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Scholarship at Rome was disrupted by the sack of the city in 1527, but by the early 1540s the cultural environment was ready for new developments. Rich and influential cardinals, such as Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, Ippolito d'Este and Alessandro Farnese, started to enjoy court antiquaries, specialists in identifying ancient Roman material and in writing about it. The first major studies of antiquities since Flavio Biondo's Roma Triumphans of c. 1457–9 date from this period, as do the first attempts at illustrated encyclopedic records. One devised by members of the Accademia della Virtù (or Vitruviana) was described by Claudio Tolomei in a letter of 1542. [FN 7: Tolomei Lettere, fols. 105v–109, reprinted in Barocchi (ed) 1971–7, p. 3037–46.] It was to be an twenty-volume enterprise, the first seven volumes consisting of commentaries on Vitruvius' De Architectura, followed by one comparing Vitruvius with surviving ancient remains, one on other literary sources for Roman architecture, one of reconstructions of buildings in Rome, three collecting drawings of sarcophagi, statues and reliefs, and three on architectural ornament, vases and other functional objects.Volume XVII was to contain inscriptions from Rome and its vicinity. The last three would cover wallpaintings, coins, 'machines' and aqueducts. That particular scheme apparently came to little, but lengthy illutrated portions of two even more ambitious projects of a similar kind survive, the Libri d'Antichità by the Neapolitan painter, architect and antiquary, Pirro Ligorio.

Kommentar: Auch Stenhouse folgt der irrtümlichen Zählung von Margaret Daly Davis und gibt darüber hinaus eine irreführende Inhaltsangabe für die ersten "sieben" Bücher des Accademia-Projekts.