Rome – Catacombs rediscovery

The Rediscovery of Early Christian Rome. Confessionalism and Antiquarianism

[This is part of the text read during a public lecture at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Rome on 30 April 2025]

From the mid-sixteenth century, the discovery of many Christian catacombs in Rome spread knowledge about early Christian art throughout Europe, and made catacombs a popular subject. This process took place through promotion of academic studies, vast numbers of copies, and museum displays, all supporting the progress of archaeological discoveries. This phenomenon from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries is obviously connected to political key events occurring in the Papal States.

One can say that the history of Christian archaeology cannot be divorced from the political and confessional use of the the catacombs. This use constantly characterised the work of many researchers and scholars, in periods when Christian archaeology was perceived as an official, national, catholic and papal discipline. They mostly fostered this relation between catacomb archaeology and politics through their scholarly publications and the production of copies of catacomb paintings. What is certainly evident is the key role of the papacy, which from time to time finds a political and cultural reason to reassert its authority through its most ancient past and claiming authority and exclusive control on it over the centuries, and playing a pivotal role in the process of dissemination of Christian art.

Catacombs for the Counter-Reformation agenda

Knowledge of the catacombs and the artistic treasures they contained was never totally ignored or forgotten contrary to long-standing assertions made by questionable but influential twentieth-century historiography. Records of pilgrims visiting the catacombs as part of the Christian-Rome cult circuit are numerous from the Middle Ages to the early modern age. Renaissance humanist scholars were the first to analyse the art of catacombs, often based on first-hand knowledge acquired during visits to the sites themselves. The scholarly impact of the construction of New St. Peter’s throughout the whole sixteenth century, an intervention that required extensive and lengthy excavations, was very important too: on that occasion, a significant number of sarcophagi, epigraphs and artefacts came to light, representing the first major contact for the modern world of Rome with early Christian art.

A crucial event happed on 31 May, 1578, during the pontificate of Gregory XIII: the accidental discovery of a Christian catacomb within the Sanchez vineyard on the Via Salaria Nova (at that time identified as the catacomb of Priscilla, but later in the late twentieth century as the Anonymous Catacomb of Via Anapo), with its impressive set of wall paintings. This is considered to be the moment when Christian archaeology began. However questionable that narrative is, this discovery nonetheless represented a real novelty involving sections of Roman population of the countryside, hitherto excluded from the rediscovery of and appreciation for Christian antiquities. These underground tunnels, marvellously decorated with paintings, totally unknown and extraordinary, attracted an incredible number of people, so much so that Gregory XIII decided to fence off the area (and then that the fence was torn down by eager groups of visitors), including not only clerics, scholars, and antiquarians, but also, and perhaps above all, ordinary people. This novel attention to of ancient Christian art is extremely interesting for the political and confessional use of catacomb art, because it appeared to have a great appeal for common people everywhere and could be used to convey Catholic messages in Italy and beyond. The first discovery of a catacomb also stimulated the search for more underground cemeteries throughout the Roman countryside, archaeological forays led by scholars, ordinary citizens, and different religious groups.

That feverish research culminated in 1634 with the publication of the first monograph on the Roman catacombs, Antonio Bosio’s Roma Sotterranea. This work and the explorations of catacombs led by Bosio increased indeed the international interest in the catacombs. While Christian cemeteries had already attracted the attention of scholars during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, after 1578, scholars or artists from all over Europe and Italy flocked to Rome with the intention of drawing and describing the paintings found in the catacomb galleries.

In a cultural context generally dominated by the new Tridentine needs in developing a new, unique artistic discourse controlled and directed by the Catholic Church, we must recall clear links between a genuine interest in Christian antiquities and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, with sacred antiquaria and apologetics in support of Catholic historiography. In fact, Roman and other European Catholic scholars of the second half of the sixteenth century were very keen to render service to the Catholic Church. Certainly, the findings, and in particular the paintings of the catacombs, could corroborate knowledge derived from literary and historical sources, and both could be used to legitimize a Catholic position against Protestant divisions. The most immediate interest was to record the paintings that were being gradually discovered during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in various Roman cemeteries. This was due to the intrinsic wonder aroused by the sight of such unknown, mysterious and yet so well-preserved Christian paintings, and to their clear link to scriptural episodes narrated in the early times of the new religion, but well known to contemporary Catholics and Protestants. These ancient paintings conveyed familiar religious stories and concepts, moreover in an easily understood visual language.

