Tags: Canada, InfoGraphics Lab, Rome, Spatial History Lab, Stanford University, Studium Urbis, University of Oregon, USA

Roman Artist Giuseppe Vasi’s Work is Now Available at Interactive Web Site

University of Oregon architecture professor Jim Tice loves to stroll through 18th century Rome. As he wanders by the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon and Piazza Navona, he watches the crowds enjoying the splendors of the Eternal City.

With the aid of 21st century technology, Tice and his colleagues have made it possible for the public to experience Rome as privileged visitors on the Grand Tour once did 250 years ago.

An interdisciplinary team from the UO’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts and the College of Arts and Sciences collaborated with noted scholars in Rome to produce a new Web site dedicated to the work of one of Rome’s great vedutisti — or cityscape artists. The intention is to provide a rich historical resource for educators, scholars, students and the general public.

“Imago Urbis: Giuseppe Vasi’s Grand Tour of Rome” presents an innovative geographic database and Web site that brings to life the work of two 18th century masters of Rome’s urban and architectural treasures: Giambattista Nolli (1701-1756), who published the first accurate map of Rome (La Pianta Grande di Roma, 1748); and his contemporary, Giuseppe Vasi (1710-1782), whose comprehensive views of the city and its monuments from 1747-1761, can be precisely located and explored by using the Nolli map as a reference.

The effort to recreate Rome during one of its most illustrious periods was made possible by a two-year grant from the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles.

“We believe that this Web site presents Giuseppe Vasi’s work in a manner that is fun to use, visually stimulating and intellectually engaging,” said James Tice, UO architecture professor and principal investigator on the project.

The Vasi project builds on previous work by the UO team that generated the award-winning “Interactive Nolli Map Website,” which was published in 2005. The research team led by Tice, Erik Steiner from the UO geography department’s InfoGraphics Lab, and Dennis Beyer, architecture graduate research fellow, analyzed 238 of Vasi’s topographic prints in detail and in relationship to Nolli’s map. Allan Ceen, professor of architectural history at Penn State University and director of Studium Urbis in Rome, acted as the scholarly consultant for both projects.

Vasi’s work and methods are interpreted through an analysis of their urbanistic, artistic and historical content. Vasi’s engravings of the city were closely examined next to Nolli’s map to determine their precise spatial coordinates and field of view, or “viewshed.” A complete list and explanatory text for more than 1,000 individual buildings and features accompany the collected views.

In addition, field notes recording observations about daily and seasonal lighting conditions and measurements for locating specific points of view supplemented the data and served to verify the accuracy of Vasi’s views and shed light on his methodology.

“The goals of the Web site are to respect the integrity of Vasi and Nolli, and to interpret their work through the filter of modern research techniques,” said Tice.

Both Nolli and Vasi excelled at describing Rome in geo-spatial terms, one through scientific measurements and plan view, the other through careful observation within a pictorial tradition that relied on scientific perspective. Because each brought a different strength to the same challenge of how one views the city, their combined efforts present a particularly rich commentary for how one might represent and understand the contemporary city as well, Tice explained.

The UO team carried the historic documentation a step further by developing an interactive Web application combining the two artists’ work with satellite images and modern photographs overlaid on the locations documented by Vasi and Nolli. Combining all of this data into an online resource for engaging academic and general audiences, the Web site is searchable by building type, architect, city district, and depictions of city life, including one topic called “mischief.”

Steiner and the InfoGraphics Lab specialize in developing research and instructional tools to explore and represent geographic databases.

“Geographic information systems, or GIS databases, and interactive mapping techniques are rarely applied in such detail to historical documents. Vasi’s Grand Tour sets a new standard,” said Steiner, who is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Spatial History Lab. “We are trying to redefine the use of historical resources by allowing people to explore them in their spatial, artistic and modern context.”

The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and private collectors made available their collections of original 18th century prints that served as the foundation for the documentation process.

“Imago Urbis: Giuseppe Vasi’s Grand Tour of Rome” is now available at http://vasi.uoregon.edu.

About the University of Oregon

The University of Oregon is a world-class teaching and research institution and Oregon’s flagship public university. The UO is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization made up of 62 of the leading public and private research institutions in the United States and Canada. Membership in the AAU is by invitation only. The University of Oregon is one of only two AAU members in the Pacific Northwest.

Links:

Imago Urbis: Giuseppe Vasi’s Grand Tour of Rome, http://vasi.uoregon.edu/

Interactive Nolli Map, http://nolli.uoregon.edu/.

Contacts

University of Oregon
Julie Brown, 541-346-3185
julbrown {at} uoregon(.)edu