Genealogies of Spanish Architectural Knowledge in Roman Print

Abstract

This article is about an album of Roman prints published during the 16th and 17th centuries. The album shows the various uses of antique architecture and sculpture in Italy, from antiquity to the Baroque. But the last folio of the album contains a print of El Escorial published in Rome that is a copy of the famous print of the same subject by Pedro Perret, made for Juan de Herrera's Estampas published in Madrid. The article analyzes the collection of prints in the Italian album from the point of view of this final plate, proposing that the sequence of images establishes El Escorial as an antiquity that is both Spanish and Christian in a way that Italian audiences would easily understand.