Disegni inediti di pavimenti antichi da Villa Casali sul Celio. Le riproduzioni ottocentesche di Enrico Calderari conservate all'Archivio di Stato di Roma

In this paper we discuss the discovery of a series of six drawings related to floor and wall decorations – preserved in the State Archives of Rome – which, due to complex archival vicissitudes, had been believed lost. The six watercolour plates, drawn by Enrico Calderari, constitute the only graphic testimony of an excavation carried out in 1824 in the Villa of the Marquis Casali on the Caelian hill, previously known through a short report by Giuseppe Valadier. Thus, the discovery permits to submit the graphic and descriptive documentation, finally reunited. The first plate depicts the general layout of the excavation, where it is possible to recognise a corridor, whose floors are decorated with black and white geometric mosaics, and a colonnaded entrance hall decorated with opus sectile. The plates II, III and IV are devoted to the detailed illustration of tessellated that adorned the hall; plate V portrays the wall decoration of the colonnade room with marble incrustationes; the last plate shows the opus sectile floor of the same room. The latter in particular is a rare example of sectile “in a square pattern with complex motifs” with the basic outline of the Q(XP) type, highlighting the importance of the discovery of Calderari’s drawings.