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A Concise History of History Global Historiography from Antiquity to the Present Daniel Woolf
Marble is one of the great veins through the architectural tradition and fundamental building block of the Mediterranean world, from the Parthenon of mid-fifth century Athens, which was constructed of pentelic marble, to Justinian’s Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and the Renaissance and Baroque basilica of St. Peter’s in the Vatican. Scholarship has done much in recent years to reveal the ways and means of marble. The use of colored marbles in Roman imperial architecture has recently been the subject of a major exhibition, and the medieval traditions of marble working have been studied in the context of family genealogies and social networks. In addition, architectural historians have revealed the meanings evoked by marble revetted and paved surfaces, from Heavenly Jerusalem to frozen water. The present volume builds upon the body of recent and emerging research – from antiquity to the present day –to embrace a global focus and address the more unusual (or at least unexpected) uses, meanings, and aesthetic appeal of marble. It presents instances where the use of marble has revolutionized architectural practice, suggested new meaning for the built environment, or defined a new aesthetic – moments where this well-known material has been put to radical use.
J. Nicholas Napoli (Ph.D. Princeton) lives in Brooklyn and currently works with GKV Architects in New York; previously, he taught History of Art and Architecture at the University of York, University of Virginia, and Pratt Institute. He was a visiting senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in 2013, and published his book on the Certosa di San Martino in Naples with Ashgate in 2015.
William Tronzo (Ph.D. Harvard) is Senior Teaching Professor in History of Art, Architecture and Landscape and Director of European Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
Routledge Research in Art History is our home for the latest scholarship in the field of art history. The series publishes research monographs and edited collections, covering areas including art history, theory, and visual culture. These high-level books focus on art and artists from around the world and from a multitude of time periods. By making these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to promote quality art history research.
The Société des Trois in the Nineteenth Century
The Translocal Artistic Union of Whistler, Fantin-Latour, and Legros
Melissa Berry
Raymond Jonson and the Spiritual in Modernist and Abstract Painting
Herbert R. Hartel, Jr.
Radical Marble
Architectural Innovation from Antiquity to the Present
Edited by J. Nicholas Napoli and William Tronzo
Pop Art and Popular Music
Jukebox Modernism
Melissa Mednicov
Globalizing East European Art Histories
Past and Present
Edited by Beáta Hock and Anu Allas
Visual Typologies from the Early Modern to the Contemporary Local Contexts and Global Practices
Edited by Tara Zanardi and Lynda Klich
Cultural Mobility in the Interwar Avant-Garde Art Network
Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands
Michał Wenderski
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/RoutledgeResearch-in-Art-History/book-series/RRAH
Radical Marble
Architectural Innovation from Antiquity to the Present
Edited by J. Nicholas Napoli and William Tronzo
First published 2018 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge
The right of J. Nicholas Napoli and William Tronzo to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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J. NICHOLAS NAPOLI AND WILLIAM TRONZO
Decoration as deliberate design: the strategic display of polychrome marbles at the Baths of Caracalla
“In bright tints . . . nature’s own formation”: the uses and meaning of marble in Victorian building culture
“In consequence of their whiteness”: photographing marble sculpture from Talbot to
Illustrations
I.1 Sebastiano Serlio, frontispiece from Il terzo libro di Sebastiano Serlio Bolognese nel qvale si Figvrano e Descrivono le Antiqvità di Roma, e le altre che sono in Italia, e Fvori d’Italia (Venice, 1540). Photo courtesy of the New York Public Library.
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I.2 Throne Baldachin/Jharoka of Shah Jahan, Audience Hall, Red Fort, Delhi (1638–48) By Hans A. Rosbach (Own work) (CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)), via Wikimedia Commons. 7
1.1 The Baths of Caracalla, Rome, 216 ce. Plan of main bathing block, with columns of frigidarium indicated. Drawing by Luke Petrocelli.
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1.2 The frigidarium of the Baths of Caracalla. Reconstruction by Guillaume-Abel Blouet, 1828 pl. XV. British School at Rome. 14
2.1 View of the interior of Hagia Sophia, Constantinople, built by the emperor Justinian (d. 565).
2.2 Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, drawing by Cornelius Loos showing nave of Hagia Sophia looking south (after Mango, Mosaics of St. Sophia, fig. 56).
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2.3 Details of marble revetment in the gallery of Hagia Sophia from Maria Luisa Fobelli, Un tempio per Giustiniano. Santa Sofia di Costantinoploi e la Descrizione di Paolo Silenziario (Rome, 2005). 27
2.4 Psalter, Paris BN lat. 10435, fol. 158 (Psalm 127).
2.5 Marble revetment in gallery of Hagia Sophia.
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2.6 Marble revetment of northwest pier of central square in Hagia Sophia. 33
2.7 Mosaic of Angels (“Authority” and “Power”) from Church of the Dormition, Nicea, probably eighth century (destroyed 1922). 34
2.8 View of the dome of the Pantheon, Rome, built by the emperor Hadrian. 37
3.1 Antonio Baldi, Title Page of Giacinto Gimma’s Della storia naturale, engraving, 1730. ETH-Bibliothek Zürich / Image in the public domain. 45
3.2 Cosimo Fanzago, Rose, c. 1630–1660, grey marble, Church of San Martino, Naples. Photo: author.
3.3 Interior of the Casa Professa, Palermo. Photo: author.
3.4 Pietro Caccamisi, Chapel of S. Rosalia, engraving, 1748, reproduced in Acta santorum, vol. 42 (September, vol. 2) (Paris: Palmé, 1868).
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Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte/ Image in the public domain. 53
3.6 The Virgin of Arauco, engraving from Alonso de Ovalle, Historica relacion del Reyno de Chile (Rome: Francisco Cavallo, 1646). Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim/Image in the public domain. 60
4.1 Chancel railing at All Saints’, Margaret Street, London, by William Butterfield. Detail showing railing capping (top) in Derbyshire Grey marble peppered with crustacean fossils. At the time this marble was colloquially referred to as “bird’s eye” or “dog’s tooth,” depending on how it was cut. Photo: G. A. Bremner 76
4.2 Upper gallery at the Oxford Natural History Museum, showing arcade with columns made of different British stones, including marble. Photo: G. A. Bremner 77
4.3 Main staircase in the Museum Building at Trinity College, Dublin, by Thomas Deane and Benjamin Woodward. Detail showing handrail made of richly veined, green marble. Photo: G. A. Bremner 81
4.4 Marble Hall at Mount Stuart house on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, by R. Rowand Anderson. Both the Hall and the house at large were extensively decorated with Mediterranean marbles. Photo: G. A. Bremner 82
4.5 Grand entrance staircase at Belfast City Hall by A. Brumwell Thomas. The Italian marble used here was supplied and fitted by Britain’s largest and best known architectural sculpture and stonework supply firm Farmer & Brindley.
