Genealogies of Spanish Architectural Knowledge in Roman Print

Abstract

This article analyzes an album of prints published in Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, organized in the tradition of the Speculum romanae magnificentiae. The album shows the various uses of architecture and sculpture, both antique and modern, in early modern Rome, and contains an engraving of El Escorial, published in 1606, on its last page. The plate reproduces the famous image realized in Madrid in 1589 for Juan de Herrera’s Estampas and is based on a plate published by Abraham Ortelius in Antwerp in 1591. The article analyzes the album from the point of view of the Roman print of El Escorial and argues that the album works, through its structure, to introduce the building to the print-buying public in Spanish Rome.