Remastering the Renaissance: A Virtual Experience of Pope Julius II's Library in Raphael's Stanza della Segnatura

FAIN: HAA-277236-21

University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA 90089-0012)
Lisa Pon (Project Director: June 2020 to present)
Curtis Fletcher (Co Project Director: November 2020 to present)
Tracy Cosgriff (Co Project Director: November 2020 to present)
Andreas Kratky (Co Project Director: November 2020 to present)
Erik Loyer (Co Project Director: November 2020 to present)

Development of a software connector between Unity and Scalar and the publication of a virtual reality experience of Pope Julius’s Stanza della Segnatura.

To develop deliberate-play experiences broadly available beyond museum walls, we need to build, test and implement a bridge that allows Scalar annotations to migrate to and from 3D environments built in Unity, and to port Scalar coordinates in order to allow easeful mapping of images in Scalar onto virtual environments. This new Scalar-Unity bridge will make possible many discursive platforms for virtual visitors. Our proof of concept: the Vatican's Stanza della Segnatura, painted by Raphael as the setting for Pope Julius II's library. We seek to construct an immersive digital environment of that room and its original contents, using Scalar as a back-end authoring platform to annotate and tag connections between the library’s books, images, and themes, and using Unity 3D to visualize them. This virtual reality environment will enable contemporary audiences everywhere to "visit" this canonical space, open window shutters, move furnishings, and select books from recreated shelves.

Media Coverage

Virtual and augmented reality bring historical objects to life (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Meredith McGroarty
Publication: Dornsife Magazine
Date: 6/25/2023
Abstract: USC Dornsife faculty use VR and AR to provide unprecedented, close-up interaction with the past.
URL: https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/virtual-and-augmented-reality-bring-historical-objects-to-life/

NEH Grant to Support Virtual Experience of Pope Julius II’s Library (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Bill Dotson
Publication: USC Libraries
Date: 1/19/2021
Abstract: The National Endowment for the Humanities recently announced a $100,000 grant from the Office of Digital Humanities to build a digital reconstruction and virtual reality experience of Pope Julius II’s library at the Vatican Palace in the room known as the Stanza della Segnatura.
URL: https://libraries.usc.edu/article/neh-grant-support-virtual-experience-pope-julius-iis-library

Associated Products

Pages, Plaster, and Computer Screens: Reimagining Raphael and the Library of Julius II (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Pages, Plaster, and Computer Screens: Reimagining Raphael and the Library of Julius II
Author: Tracy Cosgriff
Author: Lisa Pon
Abstract: Raphael’s frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura, once the private library of Julius II, manifest a monumental thesis on Renaissance theories of word and image. The rediscovery of the Stanza’s collection of deluxe volumes demonstrates that the chamber was animated by a recursive chain of media, from painting to text. Using 3D technologies to reunite the books and the frescoes, this panoramic reconstruction illuminates new dimensions of the Stanza’s experience for its early visitors and elucidates the synergistic intellectual web on which the room's design was predicated. It asks: How was the Stanza engaged by its early modern audience? How might the spatial analysis of the pope’s literary collection shape our interpretation of the chamber’s meaning? How does the relationship of text and image inform our understanding of Renaissance cultures of reading? And how do these investigations inform current urgent discussions about what a library has been and could become?
Date: 03/13/2023
Primary URL: https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/sites/default/files/sites/default/files/2822/2023Simmons_Pon_Cosgriff.pdf
Conference Name: 2023 Terry K. Simmons Lecture, Innovation Institute, Tulane University