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4.6 Frontispiece to R. T. Baker’s Building and Ornamental Stones of Australia (1915), suggesting a “civilizational” narrative of social progress from “primitive” to advanced forms of architecture through the use of stone, the implication being that the modern nation of Australia now ranked among the advanced nations of the world. 86
4.7 Font at St Barnabas’ Church (Patteson Memorial Chapel), Norfolk Island, South Pacific. Made using black, grey, and salmon pink marbles sent from Patteson’s home county of Devonshire.
Photo: G. A. Bremner
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5.1 Carrara, Bianco Gioia marble blocks. Photo from the website www. biancogioia.eu/ by kind permission of Marmi di Carrara srl. 94
5.2 White marble quarries in the Mediterranean basin. In clockwise order: Carrara (Italy), Marmara, Afyon, Usak, Denizli, Aphrodisias (Turkey), Naxos, Paros, Hymettos, Pentelikon, Thasos (Greece).
Adapted by Daniele Vadalà, from M. Oddone, 2009. 94
5.5 Adolf Loos, Villa Mueller, Prague, 1928–30. Photo Miaow Miaow (Own work) (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons. 98
5.6 Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois, 1945–51. Photo Carol M. Highsmith – U.S. Library of Congress, Highsmith Archive, Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-highsm-04118 (Public domain), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12022294. 101
5.7 Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois, 1945–51. Photo Diane Harris – SAHARA, www.saharaonline.org. 103
6.1 Unknown photographer(s), Marble statues by Jacopo Sansovino (left) and Pierre Puget (right), page spread in Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Munich, 1915), pp. 64–65. Photo courtesy of the author. 111
6.4 Edward J. Steichen, Rodin, in Camera Work 2 (1903; n.b. image taken in 1901). Photogravure. Photo courtesy of Google Art Project, commons.wikimedia.org.
6.5 Edward J. Steichen, Rodin – Le Penseur, in Camera Work, supplement issue (1906; also published as a half tone in Camera Work, no. 11, 1905; n.b. left-hand image taken in 1901). Photogravure. Photo courtesy of Google Art Project, commons. wikimedia.org.
6.6 Unknown photographer(s), The original “Farnese Hercules” and The Author (Eugen Sandow) in a similar pose, in Sandow, Life is Movement (Hertford, U.K., 1919), p. 500. Half-tones. Photo courtesy of Wellcome Library, London, wellcomeimages.org.
7.1 Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–36. Quadrante 35/36 (October 1936), unpaginated plate.
7.2 Gruppo Milanese, Palazzo del Littorio competition entry, Rome, 1934. Quadrante 18 (October 1934), 18.
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7.3 Gruppo Milanese, Palazzo del Littorio competition entry, Rome, 1934. Antonio Carminati et al., Concorso nazionale per il progetto del palazzo del littorio e della mostra della rivoluzione fascista in via dell’impero a Roma (Milan: Società G. Modiano, 1936), 15. 136
7.4 Gruppo Milanese, Palazzo del Littorio competition entry, Rome, 1934. Antonio Carminati et al., Concorso nazionale per il progetto del palazzo del littorio e della mostra della rivoluzione fascista in via dell’impero a Roma (Milan: Società G. Modiano, 1936), 15.
7.5 Gruppo Milanese, Palazzo del Littorio competition entry, Rome, 1934. Quadrante 18 (October 1934), 19.
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7.6 Gruppo Milanese, Palazzo del Littorio competition entry, Rome, 1934. Antonio Carminati et al., Concorso nazionale per il progetto del palazzo del littorio e della mostra della rivoluzione fascista in via dell’impero a Roma (Milan: Società G. Modiano, 1936), 9. 140
7.7 Gruppo Milanese, Palazzo del Littorio competition entry, Rome, 1934. Antonio Carminati et al., Concorso nazionale per il progetto del palazzo del littorio e della mostra della rivoluzione fascista in via dell’impero a Roma (Milan: Società G. Modiano, 1936), 12.
7.8 Gruppo Milanese, Palazzo del Littorio competition entry, Rome, 1934. Antonio Carminati et al., Concorso nazionale per il progetto del palazzo del littorio e della mostra della rivoluzione fascista in via dell’impero a Roma (Milan: Società G. Modiano, 1936), 20.
7.9 Gruppo Milanese, Palazzo del Littorio competition entry, Rome, 1934. Antonio Carminati et al., Concorso nazionale per il progetto del palazzo del littorio e della mostra della rivoluzione fascista in via dell’impero a Roma (Milan: Società G. Modiano, 1936), 17.
7.10 Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–36. Quadrante 35/36 (October 1936), 19.
7.11 Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–36. Quadrante 35/36 (October 1936), 26.
7.12 Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–36. Quadrante 35/36 (October 1936), 6.
7.13 Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–36. Quadrante 35/36 (October 1936), 29.
7.14 Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–36. Quadrante 35/36 (October 1936), unpaginated plate.
7.15 Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–36. Quadrante 35/36 (October 1936), 35.
7.16 Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–36. Quadrante 35/36 (October 1936), 29.
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Plates
1 William Van Alen, commissioned by Walter P. Chrysler, Lobby, Chrysler Building, completed 1930. Photo courtesy of Andrew Robertson.
2 The Baths of Caracalla, Rome, 216 CE. View of main bathing block from exterior precinct gardens. Photo by Maryl B. Gensheimer.
3 The frigidarium of the Baths of Caracalla. Extant state. Photo by Maryl B. Gensheimer.
4 The so-called Gran Tazza Farnese. Naples, Museo Archaeologico Nazionale Inv. 6021. Photo by Maryl B. Gensheimer.
5 Marble revetment on northeast pier of central square in Hagia Sophia.
6 Detail of painted dado from S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, seventh century.
7 View of the central dome of Hagia Sophia, from an oblique angle.
8 Interior of the Church of San Martino (counter façade), Naples. Photo: Joris van Gastel.
9 Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, Basilica of San Francesco, Palermo. Photo: Joris van Gastel.
