Su una misconosciuta pianta per il tempio del Santissimo Crocifisso a Todi

Abstract

On folio 2567 of the National Academy of St. Luke’s, there is a plan of an externally quadrangular and internally hexagonal
church, which, up to now, has been scarcely investigated, if at all, by the historiography of architecture. It is an anonymous
folio belonging to the Bolognese architect Octavian Mascarino (1536-1606) who donated it, shortly before his death, to the
Academy of which he was a member. The typological features of the church, a document from 1589, and metrological analysis,
enable the folio to be matched with a plan, hitherto unknown, for the Temple of the Ss. Crocifisso in Todi, a church of pilgrimage
erected in 1589 and commissioned by Bishop Angelo Cesi. The geometry of the plan, its sources and derivations - such
as the church, built soon after, of the Ss. Trinità in Turin (1598), which echoes many of its features - suggest a plan by the
Bolsenese architect, Ascanio Vitozzi (1539-1615), documented to have been in Rome for a short stay in 1589, at the time Cesi
himself was present in the city.