L’ “affare” della tribuna di San Giovanni in Laterano: gli inesitati progetti di Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1763-67) e il ruolo della Fabbrica di San Pietro

The plans drawn up by Giovanni Battista Piranesi for the apse in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, commissioned by Pope Clement Rezzonico XIII in 1763, were never realized. This represents an incredible case of the withdrawal from one of the most ambitious projects ever, both from a symbolic and an artistic point of view. The five variations of Piranesi’s project aimed for an extravagant enlargement of the choir, to maintain the prestige of the Cathedral of Rome and for its new liturgical needs. However, the project was completely abandoned in August 1764. One of the main reasons was certainly that Clement XIII was battling famine and financial crisis at that time, but above all it was the maintenance needs of the Vatican Basilica that took priority over everything, as proved by some documents found in the Historical Archive of the Fabric of St. Peter. The refusal of the Fabric of St. Peter to finance the works in the Basilica of St. John Lateran – as initially ordered by the Pope – is justified in a detailed eport on the state of disrepair of St. Peter’s Basilica, a problem more urgent than anything else, more urgent than the needs of Rome’s Episcopal See.