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A beautifully engraved and richly decorated architectural print of an ancient Roman temple in the vicinity of the Ponte Rotto on the banks of the Tiber, erroneously known as Fortuna Virilis. Today we know it was the Temple of Portunus, dedicated to the Roman god of rivers and ports around 100 BC. Blaeu’s print reimagines the worn and eroded stones and columns as they would have appeared when first built. The temple still stands, a rare example of Greco-Italian architecture of the Republican era. It became the church of St. Mary of Egypt in 871 AD, and was later used by the Armenian community.
This engraving was originally published by Joan Blaeu, who published three town-books of Italy during his lifetime: Citta del Vaticano, Roma and Napoli. By the year 1672, a fire largely destroyed the main Blaeu workshop, and much of the prepared material. Nonetheless, work on the town-books continued, and in 1682 the completed work was published in Amsterdam by his heirs. The town-books were a great success and reissued several times by different publishers in Amsterdam, as late as 1726. Pierre Mortier reissued all the Blaeu plates in the years 1704-05 in an atlas comprising four volumes with the imprint of “A Amsterdam Chez P. Mortier Avec Privilege.”
The Blaeu family of cartographers, founded by Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638) in about 1604, became the largest printer in 17th century Europe and the leading cartographic publisher during the golden age of Dutch map making. Read more about the firm in our Guide to Globe Makers.
References:
Fleet, Christopher. "Joan Blaeu." Pont Maps Biographies. National Library of Scotland. 2000. http://www.nls.uk/pont/bio/blaeu.html (17 September 2002).
Perowne, Stewart. Roman Mythology. New York: Paul Hamlyn, 1969. pp. 58-59.
"Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library & Renaissance Culture." Library of Congress. 2 July, 2002. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/vatican/arch.html (17 September 2002).
Sullivan, Mary Ann. “Rome, Italy: Temple of Fortuna Virilis (Temple of Portunus).” Digital Imaging Project, MAS/BC. http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/romanvirilis/virilis.html (17 December 2004).
Tooley, R.V. Maps and Map-Makers. 4th Ed. New York: Bonanza Books, 1970. pp. 33-34.