10 Chapel of the Crucifix (detail), Sant’Ignazio Martire all’Olivella, after 1621, Palermo. Photo: Joris van Gastel.
11 Detail of chancel wall at All Saints’, Boyne Hill, by G. E. Street. The banded effect in much High Victorian architecture, especially religious architecture, was often associated with geological formation and the theologically-charged idea of ‘development.’ Photo: G. A. Bremner
12 Pulpit at All Saints’, Margaret Street, London, by William Butterfield. In its impressive massing and rich colouration, this piece of liturgical machinery is in many respects representative of all the natural and theological connotations associated with High Victorian architecture. Photo: G. A. Bremner
13 Opus Alexandrinum floor to sanctuary at St Barnabas’ Church, Norfolk Island. The particular arrangement was likely inspired by native woven fabric patterns. Photo: G. A. Bremner
14 Daniele Vadalà (photographer), Flesh and Spirit, 2011, at the Archaeological Museum of Scolacium, Roccelletta di Borgia, Catanzaro.
15 Adolf Loos, house in Michaelerplatz, Vienna. Photo by Thomas Ledl / CC-BY-SA-4.0.
16 Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, Lafayette Park, Detroit, 1956–63. One story townhouses. Photo Raimund Koch.
17 Nicholas Henneman (attr.), Marble Bust of Catherine Mary Walter, frontispiece of I. W. (James Walter), Record of the death-bed of C.M.W. (London, 1844). Salted paper print from a paper negative. (photo by permission of the British Library (General Reference Collection C.193.a.25)).
18 William Henry Fox Talbot, Bust of Patroclus, in Talbot, The Pencil of Nature (London, 1844; n.b. image taken in 1842), pl. V. Salted paper print from paper negative. (photo courtesy of New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Jean Horblit, in memory of Harrison D. Horblit, 1994, accession no. 1994.197.1 (5), www.metmuseum.org).
G. A. Bremner is Senior Lecturer in Architectural History at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the history and theory of Victorian architecture, with a special interest in the architecture and urbanism of the British empire. His principal publications include Imperial Gothic: Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in the British Empire, c.1840–1870 (Yale University Press, 2013), and ed. Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Joris van Gastel is Scientific Assistant at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome. He is author of Il marmo spirante: Sculpture and Experience in Seventeenth-Century Rome (University of Chicago Press, 2012) and currently works on a project on artistic materials and techniques in baroque Naples.
Maryl B. Gensheimer is Assistant Professor of Roman Art and Archaeology at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on iconography, iconology, and experiential characteristics of Roman art and architecture, particularly in the city of Rome, on the Bay of Naples, and in Asia Minor, as well as aspects of Roman urbanism and social history. She is the author of Decoration and Display in Rome’s Imperial Thermae: Messages of Power and their Popular Reception at the Baths of Caracalla (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2018).
Geraldine A. Johnson is Associate Professor in History of Art at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford. She has published widely on the history of sculpture from the late Medieval period to the present day, on women and the visual arts, and on the historiography of Art History. She is also the author or editor of a number of important publications on the photography of sculpture, including an edited collection, Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension (Cambridge University Press, 1998), and a monograph entitled Photography and Sculpture (Reaktion Books, forthcoming).
J. Nicholas Napoli (City College of New York, Spitzer School of Architecture) has taught history of art and architecture at the University of York, University of Virginia, and Pratt Institute. He has contributed articles on Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture to Art History, Napoli Nobilissima, and Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Nick lives in Brooklyn, is currently an MArch candidate at City College of New York, and works with System Architecture in New York.
David Rifkind is Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture + Environmental and Urban Design at Florida International University (US), where he teaches
Contributors xiii courses in architectural history, theory, and design. His current research deals with urbanism and architecture in Ethiopia and Eritrea from the late nineteenth century to the present. He is the author of The Battle for Modernism: Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy (CISA Palladio and Marsilio Editori, 2012), has published articles on architecture and urbanism in Italy and Ethiopia, and curated the 2012 exhibition, Metropole/Colony: Africa and Italy, at the Frost Art Museum, and the 2016 exhibition, Contemporary Architecture in Ethiopia, at the Miami Center for Architecture and Design. He co-edited A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture with Elie G. Haddad (Ashgate, 2014).
William Tronzo (PhD Harvard) is Senior Teaching Professor in History of Art, Architecture and Landscape and Director of European Studies at the University of California, San Diego (US). In recent years, he has co-directed a research project on the buildings, cities and landscapes of the Italian South in the later Middle Ages funded by the NEH, a three-year program of research, seminars and conferences on the medieval Mediterranean at the American Academy in Rome funded by the Getty Foundation, and been a member of the Collegio dei Docenti del Dottorato di Ricerca in the Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre.
Daniele Vadalà is an architect and independent resercher (PhD in Renovation Projects at University of Messina 2010). His research interests lay at the crossroads between modern architectural history and politics, contemporary architectural practices and ecocentrism with a specific focus on cultural landscapes and adaptive infrastructures. He was Adjunct Professor in contemporary architectural history from 2011 to 2017 at Reggio Calabria and then Catania. He has also taught in the EMDIREB (European Master Course in Diagnosis and Repair of Buildings) and won in 2014 the Canada-Italy innovation award in the priority area of Food Security/Sustainable Agricultural Development.
Introduction
Radical marble: architecture and innovation from antiquity to modernity
J. Nicholas Napoli and William Tronzo
For the light that it sheds on building processes, for its rich associative meanings, and for its evocative aesthetic qualities, no other material in architectural history has received as much attention as marble.1 Marble is one of the great threads through the architectural tradition, and one of the quintessential building blocks of the Mediterranean world, from the Parthenon of mid-fifth-century Athens, which was constructed of pentelic marble, to Justinian’s Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and the Renaissance and Baroque basilica of St. Peter’s in the Vatican, whose displays of marbles have rightly been called encyclopedic, and beyond. But the material is also exceptional in the degree to which it constitutes a permeable membrane between architecture and sculpture: at the hands of a Phidias or a Bernini, it wavers between the planes of edifice and decoration, amalgamating and transforming these worlds. There is hardly another stone that has had the capacity, over the course of the centuries, or has been so exploited, to perform these acts of transubstantiation.
