Andrea Palladio · The Fourth Book
Chapter XIII. Of the temple of Fortuna Virilis
NEAR the Pons Senatorius, now called that of Santa Maria, is to be seen, almost
intire, the following temple, and is the church of Santa Maria Egittiaca. It not known for certain how it was called by the ancients. Some say that it was the temple of Fortuna Virilis; of which one reads, asa wonderful thing, that when it was burnt with all that was in it, only the gilded wooden statue, that was there, of Servius Tull1us was found safe, and in no part damaged by the fire.
But because regularly the temples to Fortune were made round, some others have said, that it was no temple, but the basilica of C. Lucius; grounding this their opinion upon tome letters that have been found there. Which in my judgment cannot be; not only because this edifice is little, and the basilica’s were necessarily large edifices, by reason of the great number of people who did business there; as also, because in basilica’s portico’s were made in the part within, and in this temple there are not any vestigia of a portico; I therefore believe certainly that it was a temple.
Its aspect is the prostilos, and has half columns in the walls of the cell in the part without, that accompany those of the portico, and have the same ornaments. Hence to those that view it in flank, it affords the aspect of the alato a foro. The intercolumniations are of two diameters and a quarter, so that its manner is the sistilos, The pavement of the temple is raised from the ground six foot and an half, and one ascends to it by steps, to which the basements which support the whole fabrick form a poggio. The columns are of the Ionick order, The base is Attick, although it seems that it ought to have been Ionick, as well as 04 FOURTH BO OK. the capital. It is not, however, found in any edifice, that the ancients made use of the Ionick, described by Vitruvius. The columns are fluted, and have twenty four channels, The voluta’s of the capital are oval; and the capitals that are in the angles of the portico, and of the temple, make a front two ways: which I do not remember to have seen any where else. But because it has appeared to me a beautiful and graceful invention, I have made use of it in many fabrick’s; and how it is made, will appear in the design. The ornaments of the door of the temple are very beautiful, and in beautiful proportion, All this temple is made of peperino, and is covered with stucco.
I Have made three plates of it. 31. In the first is the plan with some ornaments.
1, the dads of the basements that support the whole fabrick. 32. In the second is the front of the temple, 33. In the third is the flank of the temple. M, part of the frize, that goes with these carvings round the whole temple,
be made.
Public-domain text (London, published by Isaac Ware, 1738). Read from the Internet Archive’s scan (gri_33125011569684) of the copy in the Getty Research Institute, by way of Wikimedia Commons, where it is marked public domain. That scan’s text layer had lost the ends of the lines on every left-hand page, so the pages were read again from the scan’s images, the two readings compared word by word, and the text cleaned: the long s (ſ) is printed s and the ct and st ligatures as plain letters, words broken at the ends of lines are joined, and running heads, page numbers, signatures and catchwords are removed. Ware’s spelling, capitals and punctuation are otherwise kept (shew, publick, antient, compleat). Chapter titles and words the OCR misread were corrected against the page images. Some misreadings will remain, most of them in the italic prefaces and the Latin of Book III. Ware’s dedication, the list of subscribers, his table of terms, the errata and the bookseller’s advertisement are not reproduced. Nor are the 212 engraved plates, their inscriptions, or the keys to the letters on them that Ware prints in the text: where Palladio writes “as in the design” the figure is in the printed book.