ALFARANO, TIBERIO

ALFARANO, TIBERIO. - Born at Gerace (Reggio Calabria), by 1544 he was already serving at S. Pietro, and from 1567 was a beneficiary cleric there. He died in 1596, leaving his property to the Compagnia del S.mo Sacramento and his rich library to the Jesuits. Out of personal devotion and at the urging of the canon Giacomo Ercolano, he resolved to preserve for posterity a record of what, in those years, was being demolished of the original basilica of S. Pietro for the new Michelangelesque construction. At first he conceived his work as a supplement to the descriptions Vegio (v.), but later as a continuous commentary on a detailed plan of the old basilica, which he himself had drawn on several occasions (1571, 1576, 1582). A revised version of the plan was engraved on copper and published in 1590; the text, however, remained unpublished, although a definitive copy was presented to Gregorio XIII in 1582. The autograph manuscript, which survives, continued to be corrected by the author until his death. These notes by the author and his plan are, together with Grimaldi’s Instrumenta authentica (v.), the richest and most important sources for knowledge of the ancient basilica of S. Pietro; accurate and trustworthy in all that the author states he had seen, they were extensively used by all those who subsequently wrote on the subject, often without citing the source. - Vedi Tav. LXIV.