This article explores the use and function of the lucido technique in architectural workshops from the Renaissance through the late eighteenth century. By examining evidence from written sources and key drawing collections, the study compares the copying practices of architects with those of artists. The findings reveal that transparent paper was not appreciated as a copying medium in Europe’s architectural workshops until the mid-eighteenth century. When employed, transparent paper was primarily used for copying figure and ornamental drawings that were challenging to transfer using the pricking technique. The paper argues that the marginalization of transparent paper in architectural practice was possibly due to the coating process and the characteristics of the substances employed – vegetable oils and resins – which were incompatible with the working environment of architects. It was only with the commercialization of machine-made wove transparent paper in the early nineteenth century that architects and engineers began to systematically adopt this medium.

The article discusses a Libro dei disegni (Book of drawings) depicting ancient architectural fragments, including column bases and capitals, as well as entablatures and cornices, executed by the architect Francesco da Volterra between 1570 and 1575. Volterra's originals remain lost to us, but meticulous copies of his drawings were interpolated into a manuscript treatise compiled and assembled by Giovanni Maggi around 1614. The content of the Libro suggests that the acquisition of first-hand knowledge of antiquity was one of Francesco da Volterra’s means of professionalization and recognition as an architect, as had been the practice of previous generations of Renaissance architects. The undertaking also brings novel evidence to the argument of an unbroken continuity in the practice of copying after antiquity before and after the advent of the printed illustrated book.

This catalogue presents the first comprehensive study of the Italian architectural drawings in the Cronstedt Collection in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, comprising 181 drawings dating from c. 1570 to c. 1630. Among them are original projects by Francesco da Volterra, Carlo Maderno and other Roman architects of churches, chapels, palaces, gardens and fountains, many constituting primary and almost unknown source material relating to late Mannerist and early Baroque architecture. Also included is a large corpus of plans, façades, and architectural details by French draughtsmen that meticulously document ancient monuments as well as buildings by the Renaissance masters Bramante, Antonio da Sangallo, Michelangelo and Vignola. The catalogue puts forward new proposals of identification and attribution in the light of recent scholarship, also based on a close examination of the materiality of the drawings (paper, medium, technique, mounting). Comparative illustrations and a photographic catalogue of the watermarks complete the volume.

Il primo santo dell’età moderna, un erudito cardinale cercatore di reliquie, un architetto romano fuggito in Lombardia e
 il progetto di una grande chiesa. Questo studio ricostruisce l’acceso scontro che, all’indomani della canonizzazione di Carlo Borromeo, vide coinvolti un gruppo di devoti, una confraternita e due ordini religiosi per il primato del culto carolino a Roma, imponendo alla Nazione lombarda la costruzione lungo la via del Corso di una nuova chiesa “degna della grandezza e meriti del santo”. Il progetto del monumentale edificio che avrebbe assegnato per la prima volta ai Lombardi un posto di primo piano nella geografia dell’Urbe, integrava elementi propri della tradizione architettonica lombarda, ispirandosi ai modelli del Duomo di Milano e del santuario di Santa Maria presso San Celso.
 I lavori, iniziati nel 1612 e finanziati dalle ingenti donazioni
 e legati pii favoriti dall’arrivo a Roma della preziosa reliquia del cuore di san Carlo, si protrassero per tutto il corso del Seicento senza però mai abbandonare l’originario progetto di traslare “la chiesa identitaria di Milano nel cuore della cattolicità”.

Between 1616 and 1618, during the pontificate of Paul V, a number of sarcophagi, holy images, fragments of sculpture and mosaics, relics, epitaphs and architectural elements originating from the demolition of the old St. Peter's were exhibited on public display in the Vatican Grottos. Quite exceptionally, the fragments were labelled with stone epigraphs commemorating their history and original locations. As a complement to the exhibition, Giovan Battista Ricci painted detailed fresco representations of the exterior and the interior of the old basilica on the walls of the Grottos, giving the visitors an evocative image of its past appearance. This essay analyses the character of the installation in the Vatican Grottos and its formation, also looking at it as a result of the increased interest in antiquarian studies related to Christian antiquity and as an expression of the seventeenth-century taste for displaying antique fragments in palace ornamentation.