It was precisely the memory of a heroic era of the Church, of which the stories of saints and martyrs represented the main legacy, that produced a particular interest in the catacombs. In fact, a revival of early Christian themes and symbols, like palm as a sign of martyrdom, were used in all the arts to translate into images the Tridentine needs to create a set of iconographies to develop new resources for the faithful and new devotions to foster popular piety. This revival was translated into new styles, and tastes, as proven, for example, by the widespread diffusion of paintings with early Christian saints (Caecilia above all) in churches and private houses in the early seventeenth-century. Even the grandly Baroque architecture sought to make ancient Christianity present through the monumental recreation of early Christian liturgical spaces, which was one of the main aims of the great reconstructions of Roman churches financed by the various popes.

From a political point of view, the discovery, study, and recreation of early Christian art found in the catacombs therefore had a broad cultural role, expressed into two main directions. First, early Christian pictorial art was presented as incorrupt, pure, severe, and spiritual, thus the perfect vehicle for a process of artistic and figurative renewal of Catholicism that was to serve to counter Protestant criticism . Second, it is precisely the discovery of early Christian art and its clear message that served to convey and promote unbroken continuity of the Roman Church from apostolic times to the present. The catacomb images were very old; but in a certain sense, they were new too because they were reinterpreted as living images, models to be imitated, and a source of artistic inspiration.

Christian archaeology din late nineteenth century

One has to wait until the 1850s for the next great change in the history of Christian archaeology to take place. Under the pontificate of Pius IX (1846-1878), in particular, the promotion of the excavation and study of Roman catacombs became extensive and more explicitly political. The Roman Republic (1849), the exile in Gaeta in the Bourbonic Kingdom and the return to Rome were the initial act of a pontificate characterised by perennial conflicts with the emerging kingdom of Italy that culminated in the end of the Papal States and thus of the popes’ political power in 1870. Given such political turmoil, unique in the history of the papacy, Pius IX was called upon to promote the papacy’s temporal power and Catholic Christianity with self-assertive policies at both the local and international level. Until the end of his pontificate, Pius IX insisted on the self-exaltation of Christian culture and the centrality of Rome in an international culture with ancient apostolic roots. Christian antiquity therefore assumed a key role in the cultural policy of Pius IX, who financed important initiatives for the development of the discipline of Christian archaeology. The Roman catacombs were proposed as a symbol of the times of persecution and thus a material embodiment of the martyrial narrative with which his pontificate was cloaked.

Events that supported this objective occurred in the first years of Pius IX’s pontificate. In 1860 Europe was in the midst of numerous social transformations, revolutionary uprisings and wars of independence due to nationalistic drives hostile to the great empires reformed after the Congress of Vienna. These upheavals resulted in the emergence of nation states, particularly in Italy, where the papacy lost its territory. In a slow political and cultural process culminating in the capture of Rome in 1871, Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) saw his temporal dominion reduced to the Vatican City. We were thus facing the most radical geopolitical change on the continent, in which the political as well as the cultural definition of nations played a very important role.

Under the cultural point of view, the pope made use of the work of the Jesuit Giuseppe Marchi (1795-1860), who is considered one of the founders of Christian archaeology as a scientific discipline, and Giovanni Battista de Rossi, who was then his young assistant. The two were put in charge of excavations in countless catacombs and were also entrusted with the dissemination their discoveries in textual and visual reports/accounts. They were also the protagonists of Pius IX’s major institutional foundations dedicated to Christian archaeology. The Commission of Sacred Archaeology (1852) oversaw the study and protection of the catacombs and other Christian monuments while the Lateran Christian Museum (1854) included a lapidary section to provide a proper place to display the many works of art found in the catacombs. It functioned, in effect, as an appendix to the visit to the catacombs, replete with didactic intents designed to advance the understanding Christian antiquities . Here, then, we are in front of a real state archaeology, scientifically conducted, but in the overt service of a political agenda. If that were not enough, there were large construction and restoration campaigns that became more customary as the situation became more complicated: think of the large investments for the restoration of the great early Christian basilicas such as S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura, Santa Maria in Trastevere, or even St Paul’s outside the walls after it was destroyed by a huge fire in 1823; as well as the celebration of the papal soldiers defeated in the battles against the Reign of Italy, who in the contemporary narrative rose to the rank of martyrs of the faith and received a monument in St John Lateran, the city’s cathedral.