Scholarship has done much in recent years to reveal the ways and means of marble. Ancient archaeologists have used isotopic analysis to identify quarries that provided marble for Roman lenos sarcophagi, exposing the shifting trade networks that allowed for the widespread sculpting of marble.2 The spectacular rise in the use of colored marbles in Roman imperial architecture has recently been the subject of a major exhibition, I marmi colorati della Roma imperiale, and the medieval traditions of marble working have been studied in the context of family genealogies and social networks.3 Architectural historians have reconsidered basic but important literary sources to reveal the vast range of meanings evoked by marble revetted and paved surfaces, from Heavenly Jerusalem to frozen water.4 And the aesthetic appeal of marble has been appreciated from Pliny’s description of opus sectile as “painting in stone” to Mies van der Rohe’s conspicuous use of marble revetment in the Barcelona pavilion.5
While the present volume will build upon the body of recent and emerging research –from antiquity to the present day – its real point is to address some of the more unusual (or at least unexpected) uses, meanings, and aesthetic appeal of marble. It seeks to present instances where a particular use of marble has revolutionized architectural or artistic practice, suggested new meaning for the built environment, or defined a new aesthetic – instances, in other words, where this well-known material has been put to radical use. Our collection, therefore, is not a survey in any sense of the word, but an eclectic and experimental gathering put forth in the hope that it will stimulate the historical imagination.
J. Nicholas Napoli and William Tronzo
Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Nonetheless, it would seem impious to launch a collection of essays on marble that reaches back from our own age to that of ancient Rome without giving pride of place to what is perhaps the most famous statement made about the stone, attributed to the Emperor Augustus by the historian Cassius Dio (56.30.3): “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.” It would be difficult to find a more radical claim with regard to the material in the historical record. Truth be told, Cassius Dio lived and wrote over a century and a half after the death of Augustus, so it cannot be taken at face value that his report was accurate. But whether or not the emperor actually uttered this phrase, its thrust was clear. The words attributed to the emperor were intended to signal a new chapter in the history of marble, and to instantiate a new level of connection between the material, the individual, and the state.6 In our context, however, it might also be useful to think of the emperor’s purported sentiment beyond the staging of ambition, for it contains within itself several elements that are central to the trajectory of the story we will attempt to narrate. It may thus serve as a kind of enframement for the essays that follow.
We may begin with the setting in the largest sense of geographic placement: the Mediterranean. The presumed words of the emperor were uttered at the very heart of the Mediterranean world: Rome. And it is the Mediterranean that holds, in the lands that ring it, the greatest collection of marble sources in the world: the numerous quarries that far outnumber the ones whose names are well known, such as Luna or Carrara, Paros, Proconnesus, and Chemtou.7 These quarries produced an array of colored and patterned stones that came to be exploited in different ways by the various civilizations that occupied this space, to the extent to which one eminent scholar of the material, Michael Greenhalgh, has called the Mediterranean a “sea of marble.”8 Beginning basically with the proto-Greeks in the Cyclades in the late fourth millennium bc and continuing throughout the long and eventful history of Roman domination of the Mediterranean, and into the Middle Ages, sculptors and architects availed themselves of the riches of this “marble sea.” Societies and artistic cultures adjacent or prior to the Greek, in Egypt for example, or in Mesopotamia, had a predilection for harder stones, such as granite. But with the Greeks and Romans, marble became the material par excellence for the figural, decorative, and architectural arts.
When Augustus spoke about Rome, he clearly intended us to visualize the buildings of the city. The fortune of marble in architectural practice, therefore, is another important point. The Greeks brought marble and religion into direct relationship with one another by utilizing it for the most prestigious commissions they undertook, for the temples and images of their gods. The aforementioned Temple of Athena in Athens, the Parthenon, was a stunning illustration of the connection, not only in the physical fabric of the building itself but also in its sculpted ornaments and reliefs, which narrated religious stories and ceremonies. The tradition was continued under the Romans, who spread it throughout their all-encompassing Mediterranean empire. And empire, imperium, is another, and significant, point. The combined force of Greek and Roman culture, which we call the classical tradition, was yoked to the state, and the Romans placed marble firmly at the heart of their political, social, and economic self-image. They employed it not only for monuments, public buildings, and tombs but also for the palaces of their rulers. In these contexts, in particular, there is a dramatic rise, under Roman hegemony, in the use of colored marbles, which were
Introduction: radical marble 3 combined in ensembles of architectural elements such as columns and capitals, wall revetments and pavements, into gloriously chromatic fantasies.9
Closely associated with the dignity of god and emperor, marble thus carried with it the more general connotation of an ideal – an ideal world and setting – which constitutes perhaps the deepest layer to the story and a final point. Since antiquity, marble and the use of marble traveled from the Mediterranean to the farthest reaches of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, and indeed the world. In so doing it moved into many new and unexpected contexts.
The material served ancient religions well, but the Christians, who were otherwise adamantly opposed to paganism, had no qualms about building and decorating their places of worship with it, once, of course, they could publicly practice their religion with its recognition as a lawful enterprise by the Emperor Constantine in the Edict of Milan of 313. Constantine allowed Christians to build churches and even paid for some them, particularly in Rome, Palestine, and Constantinople. In the emperor’s building program there was initiated a practice, which would take root and spread throughout the Middle Ages on a grand scale, of the reuse of marble from pre-existing structures, even pagan temples. We think of this practice as spoliation and call the material thus obtained spolia, but it does not necessarily imply the destruction of an earlier structure. Carved marble pieces, such as columns and capitals, were doubtless stockpiled and used in ancient Rome, and when a building was dismantled it is reasonable to assume that its viable members were preserved for deployment elsewhere.10
Thus, the material, architectural, and artistic form of antiquity was recycled through a culture that tried in many ways to distance itself from its predecessor. It may seem surprising the degree to which medieval churches, when they utilized the spolia of classical antiquity, made so little attempt to disguise its derivation. On the contrary, they occasionally appear to have done exactly the opposite: to showcase the sourced pieces by positioning them in roughly hewn and abrupt juxtapositions that leave no doubt that they were not purposefully made for the Christian context.
