A facade of a church

An etching by Carlo Pontani depicting a plan for a facade of a church. This print was published by Pontani in "Opere architettoniche di Raffaello Sanzio, incise e dichiarate dall'Architetto Carlo Pontani", published in two volumes in 1841 and 1845. The print is lettered with the title in Italian and a scale. Signed by the printmaker. Annotated on the verso.

According to Ruland (1876), this etching is "a reduction of Raphael's sketch to the actual proportion of San Lorenzo". This sketch is a pen and ink washed drawing now in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. AZRom808a), where it is catalogued as a study for the facade of St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City by Baldassarre Peruzzi. The drawing was previously in the collection of Pierre Crozat ("Description sommaire des dessins des grands maistres d'Italie..", sale catalogue of Crozat's collection written by Pierre-Jean Mariette, p. 131, Nr. 48).

According to Passavant and Ruland (1876), this drawing is a project for the facade of the Basilica di San Lorenzo, Florence by Raphael. The Basilica has a complicated building development, with an important phase under the direction of Filippo Brunelleschi from 1419. After this campaign, the facade of the Basilica remained unfinished and after his visit to Florence in 1515, Pope Leo X asked leading architects to submit designs for the completion of the Basilica. If the history of Michelangelo's acquisition of the commission for the facade is clear, the circumstances preceding this are cloudy and however the work remained unbuilt. Also the role of Raphael is not too certain: it appears that both Michelangelo and Raphael were called from Rome to Florence. Scholars are inclined to believe that if there was a project by Raphael for the Basilica di San Lorenzo, this is now lost, but Manfredo Tafuri published a drawing which he proposed as a copy of the original Raphaelesque plan (see Bibliographic References).