I will also discuss how intentional similarities in the form and style of the reliquary and the cathedral which housed it added further layers of political meaning to the work of art and its contents. I will examine the political motivation behind the reliquary’s commission, and the subsequent method of its presentation and display. This paper explores the relationship between the precious reliquary and its named patrons. The Monaldeschi coat of arms accompanies that of the State of Orvieto at the end of the inscription. A frieze around its base names Tramo Monaldeschi, bishop of Orvieto as the primary motivator behind its commission, alongside the papal chaplain, the archpriest and the canons of the cathedral. The reliquary built to house it was one of the largest ever to have been produced by a Sienese goldsmith’s workshop (60 x 139 cm) and was finely worked in silver, gold, gems and translucent enamel. Its primary attraction was the eucharistic relic of the Holy Corporal, a piece of linen cloth stained with the blood of Christ produced by the miracle of Bolsena in 1264. The cathedral of Orvieto was conceived as a pilgrimage site.

What this teaches us is that, for the enlightenment visitor, looking was not a passive act of consumption, but an active engagement with complex, confusing, and evocative material remains of the ancient city within the frame of the modern one. This pictorial mode was turned toward an exploration of the various ways in which movement, real or imagined, gave rise to popular forms of experiencing the Eternal City directly as well as to a verbal and visual language to express it to others. Writers would describe contemporary encounters with imagined figures from ancient history, while artists would visually reconfigure such encounters through the genre of the Roman capriccio. French travelers brought with them a new modern form of walking linked to the creation of Parisian public boulevards, while contemporary philosophy associated the production of knowledge directly to the sensorial apparatus of the body. These narratives, found in epistolary writings and the pictorial arts, reflected and suggested that viewers, readers, or strollers could enter into landscapes, wander through streetscapes, and commune with the past in both the space of the city and the space of representation. This article traces the contours of a new way in which Rome was explored, imagined, and represented in the eighteenth century in texts and images by French travelers.

Futures & Ruins by Nina L. Dubin