But Christian architects, sculptors, and stone masons availed themselves of another approach, which had the effect of integration. They cut up ancient marbles into pieces and reassembled them into new, brilliantly multi-colored wholes. Liturgical furnishing – pulpits, paschal candelabra, and chancel barriers – as well as pavements of many medieval churches, particularly in Italy where the standing sources of marble in the crumbling infrastructure of antiquity were abundant, glisten with these recombinant forms, opus sectile: composed of four-square tesserae and stones shaped with many contours. The most famous of these works derive from the medieval Roman family whose multi-generational workshop made them, the Cosmati. Essentially, these furnishings are medieval forms but covered with a veil woven from bits and pieces of the classical past.
The Romans imitated the look of marble in paint, particularly in interior decoration; painting, after all, was a less-expensive medium, so that a “marble effect” could be achieved for a patron of more limited means at a fraction of the cost of the real thing. These paintings strive to imitate the material, architectural form of the stone and do so sometimes with stunning results (witness what we call the First and Second Pompeian styles), and thus the tradition was continued by wall painters in the Middle Ages. The medieval opus sectile of liturgical furnishings such as those of the Cosmati, however, had a laudatory effect: anti-architectural, a patterned and syncopated design that covers the surface like a textile. The weaving together of the material remains of
J. Nicholas Napoli and William Tronzo
antiquity in the form of a surface so conceived constitutes one of the most brilliant and original acts of transubstantiation that the Middle Ages performed on classical antiquity, and redeemed a beloved ancient stone for a new age.
Renaissance to the present
The material’s manifold associations with social prestige, religious piety, and economic prowess resonated in the modern period. These associations proved highly adaptable to religious developments, economic challenges, and the ever-expanding geopolitical frame of the modern world; this initiated poetic comparisons of the aesthetic qualities of marble that became the subject of geologic and geographic inquiry. Surviving documentary information related to the quarrying and manufacture of marble in this era has allowed researchers to develop industrial and economic histories of the material, enhancing its associative meanings.
Marble was an integral part of the Renaissance’s engagement with antiquity. Used to articulate the post-and-lintel tectonic system, it was the stone that expressed the classical language of architecture. The title page of Serlio’s third book of architecture, the book that focused on the antiquities of Rome (published in 1540) (Figure I.1), depicted a series of rusticated stone arches, perhaps part of an aqueduct or the entrance to a Roman bath, with fragments of marble entablatures and columns lying prominently in the foreground. An inscription runs across the narrow frieze that crowns the archway: Roma Qvanta Fuit Ipsa Rvina Docet (these ruins teach us how [great] Rome was). Where the stone-clad archways revealed the tectonic prowess and spatial ingenuity of the ancient Romans, the marble column and entablature revealed the syntax of classicism itself. The engraving makes explicit what was common knowledge to the architectural treatise writers of the Renaissance: the architectural language of classicism was written in marble.
Pliny’s Natural History was the model for pursuing questions about the geology and geography of marble in the Renaissance. In Istoria delle Pietre of 1597, the Dominican monk Agostino del Riccio noted that the recently completed chapels of Niccolò Gaddi (Santa Maria Novella) and Giovanni Niccolini (Santa Croce) in Florence featured revetted spolia that included porphyry, marmo giallo, and Porta Santa from Libya, Nero Orientale, and Marmo Verde from Egypt.11 For del Riccio, these chapels were a lesson in Mediterranean geology.
Antiquarians and polymaths in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries pursued del Riccio’s interest in the geological and geographic origins of marble with even greater scientific rigor. The secretary of the papal nephew Francesco Barberini, Cassiano Dal Pozzo, assembled a vast collection of drawings of the objects, buildings, and other material remains of the ancient world. This corpus of drawings, known as the paper museum (museo cartaceo), included a catalogue of stones painted on paper. Dal Pozzo worked with the Venetian painter Jacopo Ligozzi and the director of the opificio fiorentino, Matteo Nigetti, in painting and compiling the samplings.12 Painted compilations such as Dal Pozzo’s became the actual marble-sample panels of the eighteenth century: to this end Father Giovan Vincenzo Petrini (1725–84) founded a mineralogical museum in the Collegio Nazareno in Rome.13 The collections and accompanying catalogues grew ever more comprehensive in the nineteenth century. Later catalogues include Faustino Corsi’s 1825 catalogue of poetic comparisons of ancient and modern marbles, and Alceo Feliciani’s collection of marbles, including over 800 examples that were exhibited at the Universal Exhibition in Vienna, was published in 1896.14
While del Riccio’s geographic inventory of the marbles in the Niccolini and Gaddi chapels inspired generations of scientific inquiry, the chapels themselves marked the conjunction of aesthetic interests, antiquarian inquiry, political capital, and technological advances in stonecutting. The carving of porphyry in particular carried several important implications for the crafting of marble, especially in its use alongside harder, precious stones in commesso di pietre dure (inlay in hard stones). Like del Riccio, the Florentine artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari drew from Pliny’s Natural History to introduce his readers to the aesthetics, geography, and technology of porphyry and marble inlay.15 Vasari’s patron, Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, shared the
Figure I.1 Sebastiano Serlio, frontispiece from Il terzo libro di Sebastiano Serlio Bolognese nel qvale si Figvrano e Descrivono le Antiqvità di Roma, e le altre che sono in Italia, e Fvori d’Italia (Venice, 1540). Photo courtesy of the New York Public Library.
