The Palladio Museum of Vicenza has come up with an original exhibit treating a number of historic depictions of Rome in Antiquity. Mamma Roma: Visioni di Roma Antica da Piranesi a Pasolini is a journey through imaginations plural, of the city that once was, and the city that Andrea Palladio, above all, sought to study in profundity, in his efforts to find a new architectonic vision.
Among the works on show – and fruit of forty years of research on the part of scholar and collector Alberto Caldana – are images extracted from Pier Paolo Pasolini's films Mamma Roma (1962) and La Ricotta (1963); a very rare copy of Antiquae Urbis Romae (the first printed text describing ancient Rome, written during Raphael's era); Pirro Ligorio's view of Rome from 1561; Piranesi's Campo Marzio (1762); Rome's and Lazio's natural plant life as depicted by Luigi Canina in the 1800s; and the Forma Urbis Romae, a marble map of Rome by Rodolfo Lanciani (1893-1901).