New book is out!

Finally my latest book is here:
An Archaeologist in Rome at the Service of the Order: Letters from the Hospitaller Grand Master to Antonio Bosio (1604–1629), Routledge: New York and London, 2025.

I wrote my doctoral thesis, about ten years ago now, on Antonio Bosio, a seventeenth-century archaeologist and scholar who, the illegitimate son of a knight, was brought as a child from Malta to Rome and spent his entire life discovering and exploring the catacombs of Rome. The studies on Bosio, and all those that came in connection, have been the important basis on which I built my researcher portfolio and led me to my current job, which I truly love.

At the time when I finally published -in June 2020- the volume based on my doctoral thesis (Antonio Bosio e i primi collezionisti di antichità Cristiane, Piac: Vatican City, 2020), I did not really think it would end there. In fact, when in February 2022 I signed the contract with Routledge for the publication of the Grand Master’s letters to Antonio Bosio, it seemed to me that I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing: picking up the theme again but focusing on Antonio’s political life, on his work for the Order of Malta and, at the same time, working on unpublished materials preserved in my place of the heart: the National Library of Malta.

Brief description of the book

This volume is part of “The Military Orders Project” series and provides the original texts of the Grand Masters’ letters to Antonio Bosio in Rome, preserved in the National Library of Malta, together with a biographical study on Antonio Bosio, carried out over the years and now expanded with new information and research.

The volume opens with a historical presentation of the Bosio family within the Order of Malta. This is followed by a complete biographical profile of Antonio Bosio, compiled from the Order’s official sources and from archive documents found in various locations.

A short chapter is then dedicated to the presentation of the various archive collections in which Antonio Bosio’s private documents and autograph manuscripts are found, to offer a complete panorama of Bosio’s figure, although I focussed more on the biographical aspects inherent to the Order and his work at its service.

The core of the volume is obviously the letters of the Grand Masters to Bosio from 1604 to the time of his premature death in September 1629. The letters are presented in a simple transcription of their original form, and then their translation into English.

I believe that the task of this book is to offer a set of sources that will be useful to scholars on the international scene for years to come. The aim is to make public as widely as possible material that is not widely accessible, both in geographical (because it is preserved in Malta and so far not public in digital form) and linguistic terms (with these being handwritten in seventeenth-century Italian).

A general, critical reflection on the letters and the role of the Order’s Agent in the early seventeenth century is then proposed in the final two chapters. Here, the texts and their recurring questions are taken as a starting point for further comments, but above all to present the role and prerogatives of the Agent of the Sacred Religion on the basis of what is revealed in the Bosio epistolary.

Some small mosaics from the catacombs to the museum

Summary of the speech read at the XXXI Aiscom Colloquium

The mosaic heritage in catacombs is very limited and concerns ‘three species of mosaic works’: the floors, the slabs (marble or fictile) closing the tombs decorated with series of tesserae, and finally the wall mosaics decorating the arcosolii or the walls and vaults of the cubiculi. I will not refer to catacomb mosaics in general, but focus on a few cases and their collecting fate.

The history of mosaics in museums for the first centuries of the Modern Age has some shadows. For the 16th century, for example, we have little information on pieces of Roman floor mosaics in collections, but I would like to point out that in Chapter VI of Giorgio Vasari’s Vite, Del modo di fare i pavimenti di commesso, in the chapter on architecture (and not on painting…) he comments on the way Roman mosaics were executed ‘come se ne vede in Parione in Roma, in casa di messer Egidio e Fabio Sasso’. Moving on to the 17th century, in the collection of Cardinal Maximus, there was a ‘Stanza ultima de Musaici’, there was a special room adjoining the library, dedicated precisely to the mosaics in the collection. Even in the library itself, however, there were mosaics.

