Three Early Architectural Drawings of San Pietro in Tuscania (VT)

Abstract

AbstractIn 1989 the Getty Research Institute acquired “Record Drawings of Ancient Monuments, 1825–1833,” an album of early nineteenth-century architectural drawings ascribed to the French architect Simon-Claude Constant-Dufeux (1801–71). Amid numerous drawings of ancient structures in central and southern Italy is a folio containing a plan and two sections of an unlabeled medieval church. This article, the result of the first study of the album since its arrival at the Getty, identifies the church as San Pietro in Tuscania (Viterbo), constructed circa 1093. The artist’s use of architectural rendering techniques resulted in a high level of precision within the images, which are the earliest-known technical drawings of San Pietro’s plan and interior. As such, they serve as valuable witnesses to the church’s appearance following restorations undertaken circa 1800–26 and prior to the arrival of photography in Tuscania at the end of the nineteenth century.