Hybrid Scholars for Hybrid Histories: Virtual Reality and the Italian Renaissance (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Hybrid Scholars for Hybrid Histories: Virtual Reality and the Italian Renaissance
Author: Deanna Shemek
Author: Lisa Pon
Abstract: The contemporary information Renaissance offers powerful possibilities for investigating and representing the culture of the historical Renaissance for which Italy is celebrated around the world. This panel will present two digital projects that fuse traditional modes of study of the period (philology, paleography, art history) with applications of virtual reality, data mining, digital measurement and other tools. Such projects rely on several kinds of hybridity. From cross-disciplinary co-creation to multi-media delivery, they offer new pathways not only for preservation and access regarding archival and rare bibliographic materials, but also hybrid spaces for scholarly collaboration and teaching. Far from alienating or “diluting” traditional resources, digital tools convey the multi-sensory complexity of Renaissance artifacts and spaces, and, at their best, offer immersive, interactive experiences that recapture the scale, detail, cognitive density, and aesthetic specificity of historical resources that are often not accessible to the general public. IDEA: Isabella d’Este Archive features archival document visualization, immersive virtual reality, art history and economic history, and bibliographic data in a set of interlocking and increasingly interactive projects led by a team of specialists from around the world. The Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata (BI2) brings together book historians, classicists, art historians and interactive media artists to offer a chance to experience selected books from Pope Julius II's private library amid Raphael's frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura, the intended setting for these precious manuscripts.
Date: 02/25/2023
Primary URL: https://cla.csulb.edu/event/hybridity-the-california-interdisciplinary-consortium-of-italian-studies/
Conference Name: Hybridity - The California Interdisciplinary Institute of Italian Studies

Renaissance Hyperlinks: Pope Julius II’s Books amid Raphael’s Paintings (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Renaissance Hyperlinks: Pope Julius II’s Books amid Raphael’s Paintings
Author: Andreas Kratky
Author: Lisa Pon
Abstract: We have built a digital exploration of the early sixteenth-century private library of Pope Julius II, that we, using the vocabulary of the Renaissance humanists he admired, call the Bibliotheca Iulia instaurata, or the Julian Library renewed. Julius' library was a veritable Renaissance system of knowledge akin to today's hyperlinked information networks, which anticipated the concept of hyperlinks by establishing rich spatial references connecting different parts of the room, frescoes, books and furniture pieces to build a discursive space for knowledge. Julius II’s private library was housed in the Vatican Palace room painted by Raphael between 1509 and 1511 for Julius, now known as the Stanza della Segnatura. The main frescoes depict gatherings of thinkers from Greek antiquity to Julius’ own time, from Homer and Plato to Gregory the Great and Raphael himself. The frescoes' themes—Philosophy, Poetry, Theology, and Jurisprudence—pictorially synthesize relationships between these four major disciplines from the period, and Julius collected books in all of them. Almost two hundred of Julius’ books survive today, and Raphael’s frescoes refer almost recursively to them, their authors, and their diverse fields of study. The digital environment we have made allows visitors to explore how Julius and Raphael--major figures in the Renaissance-- used pictures, texts, and material artifacts to build a space for learning about their world. Our project aims to make the conceptual system linking these materials accessible and relevant for a contemporary audience and to create a digital version of the Renaissance system of knowledge it manifests. Our approach combines the study of books and paintings that have most often been studied separately, despite the historical fact that early visitors encountered the two together. Furthermore, by using interpretive strategies from art history, material culture, and literature as well as ... [see Secondary URL Description below]
Date: 06/26/2023
Primary URL: https://sharpweb.org/sharp2023/
Primary URL Description: Society for the History of Authorship, Readership and Publishing (SHARP) organizes a conference to explore the opportunities and distortions or limitations that technology has created or is likely to create for book history. Topics relate to the theme of Textual Interactions Past, Present and Future. Hosted by the Centre for the Book at the University of Otago, New Zealand, SHARP 2023 will run entirely online over three days, allowing participation from anywhere. June 26-29, 2023
Secondary URL Description: Furthermore, by using interpretive strategies from art history, material culture, and literature as well as interactive media, game design, and digital humanities, this project illuminates how linear perspective, Renaissance painting’s contribution to the modeling of three-dimensional space, and period concepts of knowledge have a legacy in today’s digital constructs. We propose a three-part research lab session at SHARP 2023 including (1) a presentation of our project, (2) time to virtually visit our digital library of Julius II, (3) time to collect responses and comments and to ask and answer questions.
Conference Name: Affordances and Interfaces: Textual Interactions Past, Present and Future

The Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata: a digital reconstruction of the library of Pope Julius II in the Vatican Palace, Stanza Della Segnatura (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata: a digital reconstruction of the library of Pope Julius II in the Vatican Palace, Stanza Della Segnatura
Author: Lisa Pon
Author: Frederic Nolan Clark
Abstract: The Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata is a digital immersive environment in which visitors can choose, handle, read, and annotate book assets representing manuscripts, now in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, that were once part of Julius II's personal library. We will discuss Renaissance practices of reading and commentary, and our development of "digital interleaves" for our project.
Date: 06/09/2022
Primary URL: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/node/10771
Primary URL Description: A Warburg Institute online workshop organised by Rheagan Martin (CASVA Center for Advanced Study in Visual Arts Predoctoral Fellow) and Louisa McKenzie (Warburg/LAHP PhD candidate). Digital humanities tools are increasingly deployed as research methodologies. Each digital project brings with it its own set of challenges: the binary nature of digital platforms often forces the researcher to present subjective decisions as objective fact, which otherwise may have been moulded with metaphorical language. This workshop will focus on both the institutional and individual level, with an emphasis on digital projects as tools for investigating interdisciplinary concepts of cultural memory.
Conference Name: Between Technology and Theory: Digital Humanities Projects in Progress

Digital Lenses and Renaissance Readings: Reimagining Raphael in the Library of Julius II (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Digital Lenses and Renaissance Readings: Reimagining Raphael in the Library of Julius II
Author: Tracy Cosgriff
Abstract: Raphael's frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura, once the private library of Julius II, manifest a monumental thesis on Renaissance theories of word and image. The rediscovery of the Stanza's collection of deluxe volumes demonstrates that the chamber was animated by a recursive chain of media, from painting to text. Using 3D technologies to reunite the books and the frescoes, this panoramic reconstruction illuminates new dimensions of the Stanza's experience for its early visitors and elucidates the synergistic intellectual web on which the room's design was predicated. It asks: How was the Stanza engaged by its early modern audience? How might the spatial analysis of the pope's literary collection shape our interpretation of the chamber's meaning? How does the relationship of text and image inform our understanding of Renaissance cultures of reading? And how do these investigations inform current urgent discussions about what a library has been and could become?
Date: 12/02/2022
Primary URL: https://rsa.confex.com/rsa/22virtual/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/13569
Primary URL Description: Digital Humanities Panel IV: New Affordances of Digital Visualization and Simulation in the Arts of Italy
Conference Name: Renaissance Society of American Virtual Conference 2022

From There to Here (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: From There to Here
Abstract: This session explores the power of experiencing the past in the present and the present in the past through the arts and technology.
Author: Lisa Pon
Author: d. Sabela Grimes
Date: 02/15/2023
Location: Sidney Center (previously known as the Harman Academy); Doheny Memorial Library
Primary URL: https://polymathic.usc.edu/event/there-here
Primary URL Description: Choreographer-writer-composer-educator d. Sabela Grimes performs and discusses his movement meditations in LA's Leimert Park as QUANTUM aka kwon aka quantAUM... Art historian Lisa Pon describes reading, technology, and knowledge in the Renaissance, today and in the future.

From Scrolls to Scalar: the History of the Book (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: From Scrolls to Scalar: the History of the Book
Abstract: Paper is a technology. And paper technology has endured from Renaissance Europe through the 2020 pandemic spring as a platform for making, holding and disseminating knowledge. Now we find ourselves in a moment of transition in which personal meetings are replaced by Zoom and paper gives way to PDFs. So are technologies of paper and the digital terminally incompatible? Applying a polymathic approach demonstrates quite the opposite, rather that the two technologies intertwined can produce knowledge heretofore unseen. Scalar Creative Director Erik Loyer and Professor of Art History Lisa Pon join our polymathic community to explicate the ways and spaces where text and the digital intersect right here at USC. With the Remastering the Renaissance Project, for instance, the USC Libraries’ special collections, the School of Cinematic Arts, the Classics and Art History Departments, and the Ahmanson Lab form just one of several polymathic collaborative ensembles where the application of virtual technologies illuminates ancient texts to speak and disseminate new and profound forms of knowledge. Scalar, a platform for media-rich scholarly publishing, facilitates similar functions and is a tool that all of our polymaths can learn and apply to their own scholarship—in any and all disciplines across the university. We are limited only by our imagination with the discoveries to be made by the intersection of technologies of the past (ie: paper) with the emerging technologies of today and the future (Multimedia, VR, AR, GIS, AI to name a few). And polymaths are, indeed, of the imaginative sort.
Author: Lisa Pon
Author: Erik Loyer
Date: 04/07/2021
Location: Online event during COVID lockdown
Primary URL: https://polymathic.usc.edu/event/scrolls-scalar-history-book?width=600px&height=400px&inline=true

