Andrea Palladio · The Fourth Book
Chapter XIX. Of the temple of Jupiter, the Thunderer
AT the foot of the Campidoguo some vestigia of the following temple are to be seen, which some say was that of Jupiter the Thunderer, and that it was built by Acutus, for the danger that he escaped when, in the Cantabrian war, in a voyage that he made by night, the litter wherein he was, was struck with lightning, by which a servant who was before was killed, without doing the least hurt to the person of Augustus. Of which I a little doubt, _because the ornaments there to be seen, are wrought most delicately with most beautiful intaglio’s. And it is manifest}, that in the time of Augustus the works were made more solid 5, as may be seen in the portico of Santa Maria Ritonda, built by M. grippa, which is very simple, and also in other edifices. Some would have it, that the columns that are there, were of the bridge which Caligula made; which opinion I have just now shewn to be entirely false,
The aspect of this temple was that which was called dipteros, that is, double winged. It is very true, that in the part towards the Campidoglio there was no portico. But by what I have observed in other edifices built near hills, I am apt to believe, that it was in this part made as the plan shews; that is, that it had a very thick wall, which inclosed the cella, and the portico’s, and then leaving a little space, there was another wall, with abutments that went into the hill. Because in such cases the ancients made the first wall very thick, that the damp might not penetrate into the inward part of the edifice; and they made the other wall with abutments, that it might be the better able to support the weight of the hill; and they left the said space between the one and the other of the said walls, that the water which sell from the hill might there have a free course, and do no damage to the fabrick. The manner of this temple was the picnostilos, The architrave, and the frize in the front were in a line, that they might contain the carving of the inscription, and some of the letters are still there to be seen. The ovolo of the cornice over the frize is different from any I have yet seen, with this variety, that there is this cornice two sorts of ovolo’s, very judiciously made. The modiglions of this cornice are so disposed, that directly over the columns comes a plain space, and not a modiglion, as in some other cornices; although they regularly ought to be made so, that directly over the middle of the columns there should come a modiglion. And because by the designs of the temples already mentioned, the reasons for this are also comprehended, I have made only two plates of it.
In the first is the plan. Plate Ix the second are the particular members of the portico.
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.