Rome: A Sketch-Book — Edition Insights

A Sequence of Contrasts

The plate list is organized not chronologically but as a series of visual contrasts. Ancient remains—the Temple of Castor and Pollux, the Theatre of Marcellus—are followed by Christian sites such as S. Francesca Romana and the Church of S. Saba. The Forum is shown looking toward the Colosseum, while a separate plate looks toward the Capital from the Palatine. This sequencing suggests that Richards intended the viewer to move between eras within a single turn of the page.

Several plates pair a landmark with its vantage point: S. Peter's appears twice, once from the Tiber and once from the Strada della Mura. The repetition emphasizes how a single structure can be transformed by its setting. The inclusion of an 'Unknown Temple' near the Tiber introduces an element of mystery, a reminder that not all of Rome's ruins have been identified.

Beyond the City Walls

Richards extends his sketch-book beyond Rome's historic center to the Alban Mountains, with plates of Rocca di Papa and Nemi, and to Tivoli, where he depicts the garden of the Villa d'Este and the Temple of the Sibyl from the ravine. These choices indicate that the sketch-book is not merely a record of famous monuments but an exploration of the Roman Campagna and its relationship to the city.

The Villa d'Este garden and the Temple of the Sibyl represent a different kind of antiquity—one that is naturalized, overgrown, and integrated into the landscape. By including these sites, Richards suggests that the essence of Rome extends into its surroundings, where ancient and Renaissance elements coexist with rural life.

The Absence of Text

The sketch-book contains no descriptive text, captions, or commentary beyond the plate titles. This silence places the entire interpretive burden on the images themselves. The viewer must infer relationships between plates, such as the visual echo between the Forum looking toward the Colosseum and the Arch of Titus, or the contrast between the massive bulk of Hadrian's Tomb and the delicate medieval house opposite S. Cecilia.

The lack of explanatory text also means that the sketch-book functions as a pure visual document, inviting repeated looking. The viewer is free to construct their own narrative of Rome's architectural history, guided only by the sequence and juxtaposition of Richards's views. This restraint is characteristic of the series format, which prioritized color illustration over written content.

Readers approaching Rome: A Sketch-Book should attend to the sequence of plates and the relationships between them. The absence of text makes the order of images the primary means of meaning-making. Consider how Richards frames each subject—what is included, what is excluded, and how the vantage point shapes the viewer's understanding. The sketch-book rewards slow, comparative looking, inviting the reader to become an active interpreter of Rome's layered past.

I keep thinking of Fred Richards’s plate of a medieval church shoulder-to-shoulder with a temple’s broken columns, both silent in the same afternoon light. It reminds me of how, in the Catalogue of Violent and Destructive Earthquakes in the Philippines With an Appendix: Earthquakes in the Marianas Islands 1599-1909 — Text and Context, each dry entry carries the weight of a town rearranged overnight, leaving only fragments standing together, patiently.