J. Nicholas Napoli and William Tronzo
biographer’s interest in the cutting of marble and hard gemstones. The technology of cutting hard stone, in fact, became a matter of geopolitical importance. Duke Cosimo de’Medici’s discovery of a temper for chisels, enabling sculptors to carve porphyry, was a technological breakthrough with a number of implications.16 The ability of Florentine stonecutters to manufacture tools strong enough to cut porphyry prompted the Duke to require official registration of all iron products, making blacksmithing a government monopoly.17
Florentine advances in stone cutting would ultimately enjoy global distribution. The pietra dura workshops of sixteenth-century Florence were key disseminators of techniques in working in marbles and precious stones. Its production and reception extended geographically from Prague to India. In Prague, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (r. 1576–1612) brought two gem and stonecutting families from Italy – the Florentine Castrucci and the Milanese Miseroni – to establish a workshop in the Holy Roman capital. Their production featured stone quarried in the Habsburg lands of central Europe, and it embraced the full range of pictorial and plastic possibilities of marble and precious stone: Cosimo Castrucci’s panels featured landscapes fashioned from inlaid stones, and Ottavio Miseroni’s sculpted bowls transformed quartz into folding cartouches and undulating grotesques.18
Florentine pietra dura appealed to the Mughal shahs for several reasons. The first of the Great Mughals, Akbar (r. 1556–1605), had a broad interest in European culture that began with the reception of a Portuguese delegation in 1573 and broadened through contact with Jesuit missionaries who arrived in 1580. Their illustrated bibles became a treasure trove of European pictorial motifs. The naturalism of Florentine pietra dura motifs, furthermore, appealed to the Great Mughals’ interest in the keen observation of the natural world. European stone-workers and goldsmiths were employed at the Mughal court,19 and Florentine-manufactured pietra dura panels feature in Shah Jahan’s throne baldachin, or jharoka, in the audience hall of his palace of Delhi (1638–48) (Figure I.2).20 Employing European stonecutters and incorporating Florentine panels into their architecture, Mughal pietra dura inlay developed into a related but independent artistic phenomenon. With its delicate and naturalistic floral motifs set in a background of white marble, the cenotaph of Shah Jahan’s father Jahangir (1628–38) exemplifies the autonomous nature of Mughal pietra dura.
The travels and migrations of stonecutters and sculptors like the Castrucci and the Miseroni enabled the geographic diffusion of pietra dura and prompted questions about the logistics of marble cutting from quarry to site. Studies focusing on this question have revealed trans-regional economic histories and sophisticated strategies of collaboration. With reference to baroque Rome, Jennifer Montagu has called these “the industry of art.”21 Whether it was Duke Cosimo de’ Medici’s use of the Tuscan quarries at S. Giusto a Monterantoli and near Seravezza or the Jesuits’ use of Sicilian jaspers at the Roman church of S. Andrea al Quirinale, the economics of marble importation was a significant aspect of the material’s use, and invited comparisons to ancient Rome’s use of stone quarries throughout the Mediterranean.22 Christianne Klapisch-Zuber’s Les Maitres du Marbre: Carrare 1300–1600 represents a fundamental study of the logistics and economics of marble quarrying and exportation. This study has revealed a rich substratum of marble working families, including the Casoni, Guidi, and Pelliccia, who were instrumental in establishing centers of marble importation and production in Rome, Genoa, Naples, and Palermo.23
Figure I.2 Throne Baldachin/Jharoka of Shah Jahan, Audience Hall, Red Fort, Delhi (1638–48) By Hans A. Rosbach (Own work) (CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-sa/3.0)), via Wikimedia Commons.
Members of these families also became accomplished sculptors in their own right, and so the production of revetted marble interiors and monumental marble ensembles represented a close collaboration between stonecutters from the quarry and sculptors at the site of installation. Art and architectural historians have studied this collaboration in the cities of Rome, Naples, and Palermo24 – the most prominent of these has
J. Nicholas Napoli and William Tronzo
been Jennifer Montagu’s study of baroque Rome. Her observation of the interiors of seventeenth-century Rome and attentive reading of documents has demonstrated how the prodigious production of Gian Lorenzo Bernini was made possible through the assistance of accomplished sculptors, many of whom came from the exporter families of Carrara.25 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also came from a family of stone cutters: the skillful use of marble in two of his most famous projects, the Barcelona Pavilion and the Tugendhat house in Brno (Czech Republic), bears out this pedigree.26
Just as it inspired Pliny’s descriptive phrase “painting in stone,” the material evoked poetic descriptions in the modern period. The chromatic and pictorial qualities of marble were not lost on patrons and connoisseurs. As Fabio Barry has shown, the names of marbles, such as “cloudy alabaster” (alabastro nuvoloso) or “brocade” (brocatello) reveal its evocation of clouds and sumptuous fabrics in the eyes of seventeenth-century beholders.27
The reflective qualities of marble continued to inspire even in the age of steel and concrete. While Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion has been acclaimed as a tour de force of flowing space using a minimal combination of columnar supports, walls, and a roof slab, it was the vitreous qualities of the pavilion’s surfaces, especially the interior onyx wall, the green marble of the smaller pool, and travertine platform, that resonated with early visitors.28 In his review of the pavilion in the August 1929 edition of Die Form, Justus Bier made particular note of the play of light between marble, glass, and the water of the reflecting pools.29 For Mies van der Rohe, travertine, onyx, and green Tinos marble made the distillation of wall, roof, and column palpable. The play of water and stone, furthermore, evokes the poetic descriptions of Paul the Silentiary’s description of Hagia Sophia.
With its enduring capacity to evoke poetic description, the material proved eminently adaptable to the interests of patrons and artists in the modern world. The use of revetted marble in sacred spaces after the Council of Trent bound past associations of magnificence to the promise of renewal in the present-day and future. In the Sistine and Pauline Chapels in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, the practice of decorating with polychrome marble revetment became the fitting expression of spiritual splendor and dynamic renewal. Its use revived the metaphor of the Heavenly Jerusalem, represented a justified expenditure commensurate with the superlative dignity of the church – as building and institution – and attested to the piety of the commissioner of the chapel, Sixtus V.30
Marble’s ability to evoke connotations of stability, permanence, and splendor –associations made since antiquity – resonate in the modernist tradition. The Art Deco lobby of the Chrysler Building, a triangular space that is sheathed in red Moroccan marble, presents a prominent example of these enduring meanings (Plate 1). In the lobby, a bronze plaque memorializes a statement made by Walter P. Chrysler after the completion of the Chrysler Building in May 1930:
The Chrysler Building is dedicated to world commerce and industry. It was created to meet the demands of business executives of today who, with their sensitive activities, must have the most favorable office surroundings and conditions.
With this statement, Walter Chrysler revealed his motivations for seeking out costly and exotic materials, including red Moroccan marble: these materials confer dignity on the function of the building as a place of business and prompt comparisons to the
Introduction: radical marble 9 privileged place of marble in ancient and present-day building practice. Marble was the material that conferred the social, political, and spiritual distinction of a building and signaled the highest aspirations of its patrons.
