viewer to distinguish colonnaded temples, vaulted baths, semicircular theaters, and the tiered arcades of amphitheaters.

The Colosseum stands near the center-right, above the elongated Circus Maximus. Elsewhere, the great imperial mausoleums, monumental precincts, and extensive bath complexes interrupt the smaller-scale residential fabric. These buildings appear as complete, functioning structures rather than archaeological fragments. The contrast is fundamental to the map's purpose: scattered remains and textual references have been assembled into a continuous architectural landscape. The presence of the Colosseum, inaugurated in AD 80, also makes clear that this cannot be a reconstruction confined to Augustus's reign, which ended in AD 14.

The numbered keys occupy tall architectural panels along both sides of the view. Their 269 entries provide a means of navigating a composition whose density might otherwise overwhelm. Above them, sculpted figures support wreath-framed portrait medallions; below, classically dressed figures flank the title and subsidiary inscription. The coloration distinguishes red roofs, blue water, and green gardens without sacrificing the engraved architectural detail. At lower left, the extended Latin title sets out the reconstruction's evidentiary basis: ancient buildings and walls, coins, monuments in various materials, and the testimony of classical authors. Its reference to Augustus concerns the city's 14 administrative regions, not the exclusive date of the buildings depicted.

Ligorio's Reconstructed Rome

Pirro Ligorio (c. 1512/13 - 1583) approached ancient Rome as an architect, painter, and antiquarian. His reconstruction combined the examination of surviving remains with information recovered from literature, inscriptions, coins, and other ancient objects. His architectural experience enabled him to turn this material into persuasive representations of complete buildings, though conjecture necessarily filled the considerable gaps between surviving evidence and the finished city. The resulting image should therefore be understood as a learned reconstruction rather than a measured survey of a single historical moment.

Ligorio's monumental Anteiquae Urbis Imago was engraved by Jacob Bos on twelve copperplates and published by the Tramezzino firm in 1561. Its influence extended well beyond that ambitious original format. Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg adapted the reconstruction for a two-sheet view in volume IV of their Civitates Orbis Terrarum, published in 1588. Halma's edition belongs to this continuing transmission of Ligorio's ancient city, in which an elaborate Renaissance reconstruction became a durable reference image for later readers of Roman history.

Publication History and Census

This undated example is likely from the 1704 Amsterdam issue engraved and published by François Halma (1653 - 1722). The plate was prepared for the publishing enterprise of Johann Georg Graevius (1632 - 1703), whose 12-volume Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum first appeared between 1694 and 1699 under the joint imprints of Halma (Utrecht) and Pieter van der Aa (Leiden).

This map, in its various editions and issues, is well represented institutionally. A full census of this Halma issue is impossible because institutional cataloging is incomplete and inconsistent.

Cartographers

Pirro Ligorio (c. 1512/13 - 1583) was an Italian antiquarian, architect, painter, and cartographer whose reconstructions of ancient Rome united archaeological observation with Renaissance artistic imagination. Born in Naples, he settled in Rome around 1534, initially working as a painter before turning increasingly to the study of antiquities. In 1549, he entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este, a patron whose archaeological and architectural ambitions shaped much of his subsequent career. Ligorio's architectural achievements included the gardens of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli and the Casino of Pius IV in the Vatican. In 1564, he succeeded Michelangelo as principal architect of St. Peter's. Ligorio's principal cartographic achievement was the monumental Anteiquae Urbis Imago, published by Michele Tramezzino in 1561. This bird's-eye reconstruction of ancient Rome combined evidence from surviving ruins, classical literature, coins, inscriptions, and reliefs to recreate the imperial city. Its elaborate architectural detail offered viewers a remarkably coherent vision of Rome's lost grandeur, although the reconstruction necessarily incorporated conjecture alongside documented remains. The map enjoyed a long publishing life, appearing again in an edition issued by Carlo Losi in 1773. Ligorio also compiled extensive illustrated manuscripts on ancient monuments, inscriptions, and coins. His scholarship may have extended into invention, including fabricated inscriptions, complicating his reputation as an authority on antiquity. He entered the service of Duke Alfonso II d'Este in 1568 and later settled in Ferrara, where he continued his antiquarian and architectural work until his death in 1583.   Further Details...

François Halma (1653 - 1722) was a Dutch publisher active in Utrecht (starting 1674) and later in Amsterdam where he worked as printer and publisher from 1699-1710. He eventually settled at Leeuwarden, where he died. His output was composed of botanical, theological and historical works, but also, he published a small number of geographies and atlases. In 1695, he published an edition of Gerard Mercator's Ptolemy. His re-issue of Schotanus à Sterringa’s Friesche Atlas in 1698 was regarded among his finest work. He also published an edition of Sanson’s Description de l’Univers. He produced an edition of Falda's plan of Rome in or around 1700. He also caused to be engraved a set of large-format maps of the continents and the world (this latter after Cassini) which are quite rare and appear to have been separately issued. We are aware of institutional copies of the continents having been bound into a 1710 Visscher atlas. The execution of these large and rare maps, drawn by Jan Goeree and engraved by Jan Baptiste, was of a very high quality. The plates were later acquired and reprinted, virtually unchanged, by Pieter van der Aa in 1713.   Further Details...

Source

Graevius, Johann Georg, Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum, 12 vols. (Amsterdam: François Halma), 1694 - 1699; reissued 1704.    

Condition

Very good. Minor margin repairs.