Metamorfozy miejsca. Mechanizm przemiany wyobrażeń o przestrzeni Rzymu w średniowieczu

The longevity of items and objects of architecture favours changes in their function. What remains is the memory of a place and works of art, which charge a given space with emotions. In human awareness, they lay the foundations of cultural identity. The memory in question has accumulated both in the works of visual art and in writings, delivering a testimony to the transformations of the image of Rome. Therefore, the present article covers the essential artistic and cartographic images of medieval Rome, instances of mythologisation and metamorphoses of space, as well as the city’s history as viewed through the prism of art. The evoked and discussed historic literary sources include Mirabilia Urbis Romae, or a collection of silva rerum tales by Giovanni Rucellai, Il zibaldone quaresimale (a record of a journey to obtain indulgence undertaken in 1450). Literary metamorphoses are interpreted in the context of the findings of art history. In a similar manner, changes in the imagined vision of Rome are laid out on the example of a cycle of 15th-century paintings by Hans Holbein the Elder, Hans Burgkmair and Master who signed with initials L.F. Executed for a monastery in Augsburg, the cycle presented seven station churches and was a kind of biblia pauperum, which adopted the orm of a painted story of a pilgrimage to Rome. The cycle proved to become a fostering and building force behind the process of spiritual metamorphosis of the place carried out by visual means.