During the 17th century, coinciding with the extensive underground discoveries, the existence of mosaics in the catacombs was noted, and they too entered collections and the antiquities market.

Following a ‘translation of saints’ bones’ in 1656 the mosaic portraits of Flavio Giulio Giuliano and Simplicia Rustica were discovered in the cemetery of Ciriaca, detached between 1656 and 1677 from a tomb with their epigraph and acquired by the collection of Agostino Chigi. They were placed, as was the custom at the time, on the wall in the staircase leading to the Library, according to a design by Pietro da Cortona Chigi and in a pattern not unlike the one we have mentioned for the Massimo collection. An interesting contiguity, therefore, between mosaics and libraries. It was not until 1918 that the mosaics were detached and acquired by the Lateran Christian Museum, where they were again restored.

In the 18th century, the century in which mosaics made their entry into museums and collections, we find several testimonies of mosaics in the catacombs, without precise topographical references, by the Custodian of the Cemeteries Marc’Antonio Boldetti in 1720. He testifies of mosaic decorations on lithic or fictile supports, and is the main source on the topic for that century.

A couple of examples: Boldetti describes a brickwork from the cemetery of Ciriaca, on which there was a monogram between alpha and omega in mosaic tesserae. It is now lost, but at the time it ended in Gaetano Marini’s private collection. I do not think it is a coincidence that a mosaic artefact of this type, i.e. more epigraphic than artistic, aroused the interest of the leading epigrapher of the time, who was also the Vatican Librarian. Secondly, Boldetti draws a direct connection between some mosaics found in the catacombs and the Carpegna Museum: these are mainly ‘several birds and flowers formed on terracotta boards with non-ordinary artifice, and of minute workmanship’, i.e. emblemata, found between the Appia and Ardeatina roads, in particular at Callisto, used as closures for burial niches. All these pieces were later transported to the then Carpegna Museum in the Rione Sant’Eustachio in Rome, of which no further information is available afterwards.

In general, mosaics in collections in the 18th century had to be tear out and cut up to make more artefacts, for immediate placement in an antiquarian market. The 19th century in Rome marked the beginning of massive systematic excavations in the catacombs, the founding of the first institution for the protection of these monuments and above all the opening of a large museum dedicated to them in 1854 at the Lateran Palace, where the discovered mosaics were directly brought. In the Lateran Museum, they are displayed into the wall, following a practice that has been going on for centuries, inaugurated in papal museums by the display of the Dove emblema of Villa Adriana. Indeed, in the Lateran Palace hosted the important museum experiment of displaying the mosaic of the athletes of the Baths of Caracalla, discovered in 1824 and then placed in the museum in 1836, first in an imaginative reconstruction of the floor and then set into the wall, had been developed.

For our theme, an emblematic case is the brick with the mosaic image of a cock, a pavement emblem probably reused to close a niche. It was discovered in 1837 during the works of Virginio Vespignani in the cemetery of Verano, as stated in the sixth volume of Louis Perret’s disputed Catacombes of 1852, which places the mosaic to cover an unspecified martyr’s grave. Upon its discovery, it was sent straight into the Lateran Museum, where it was slightly restored and placed on the wall, in the large gallery of sarcophagi, along with all the other ‘sculptural works’, as noted in the catalogues of the time.

During the 20th century, the museum housed both mosaics previously housed in private collections (as the one in the Chigi Library which passed to the Laternanense Museum and then to the Pio Cristiano in the Vatican) and new discoveries, such as the two fictile slabs decorated with polychrome glass mosaic tiles from the Aproniano catacomb depicting three episodes from the biblical story of Jonah. They were discovered on 1 February 1938, the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology donated them to the Holy See and they immediately entered the Vatican collections, also becoming part, in 1963, of the new Pius Christian Museum opened in the Vatican after the closure of the Lateran Museum. Perhaps the most linear path in our little story.