Notes
1 A point of orientation on the subject is provided by the collection of essays in Marmi antichi, ed. Gabriele Borghini (Rome: De Luca, 1998). See also Luciana and Tiziano Mannoni, Marble: The History of a Culture, trans. P. J. Hammond-Smith (Genoa: Sagep, 1984); Marble: Art Historical and Scientific Perspectives on Ancient Sculpture, ed. M. True and J. Podany (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1990); John Bryan Ward-Perkins, Marble in Antiquity: Collected Papers (London: British School at Rome, 1992). See also the publications of the international symposia of the Association for the Study of Marble and Other Stones used in Antiquity.
2 Classical Marble: Geochemistry, Technology, Trade, ed. Norman Herz and Marc Waelkens (Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988); Marmi Antichi: problemi d’impiego, di restauro e d’identificazione, Studi Miscellanei 26, ed. P. Pensabene (Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1985); Ancient Stones: Quarrying, Trade and Provenance. Interdisciplinary Studies on Stones and Stone Technology in Europe and Near East from the Prehistoric to the Early Christian Period, ed. Marc Waelkens, Norman Herz and Luc Moens (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992).
3 I marmi colorati della Roma imperial, ed. M. De Nuccio and L. Ungaro (Exh. Cat., Rome, 28 September 2002–19 January 2003), Rome, 2002. See also: Radiance in Stone: Sculptures in Colored Marble from Museo Nazionale Romano, ed. M. Anderson and L. Nista (Rome, 1989); L. Lazzarini, “Rosso antico and Other Red Marbles Used in Antiquity: A Characterization Study,” in Marble: Art Historical and Scientific Perspectives on Ancient Sculpture, ed. True and Podany, 237–52; Mark Bradley, Colour and Marble in Early Imperial Rome, edited version of paper delivered at the Cambridge University Laurence Seminar on Sensory Perceptions, May 2002. For medieval marble workers, see Cornelius Claussen, Magistri doctissimi Romani: die römischen Marmorkünstler des Mittelalters (Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag, 1987).
4 W. R. Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1892), provides a prescient early survey of this subject; Fabio Barry, “Walking on Water. Cosmic Floors in Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” The Art Bulletin 89 (2007): 627–56.
5 Pliny; P. Hills, Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass, 1250–1550 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
6 J. Clayton Fant, “The Roman Emperors in the Marble Business: Capitalists, Middle-Men, or Philanthropists?” in Classical Marble: Geochemistry, Technology, Trade, ed. Norman Herz and Marc Waelkens (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), 147–58; id., “Ideology, Gift and Trade: A Distribution Model for the Roman Imperial Marbles,” in The Inscribed Economy: Production and Distribution in the Roman Empire in the Light of Instrumentum Domesticum, ed. W. V. Harris, JRA Suppl. 6 (Ann Arbor, 1993), 145–70; id., “Augustus and the City of Marble,” in Archéomatériaux: marbres et autres roches, Actes IV Conférence ASMOSIA (Bordeaux 1995), ed. M. Schvoerer (Bordeaux, 1999), 277–80. See also Diane Favro, The Urban Image of Augustan Rome (Cambridge: UC Press, 1996).
7 N. Herz and D. Wenner, “Tracing the Origins of Marble,” Archaeology 34 (1981): 13–21. See also E. Dolci, Carrara: cave antichi, Carrara, 1980; id., “Marmora Lunensia: Quarrying Technology and Archaeological Use,” in Classical Marble: Geochemistry, Technology, Trade, ed. Herz and Waelkens, 77–84; id., “Considerazioni sull’impiego dei marmi a Luni nella prima età imperial,” Splendida ciuitas nostra. Studi in onore di A. Frova (Rome, 1995): 361–70.
8 M. Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monumental Present: Building with Antiquities in the Mediaeval Mediterranean (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009).
9 F. Guidobaldi, “La decorazione in opus sectile dell’aula,” in Aurea Roma: dalla città pagana alla città cristiana, ed. S. Ensoli and E. La Rocca (Rome), 251–62; id. and A. Salvatori, “The Introduction of Polychrome Marbles in Late Republican Rome: The Evidence from Mosaic
J. Nicholas Napoli and William Tronzo
Pavements with Marble Insertions,” in Classical Marble: Geochemistry, Technology, Trade, ed. Herz and Waelkens, Switzerland: Springer Netherlands), 171–75.
10 H. Brandenberg, “The Use of Older Elements in the Architecture of Rome,” Reuse Value
11 A. del Riccio, Istoria delle Pietre, ed. Raniero Gnoli and Attilia Sironi (Turin 1996 [1597]) 89–111. Raniero Gnoli, Marmora Romana (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1971).
12 C. Napoleone, “Il collezionismo di marmi e pietre colorate dal sec. XVI al sec. XIX,” in Marmi antichi, ed. Gabriele Borghini (Rome: De Luca Edizioni d’Arte, 1992), 99–116, 102.
13 Napoleone, “Il collezionismo di marmi e pietre colorate,” 107–8.
14 Napoleone, “Il collezionismo di marmi e pietre colorate,” 110.
15 A. Morrough, “Vasari and Coloured Stones,” in Giorgio Vasari tra decorazione ambientale e storiografia artistica (Florence, 1985), 309–20.
16 Suzanne Butters made these observations in The Triumph of Vulcan: Sculptors’ Tools, Porphyry, and the Prince in Ducal Florence (Florence, 1996). A summary of her observations is found in the introduction, 29–32. The contemporary accounts of Vasari, Francesco Bocchi’s 1591 guidebook to Florence, and Cellini’s 1569 Trattati attribute the discovery of the porphyry temper to different people. While Vasari and Bocchi attribute the discovery to Cosimo, Cellini gave credit to Francesco Ferrucci del Tadda, who worked under the close supervision of Duke Cosimo. See Butters, Chapter 9.
17 Butters, The Triumph of Vulcan, 164, 191–3.
18 R. Distelberger, “The Castrucci and the Miseroni: Prague, Florence, Milan,” in Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe, ed. W. Koeppe and A. Giusti, exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 28–39, 29.
