Andrea Palladio · The Fourth Book
Chapter XXI. Of the Designs of some temples that are out of Rome, in Italy; and, in the first place, of the temple of Bacchus
WITHOUT the gate, as it is now called, "of Santa Agnesa, and by the antients
Viminalis, from the name of the hill where it is placed, the following temple is to be seen pretty intire, which is dedicated to Santa Agnes.
I Believe that it was a sepulchre, because there was very large case of porphry found in it, very beautifully carved with vines, and little children gathering grapes; which has made some believe that it was the temple of Bacchus. And because it is the common opinion, and now serves for a church, I have placed it among the temples,
BEFORE its portico the vestigia of a court are to be seen, of an oval form, which I believe was adorned with columns, and niches in the intercolumniations, which must have been for its statues.
The loggia of the temple, by what is to be seen of it, was made of pilasters, and had three openings. In the inward part of the temple there were columns placed two and two, which supported the cuba.
At these columns are of granate; and the bases, the capitals, and the cornice of marble, The bases are in the Attick manner. The capitals are of the Composite order, very beautiful, and have some leaves which project from the rosa, from which the voluta’s seem to spring very gracefully. The architrave, the frize, and the cornice are not very well wrought; which makes me believe that this temple was not made in good times, but in those of the latter emperors. It is very rich with works, and with various compartments; part of them of beautiful stones, and part &f Mosaic work, as well in the pavement, as in the walls, and in the vaults.
Or this temple I have made three plates. 61. Im the first is the plan, 62. IN the second the elevation. 63. In the third is to be seen how the columns were ordered that support the arches upon which the tribuna rests.
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.