A Virtual Experience of Pope Julius II's Library in Raphael's Stanza della Segnatura (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: A Virtual Experience of Pope Julius II's Library in Raphael's Stanza della Segnatura
Author: Andreas Kratky
Abstract: Our project seeks to construct an immersive digital environment of the Stanza della Segnatura and its original contents, using Scalar as a back-end authoring platform to annotate and tag connections between the library’s books, images, and themes, and using Unity 3D to visualize them. This virtual reality environment will enable contemporary audiences everywhere to "visit" this canonical space, open window shutters, move furnishings, and select books from recreated shelves.
Date: 10/21/2021
Primary URL: https://polymathic.usc.edu/usc-working-group-scholarly-vr-ar-and-3d-modeling
Conference Name: USC Working Group on Scholarly VR, AR, and 3D Modeling

Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata = Julius II's Library Renewed... (Web Resource)
Title: Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata = Julius II's Library Renewed...
Author: Lisa Pon
Author: Tracy Cosgriff
Author: Andreas Kratky
Author: Jessica Dong
Author: Bernice Wang
Author: Shelby Zhang
Abstract: The Immersive Raphael Project is a platform to reflect on and communicate the embodied experience of a room like the Stanza della Segnatura as a functional complex: How can we understand the act of reading in the Renaissance that takes place in the room; how did discourse structures work at the time? To tackle these questions, we decided to build a tool that allows us and people with related interests to analyze and think beyond the typically isolated representations of the frescos on one side, the books on another, the Vatican architecture on yet another. How can we create a complete scene that allows us to "experience" and reflect on all of these aspects together, in the way they used to exist and were conceived? This was the foundational question that led us to create a virtual reconstruction of the room with its books and context.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://immersive-raphael-project.netlify.app
Primary URL Description: A public-facing online presence we created to inform the widest possible general audience about our project.

Scalar - Unity Two-Way Bridge (Web Resource)
Title: Scalar - Unity Two-Way Bridge
Author: Erik Loyer
Author: Curtis Fletcher
Author: Andreas Kratky
Abstract: With the Scalar/Unity Bridge you can achieve greater two-way integration between Scalar and Unity, enabling your Unity scenes to be annotated by Scalar in 3D, and your Unity scenes to call data from your project using the Scalar API.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://github.com/anvc/scalar-for-unity
Secondary URL: https://scalar.usc.edu/works/guide2/working-with-unity-scenes?path=working-with-media

Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata
Author: Tracy Cosgriff
Author: Curtis Fletcher
Author: Erik Loyer
Author: Andreas Kratky
Author: Lisa Pon
Abstract: What did Pope Julius II read? The surviving inventory of the Bibliotheca Iulia’s contents, prepared in 1513 after the pope's death, documents 220 unique volumes once housed in the Stanza della Segnatura.Today, roughly a third of the original collection has been identified. The recovery of these precious volumes suggests a recursive relationship between the paintings and the papal collection of texts, and that this canonical space can only be understood in consideration of the mutual transactions that took place between these visual and verbal media.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://scalar.usc.edu/works/digital-stanza-della-segnatura/index?path=plato_manuscript
Primary URL Description: The Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata allows its visitors to select, handle, and learn through book assets representing volumes from Pope Julius II's personal library, while virtually moving around and looking at Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. Since these books were meant to be seen in this space, new insights about both the texts and the images, as well as the connections between them, can be explored.
Access Model: open access

Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata: Reading in the Library of Julius II (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata: Reading in the Library of Julius II
Writer: Tracy Cosgriff
Writer: Andreas Kratky
Director: Andreas Kratky
Producer: Jessica Dong
Producer: Bernice Wang
Producer: Shelby Zhang
Abstract: A video introducing the Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata featuring Frederick Nolan Clark, Tracy Cosgriff, Andreas Kratky, and Lisa Pon
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://immersive-raphael-project.netlify.app
Primary URL Description: Under "Videos" tab, video 2
Access Model: open access
Format: Video

Immersive Raphael: Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Immersive Raphael: Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata
Writer: Andreas Kratky
Director: Andreas Kratky
Producer: Andreas Kratky
Abstract: A user's demo of the Bibliotheca Iulia Instaurata
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://immersive-raphael-project.netlify.app
Primary URL Description: Under "Videos" tab, video 1
Secondary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ8Kt441bDA&t=74s
Access Model: open access
Format: Video

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