ANTE OCULOS PONERE:VISION AND IMAGINATION IN FLAVIO BIONDO'SROMA TRIUMPHANS

This article examines two ekphrastic digressions from book 2 of Flavio Biondo'sRoma Triumphans(1459), both occurring in the section on the festivals of ancient Rome. The first is an eye-witness account of a celebration mounted in Piazza Navona in Rome to mark the defeat of the Turks at Belgrade in 1456; the second is an imaginative recreation of the horse race at the Equirria, as Biondo envisions it taking place in the streetscape of ancient Rome. Both digressions serve one of Biondo's most important purposes, the linking of ancient and modern Rome. The aim of the discussion is to demonstrate the importance of visualization in Biondo's framing ofRoma Triumphansas a whole. In this aspect he was a powerful model for later antiquarian writing.