Saturday morning at the Vatican Museums

Last weekend I had the opportunity to take part in some of the events of the Jubilee of Artists and the World of Culture, which was held in the Vatican on 15-16-17 February 2025. Among the various religious celebrations, there was an international congress at the Vatican Museums, organised by the Museums themselves and the Dicastery for Culture and Education. The event aimed to bring together cultural workers from the Vatican State and various international representatives of institutions related to culture, the arts, research and teaching, including an important group of speakers chosen for their roles within the main Italian museums and universities.

The morning session was an important opportunity to reflect on the present, conceived as an analysis to understand what future awaits cultural heritage, as expressed by the title of the meeting ‘Sharing Hope – Horizons for Cultural Heritage’. The target was clearly the cultural heritage inherent to Christianity, but with a necessarily universal focus, if one thinks of the impact Christianity has had on European art. This is a subject very close to some of my recent studies and that is why attending this meeting was extremely inspiring.

In general, the experiences brought to the table were all of great interest, and all focused on the need to address a new cultural horizon so that Europe’s heritage does not become mute in the face of the growing backwardness of religious culture. I will not go into the details of the individual interventions, but I will report what for me were the most important points of reflection of the morning:

– The cultural code of the monotheistic religions can be considered as an indispensable iconographic volume to understand European art, a sort of manual through which to understand scenes and references. Much of European art is art born in churches, and therefore born to enliven faith: to forget this is to consider only the aesthetic aspects of a work, risking emptying it of its soul.

– The codes of understanding, however, are neither univocal nor fixed in time, and the sense of the sacred in all civilisations is made up of stratifications. Museums must always take this into account when communicating, increasingly moving towards an anthropological approach to monotheistic religions as well. In this sense, it is good to think of museums as two-faced beings: they look at both the past and the future at the same time, while remaining firmly anchored in the present.

– In the process of communication and valorisation, one has to take into account that cultural heritage is always an extremely contested point in societies and between generations. Doing culture in a museum or in research and educational institutions involves thinking about investing in the future: in a museum, when we conserve and enhance, we are responsible for a dialogue between generations, in which we must aim to meet and overcome the sense of superiority we have towards younger people.

The second part of the meeting included the presentation of the ‘Manifesto on the transmission of the religious cultural code’. Such initiatives are not new for Vatican cultural institutions: one example is the ‘Circular Letter on the pastoral function of ecclesiastical museums’, published in 2001 to become an important vademecum on how to manage ecclesiastical museums in the contemporary world.

The new Vatican manifesto is a declaration of intent focused precisely on a generational pact that has religious cultural heritage at its centre. It is composed of seven parts that briefly condense the focal points of the contemporary debate in international museology (1. Accessibility and codification; 2. Inclusion and innovation in cultural languages; 3. Education for active and deep involvement; 4. Artificial intelligence and bridges to the future; 5. Awareness and re-contextualisation; 6. Custody and transmission in times of crisis). It is the result of shared reflections, according to more universal ideas of peace, hope and dialogue, i.e. the themes of the current Jubilee.

The text in general presents a little bit of paternalism, a naïve vision of the “power of Beauty”, and presents a concept of inclusion that is extremely limited to a communicative rejuvenation. But beyond this, the manifesto is interesting for its focus on issues of communication, education and access to museum content.

I highlight just a few points:

Point 1, Accessibility and codification: it enhances the concept of accessing and understanding information through various media, very close to the indications given by the International Council of Museums in the new 2022 definition of museums.

Point 3, Education and involvement: it is assumed that learning happens in various forms, with interaction and involvement on various levels not only through passive actions of listening and reading information shared in a unidirectional way, with the top-down approach typical of museum curatorship in the past.

Point 5, Awareness and re-contextualisation: at every communicative moment, it is necessary to be able to critically question the meaning of the works, their historical context and the ethical issues related to their provenance. Here is where the question of the critical meaning of things arises, against any kind of simplified narrative.

These are very important seeds in a horizon of disorientation in which museums need to keep straight in order to continue their work of dissemination and inclusion without losing the direction themselves. It starts from the Vatican’s main museum with the ambition to reach all Christian and Catholic museums around the world, as well as all those who deal with religious heritage.

How were catacombs explored?

Exploration of Christian catacombs was a widespread and very fashionable practice in Rome between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. It involved Roman population, regardless of their social classes, as well as scholarly and ecclesiastical groups from outside Rome, generating a huge wave of interest in Christian catacombs that revolved in a “race” for catacomb exploration.

