From March 3rd to June 7th, 2026, the Central Institute for Graphics (ICG) at Palazzo Poli will host the exhibition “Maarten van Heemskerck and the Charm of Rome: Visual Journeys of the Eternal City.” Curated by Tatjana Bartsch, Rita Bernini, and Giorgio Marini, with the collaboration of Julia Cosima Hagge and Eleonora Magli, the exhibition is a scientific partnership with the Kupferstichkabinett of the Berlin State Museums and the Hertziana Library – Max Planck Institute for Art History. It features 140 works, including drawings, prints, and original matrices.
Rome’s monumental, majestic image, seemingly suspended in time and breathing slowly through the centuries, is a meticulously crafted and expertly constructed ideal. Before the advent of photography and motion pictures, this idealization was conveyed through pen and ink. Between 1532 and 1536, Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574), one of the first Northern artists to visit the Eternal City, studied its ancient and modern art and architecture. His work anticipated the tradition of formative travel that would later be known as the Grand Tour in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
On the pages of his notebooks, recently restored by the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin and displayed for the first time in Rome, the city appears impeccable and majestic. This is an early form of romanticization that, unsurprisingly, still resonates today in the works of many young artists in residence at the city’s numerous foreign institutions, highlighting how Rome’s “charm” has endured through the centuries.
During his stay, the Dutch artist built a comprehensive visual archive of the city. Ruins, sculptures, and urban views—from the Arch of Constantine to Santa Maria in Aracoeli, from the head of Laocoön to that of the Capitoline Brutus—are rearranged through skillful compositional arrangements, foreshadowing the city’s image as a stage set that would become ingrained over time.
Alongside this precious core collection, the exhibition traces four centuries of representations. It includes historical photographs from the almost intact Studio Vasari archive, now at the ICG, and renowned images from the Bibliotheca Hertziana’s photo library, featuring numerous shots by the Alinari brothers, pioneers of Italian photography. Contemporary photographs by Enrico Fontolan are also presented, conceived as replicas of 16th-century views in a direct comparison, reactivating Heemskerck’s gaze through the photographic medium.
The exhibition aims to demonstrate the continuity of a perspective that spans centuries, from drawing to photography and cinema. However, this continuity is disrupted by the exhibition’s layout, which separates drawings and matrices on the second floor from historical and contemporary photographs on the first. This reiterates a traditional, clear distinction between media, prioritizing disciplinary separation over a direct dialogue between the images.
In the case of Fontolan’s photographs, a closer juxtaposition could have intensified the comparison, making visible the persistence of certain scenes and the transformation of the urban landscape, a testament to the city’s vitality. A greater intermingling of artistic languages might have presented a less compartmentalized vision of Rome, illustrating how each era continues to idealize the same monumentality in different forms.
The exhibition, which marks the beginning of Fabio De Chirico’s directorship, succeeds in bringing drawing to the forefront as a tool of knowledge and reaffirms Rome’s role as a European visual laboratory. Yet, the question remains: how to narrate a city that exists in the simultaneity of media today? From 16th-century notebooks to historical photography, contemporary replicas, and cinema, Rome continues to exist as a construct of perception. Perhaps the challenge is not just to preserve its images, but to truly connect them, allowing them to dialogue in space as they do in time.
