The Villa Laurentina of Pliny the Younger in an 18th Century Vision

The book deals with a paper reconstruction of Pliny the Younger’s (c. AD 61-112) villa near Ostia, some twenty kilometres from Rome. This unique work was created in Rome in the years 1777-78 by a young Pole, Count Stanislaw K. Potocki (1755-1821) in cooperation with Giuseppe Manocchi and other outstanding artists of the time. The work, originally in the Potocki collection in Wilanow, is today housed in the iconographic collection of the National Library, Warsaw. It contains over thirty large-format drawings (57.789.5 cm) in colour. Just before the close of the 18th century, probably during his last sojourn in Italy (1795-97), Count Potocki wrote a 24-page-long commentary to his work, entitled Notes et Idees sur la Villa de Pline. This hitherto unpublished manuscript commentary and reconstruction drawings of the villa are now published together with a virtual visualisation of the villa produced in 3D Studio Max 2014.