Villa Mattei, Rome

~The practice of exhibiting ancient Roman statues, sarcophagi, and reliefs in their gardens presumably promoted the idea among Renaissance Romans to organize iconographical programs, primarily based on classical mythology, for the decoration and classicizing of their gardens. The earliest example of such a program, however, was not concerned with sculpture and it...

An issue that provoked much heated debate and inspired a mass of printed dissertations in Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century was the question of whether or not the waters of the Tiber were drinkable, and whether they should be celebrated for their therapeutic qualities or regarded with distrust and suspicion. This was a recurrent theme in the work of Alessandro Petroni, Andrea Bacci,...