Steuco, Agostino
Persons known by name
Steuco, Agostino
- Agostino Steuco (1496-1549)
- 1538 Pope Paul III Farnese made him to the librarian of the Vatican Library which he remained until his death in 1549
- was a friend of Marcello Cervini who followed him in this office
- in 1545, Steuco took a free time from his office to investigate the Roman aqueducts, about which he published small books later
- [Long 2008: 1117]: "Early in his career he wrote polemical tracts against the Protestants as well as biblical commentaries, but when he arrived in Rome in 1535 he turned to problems of engineering. As Ronald Delph has shown, Steuco began thinking about the city as a whole and how it could be transformed to better reflect the glory of the popes and the Catholic Church. He adopted the humanist view that prevailed in Rome in the 1530s and ’40s that the popes were the legitimate heirs of the Roman imperium and should rightly work to return the city to its ancient splendor. The ideologies of renovatio imperii and renovatio Romae guided Stueco’s writings, which focused on practical problems of urbanization and hydrology."
- [Long 2008: 1118]: "Steuco wrote a treatise about his discovery and thereby established himself as a serious student of Roman archaeology and of classical scholarship.
Giovanni Angelo Medici, who, like Steuco, was a protégé of Paul III Farnese, traveled to Rome from time to time in the 1530s and ’40s, and may well have been acquainted with Steuco and his exploration of the aqueduct. In any case, after he became Pope Pius IV in 1559, he seems to have immediately taken up the task of the reconstruction of the Acqua Vergine."