Review: The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City by Katherine Wentworth Rinne

Abstract

Katherine Wentworth Rinne. The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City . New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010, 262 pp., 47 color and 120 b/w illus. $65, ISBN 9780300155303 The copious literature on Rome's water supply extends back to Sextus Julius Frontinus's treatise on the ancient aqueducts, written late in the first century. Frontinus memorably remarked, “With such an array of indispensable structures carrying so many waters, compare, if you will, the idle Pyramids or the useless, though famous, works of the Greeks.” The Waters of Rome shares much with Frontinus's book, the fons et origo of studies on Rome's hydraulic infrastructure, including the emphasis that Katherine Rinne places on engineering over art and utility over display. In stressing utility, she also recalls Vitruvius, who considered water to be “the chief requisite for life, happiness, and for everyday use.” By comparison with the aqueducts supplying ancient Rome, the revival of the city's water supply in the Renaissance has received relatively less scholarly attention. Art historical interest has centered on the striking fountain displays of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to the neglect of the more modest and utilitarian fountains of the sixteenth century. This neglect is even more evident where the largely invisible system of settling tanks and conduits that supply Rome's fountains, together with the drains that recycle and ultimately dispose of the water that flows from them, are concerned. The Waters of Rome, by telling the story of how the city's water supply came to be revived in the period 1560–1630, not only fills a significant gap in the scholarly literature but also underscores the linkage between water and urban development. Technology and topography figure prominently in Katherine Rinne's account. So, too, do patronage and social history; the question of how water was used by people from different strata of Roman society, from fullers and laundresses to princes and popes, emerges as a recurrent theme. The nine chapters comprising the book examine a number …