From a technical point of view, the ways of exploring the catacombs remain the same throughout the centuries. And the problems due to the architecture of the catacombs also remain the same: the darkness, the inconvenience of access, the labrinthic structure.
The theme is, therefore, universal and serves a reconstruction of catacomb explorations over the centuries.

An answer to the question “how were the catacombs explored?” was given during an interesting conference in Rome in November 2024 (Here is the link: https://www.velociproject.org/en/events/rome24 )

The catacombs were accessed through random openings in the countryside, or specially dug ones, from which one descended and from which one exited along with the finds recovered underground. It was therefore necessary to make them wider; hoes and spades were used, as well as ladder. To make one’s way through the tunnels without fear of losing one’s way, long ropes were used that were tied to the entrances and then uncoiled as one went along, or one could mark the points at which one turned at each fork in the road. Then of course one had to use flashlights and candles, in such quantities that they could last for days.

Once inside the catacomb, therefore, one proceeded mostly on all fours, or by crawling, or enlarged passages by excavating the tufa.

“Roma Sotterranea” (1630) and “Osservazioni sopra i cimiteri de Santi Martiri” (1720)
are the main sources of information for this topic.

Then, once inside the catacomb, one would proceed to walk around to find new areas and discover new parts of the monument, especially galleries with closed tombs.

But aside from basic exploration, what was being done in the catacomb? Coming soon…

Two 17th-century images from the Catacombs of Priscilla (Rome)

The “Cubicolo della Velata” (Cubicle of the Veiled Woman) is one of the most famous burial chamber in the catacombs of Rome, known since the 16th century and much loved by all scholars of the past. It is located in the central core of the Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome, and its name derives from the presence of a ‘Veiled’ woman painted in the bottom lunette in a praying attitude. The scenes, dated to the late 3rd century, are interpreted as the important moments in the life of the deceased: her marriage (left), motherhood (right) and her admission among the blessed (in the middle).

It was one of the very first places to be investigated by explorers in the 16th century. In fact, we have two original drawings reproducing the cubicle, preserved inside two important manuscripts in the Vatican Library.

The first, Vat. lat. 10545, f. 187r, dates from around 1590 and was executed by a draughtsman from the circle of the Flemish scholar Philip van Winghe, who is also known for having executed the first extant plans of the Roman catacombs.
The style of the copy is very simple and straightforward, almost childlike, but close to the original, a typical feature of copies of catacomb paintings in this manuscript.

The volume can be viewed in full here: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.10545

The second, Vat. lat. 5409, f. 24r, belongs to the rich set of images of the Roman catacombs in the work of the Spanish Dominican Alonso Chacon, and dates to the late 1590s.
The drawing is completely different from the previous one, the original early Christian painting is copied in a very baroque manner, with reminiscences of Michelangelo and a richness that does not belong to the style of the catacomb art. In addition, the inconographic reading is also misinterpreted, creating images of Christ and Mary that do not correspond to the original work.

IThe volume can be viewed in full here: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.5409

New outcome from the project LIT!

In the last issue of the online Journal of Art Historiography (Number 26, June 2022) the is the most recent output of the Project LIT!

The study and dissemination of an iconography: banquet scenes from the catacombs of Rome to the facsimile catacombs of the nineteenth century

In general, the text traces the discovery and the history of two important banquet scenes from the Roman catacombs (from the Catacombs of Callixtus and from the Catacombs of Priscilla). It focuses on the fortune of these scenes in Europe. this fortune developed in their reproductions found in various churches and chapels up to the middle of the 20th century. This overview helps in understanding how the study and reproduction of a single iconography can contribute to a general reconstruction of the development of the discipline of early Christian art history.

The whole article can be read here: https://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/cecalupo.pdf

While the issue is fully available at: https://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/26-jun22/

A postcard from the catacombs: new exposition at Universidad Carlos III

At the end of the 19th century, the catacombs were not just the object of archaeological research. From 1883 until 1930, the Trappist Fathers were entrusted with the care and management of the catacombs of Saint Callixtus. The community settled in the abbey built on the site of the catacombs and began to receive the numerous pilgrims and tourists who came to visit them.

