Unlike his contemporaries Leonardo and Michelangelo, Raphael wrote very little. What survives does not boast the same breadth or facility that we often associate with the artist's counterparts. It is this relative poverty that makes the so-called Letter of Leo X so exceptional and important. Composed in collaboration with Baldassarre Castiglione, the letter represents a humanistic thesis on the reconstruction of Rome's ancient landscape. The latest entry in the study of this significant work, Francesco Paolo di Teodoro's Lettera a Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione is the synthesis of decades of extensive and original research: combining scrupulous paleographic analysis with lucid historical discussion, the volume offers a fresh and accessible reading of the letter's rich intellectual strata.

Beginning with his doctoral dissertation, di Teodoro has distinguished himself as a prolific authority on the letter's history and interpretation. His 1994 publication represents the first critical edition of the letter and its witnesses; a second edition, which appeared in 2003, includes an updated bibliography and new essays on the letter's relationship to Vitruvius and Alberti. Shorter and more general in its scope, the present volume opens this history to the wider public, although it makes no sacrifice of scholarly rigor. It also enters into this analysis an important new document. In 2015, di Teodoro recovered another version of the letter from a private archive in Mantua. Probably prepared in 1583 or 1584 from a lost intermediary, this witness is likely the one cited by Bernardino Marliani, who was commissioned by Castiglione's son Camillo to rehabilitate his father's reputation. The author's meticulous assessment of this and other documents paints a compelling picture of the letter's genesis: whereas John Shearman posited that initial drafts were penned around 1516, di Teodoro persuasively dates this work to autumn of 1519—an opinion shared by Christof Thoenes. Notably, the earliest version of the letter, the autograph in Mantua’s State Archives, is reproduced in high-resolution color.

Most of the volume, which takes the form of an extended essay, focuses on the sources that shaped the letter's structure and its contents. As it was originally conceived, the letter served as a preface to Raphael's drawing of ancient Rome. Since this project does not survive, the letter represents the most compelling testimony of Raphael's approach to architectural drawing and the reconstruction of ruins. To situate these themes, di Teodoro begins with the missive of the Venetian Marcantonio Michiel, a rare eyewitness account, which lends valuable context for framing the letter's place in the reception of antiquity. It also supplies a tantalizing detail, that one of the regions of Rome was “finished” before the artist's death, although, as di Teodoro notes, the language here is open to speculation (10). In what follows, di Teodoro surveys the humanist literature that informed the letter's substance and readership, from Ptolemy, to Poggio Bracciolini, to Pietro Bembo. Recognizing that the letter belongs to the tradition of archaeological compendia, he suggests that Raphael's pursuit of Roman antiquity was both material and literary. In the artist's own words, his expertise was justified because he diligently searched for artifacts and compared his discoveries with the writings of ancient authors. The letter, di Teodoro maintains, is not only a sophisticated architectural treatise but also a humanistic celebration of the papacy, as the riptide of Luther's Reformation drew near.

For all of its literary richness, the letter also raises important questions about the conventions of architectural drawing, and di Teodoro attends in particular to the “three modes” recommended by the text—plan, section, and elevation—arguing that this system, reminiscent of Vitruvius, enabled the artist to “draw like the ancient Romans” (35–37). It is the description of orthogonal projection, moreover, that di Teodoro connects to the intellectual legacy of Piero della Francesca and the perspectival grid. As the author shows, this intersection of media belongs, on the one hand, to a long cultural discourse; on the other, it gestures to the emergence of new strategies of representation. Indeed, the relationship of drawing to antiquity, and of architecture to painting, is enjoying a floruit of academic interest, including recent studies by Alina Payne, Sabine Frommel, Cammy Brothers, and Mari Yoko Hara.

Both handsome and timely, the volume rewards close reading; it includes a precious gold mine of references to ancient and early modern sources, which will appeal to seasoned scholars and recent initiates alike. In the present context especially, a book like di Teodoro’s fills an important gap. The current pandemic has upended many planned celebrations of Raphael's life and career, not the least of which was the quincentenary exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale, where an entire room was dedicated to the letter and its contexts. Di Teodoro's volume is a welcome commemoration of the artist's legacy, inviting fresh consideration of the words, images, and conversations that once brought Raphael's Rome to life.