Around 1890, their activities to promote the catacombs as a tourist and religious site began to develop considerably. In particular, they began to print valuable souvenirs with images of the frescoes of the catacombs in the Luigi Salomone lithography workshop: first, postcards, whose designs are attributed to the Roman painter Romeo Cavi, and then a booklet with images of the spaces and paintings of the catacombs and explanations of them. All the drawings on these objects are inspired by – and even copied from – the engravings and illustrations in the volumes of “Roma Sotterranea Cristiana” by Giovanni Battista de Rossi.

Many of these objects can now be seen in the exhibition: Una postal de las catacumbas. Exposición de tarjetas postales artísticas de las catacumbas romanas de 1890

From 18 March to 1 April 2022. Library of Humanities, Communication and Documentation. Campus Getafe, Universidad Carlos III of Madrid.

Organised by Chiara Cecalupo in the framework of the Conex-Plus project and in celebration of the second centenary of the birth of Giovanni Battista de Rossi (1822-1894).

Una postal de las catacumbas

February 2022: the month of Giovanni Battista de Rossi

On the 22nd of February 2022 the scientific community celebrates the second centenary of the birth of Giovanni Battista de Rossi (1822-1894), one of the ‘founding fathers’ of Christian archaeology. He was Scriptor and then head of the Vatican Library, first secretary of the Commission of Sacred Archaeology, established by Pius IX in 1852, creator and curator of the Museo Pio Cristiano Lateranense founded in 1854. He is remembered also as founder and editor of the first specialist journal in the field, the Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana (still existing today as Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana). He began the publication of the critical edition of all the early Christian inscriptions of Rome (ICVR) and was the author of the Roma Sotterranea Cristiana, an in-depth study of the main Roman catacombs (especially the catacombs of San Callisto) drawn up following his own important discoveries.

To celebrate the event, the Vatican State issued a special stamp where de Rossi is portayed with the ruins of the Hypogeum of the Flavi in the catacombs of Domitilla.

The project LIT! owns very much to de Rossi’s work. He was the one who created the first fac-simile catacombs in 1867 for the Universal Exhibition in Paris. We are therefore very happy to share the brand new article about the topic. Enjoy!

C. Cecalupo, GIOVANNI BATTISTA E MICHELE STEFANO DE ROSSI ALL’ESPOSIZIONE UNIVERSALE DI PARIGI (1867), in Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana, 97, 2021,2, pp. 319-347.

Psss, hey! Universidad Carlos III will soon celebrate de Rossi with a special exhibition. Stay tuned…

Postcards of the Roman catacombs by Pio Luzzietti

As earlier pointted out here, the postcards with pictures of the catacombs of Rome are enjoyable sources to understand the cultural impact of Roman catacombs in European culture in late 19th century.

This time, we will present three postcards issued by the famous Roman antiquarian library founded by Pio Luzzietti. The Libreria Antiquaria Pio Luzzietti had a very rich collection of historical prints and was very active in selling antique books and prints and publishing antique catalogues from about 1890 to 1930.

The founder Pio Luzzietti (1869-1927) was among the best known collectors and booksellers in Rome. He certainly had an interest in Christian archaeology, considering that he had acquired important libraries on the subject, such as Mariano Armellini’s and Enrico Stevenson’s. The bookshop was located in Via dei Crociferi 16, then in Piazza dei Crociferi 4 and finally – from 1906 – in Piazza d’Aracoeli 16-17.

The bookshop was a meeting place for Italian and foreign politicians and scholars. It is also known that the bookshop supplied prints and rare books to important institutions such as the Prints Cabinet in Rome and the museum of Castello Sforzesco.

Among all the prints, it is possible to find some postcards with scenes from the catacombs, dating before the year 1906. The language used is obviously the international one, French. But, unlike other postcards from the same period, the images printed on these catacombs are not taken from Giovanni Battista de Rossi’s Roma Sotterranea Cristiana. They are in fact artistic collages of real photographs of the underground architecture and paintings.

From this we understand that Luzzietti had original photographic material at his disposal, perhaps from libraries he had acquired.