19 E. Coch, “Pietre Dure and Other Artistic Contacts Between the Court of the Mughals and That of the Medici,” in A Mirror of Princes: The Mughals and the Medici, ed. Dalu Jones (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1987), 29–56.
20 The relation between Mughal stone inlay and Florentine pietra dura has been hotly debated since the nineteenth century. The debate is summarized by Ebba Koch, Shah Jahan and Orpheus: The Pietre Dure Decoration and the Programme of the Throne in the Hall of Public Audiences at the Red Fort of Delhi (Graz: Akademische Druck–u. Verlagsanstalt, 1988),10–11, 36f–37f.
21 See C. Klapisch-Zuber, Les Maîtres du Marbre: Carrare, 1300–1600 (Paris, S.E.V.P.E.N. 1969); and Jennifer Montagu, Roman Baroque Sculpture: The Industry of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989).
22 The economic and historic significance of marble importation, in the context of grand-ducal Florence, is addressed by A. Morrough, “Vasari and Coloured Stones,” 312.
23 Klapisch-Zuber, Les Maîtres du Marbre, see especially pp. 156–61.
24 For Palermo and Messina, see S. Piazza, I Colori del Barocco, and H. Hills, Marmi Mischi Siciliani. For Naples, see R. Ruotolo, “La Decorazione in Tarsia e Commesso a Napoli nel Periodo Tardo Manierista,” Antichità Viva 13 (1974): 48–58; ed., “I Cibori Teatini,” in P. D’Agostino, Cosimo Fanzago Scultore (Naples: Paparo Edizioni, 2011), and J. Nicholas Napoli, “ ‘Pianificare o indulgere nel Capriccio’? Cosimo Fanzago e la Causa ad exuberentiam alla Certosa di San Martino,” Napoli Nobilissima (2003): 9–18.
25 J. Montagu, Roman Baroque Sculpture: The Industry of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989).
26 Bier, 423.
27 F. Barry, “ ‘I marmi loquaci’: Painting in Stone,” Daidalos 56 (June 1995): 106–21. The poetics of marble have also received attention in Jan Joris Gastel, Il Marmo Spirante: Sculpture and Experience in Seventeenth-Century Rome (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013).
28 J. Quetglas, “Fear of Glass: The Barcelona Pavilion,” Fear of Glass: Mies van der Rohe’s Pavilion in Barcelona, trans. John Stone and Rosa Roigl, intro. Rafael Moneo (Basel: Birkhäuser-Publishers for Architecture, 2001), 141–46. While Philip Johnson acknowledged the “rich materials” of the pavilion in his 1947 monograph on Mies, he concentrated more on the sense of “flowing space” that the marble walls and travertine platform created. Philip C. Johnson, Mies van der Rohe (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1953 [1947]), 60; Justus Bier, “Mies van der Rohes Reichspavilion Barcelona,” Die Form 4:16 (August 15, 1929), 423–30, 423; Josep Quetglas, “Fear of Glass. . . ” 65, 126–49.
Introduction: radical marble 11
29 Justus Bier, “Mies van der Rohes Reichspavilion Barcelona,” 423.
30 S. F. Ostrow, “Marble Revetment in Late Sixteenth-Century Roman Chapels”, IL60: Essays Honoring Irving Lavin on His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Marilyn Aronberg Lavin (New York, 1990), 253–76. Ostrow also notes that early Christian Churches including the Lateran basilica, its adjacent baptistery, the Oratory of the Holy Cross, the Church of S. Costanza, the Church of SS. Cosma and Damiano featured instances of polychromed revetment or opus sectile.
1
Decoration as deliberate design
The strategic display of polychrome marbles at the Baths of Caracalla
Maryl B. Gensheimer
Abundant archaeological, art historical, epigraphical, and literary evidence discovered throughout the Roman Empire attests to both the omnipresence of public baths in antiquity, as well as the significance of those baths to people’s daily routines and interpersonal relationships.1 Even in provincial towns where there were no other monumental entertainment facilities, one or more bath complexes can be found.2 Likewise, in the capital city of Rome itself, public baths were the predominant form of entertainment building.3
Out of the large number of baths in the city of Rome, the eight so-called imperial thermae4 constructed under the patronage of the emperor or his family between 25 bc and ad 315 are of particular interest. Marcus Agrippa, the emperor Augustus’ friend and son-in-law, endowed the first in this series. Following Agrippa’s lead, throughout the next three centuries, seven other emperors endowed imperial thermae: Nero (ad 60–64), Titus (ad 80), Trajan (after ad 104), Caracalla (ad 211/12–216), Trajan Decius (ad 252), Diocletian (ad 305–306), and Constantine (ad 315). Generally speaking, each of these complexes was successively more ambitious than its antecedents in terms of its scale and decoration. Indeed, both the lavish size and embellishment of the imperial thermae culminate in the third century with the grandiose Baths of Caracalla, built across twenty-seven acres southeast of the Aventine Hill, and the still larger Baths of Diocletian, which extended over thirty-two acres on the Quirinal Hill.
It bears repeating that when endowing monumental baths, extravagant decoration was as important as sheer size. Surviving inscriptions are a reminder that sculpture and other art media were viewed as an essential part of the emperor’s benefaction – and were expenses worthy of accolades and acclaim.5 This chapter, therefore, addresses part of the polychrome stone decoration of the best preserved of the imperial thermae, the Baths of Caracalla (inaugurated in ad 216; Plate 2). It is clear that these types of decorative stone elements added enormously to the overall cost of building projects.6 In the case of the Baths of Caracalla, predominantly a brick and concrete building, Janet DeLaine has argued convincingly that the cost of the stone and its carving accounted for perhaps fifteen percent of the total cost and eighty percent of the cost of decoration.7
In the following discussion, I argue that this expensive stone decoration was carefully curated to deliver a specific message to the diverse Roman audience that frequented the Baths of Caracalla on a daily basis. This chapter examines the subtext of the sumptuous stone display, addressing both the visual experience of the baths and elucidating the marble elements’ critical role in advancing imperial agendas. As a representative example, I address only a small part of the architectural decoration
Figure 1.1 The Baths of Caracalla, Rome, 216 ce. Plan of main bathing block, with columns of frigidarium indicated. Drawing by Luke Petrocelli.
of the frigidarium (the large, central hall with cold bathing pools; Figure 1.1), but the conclusions drawn can and should be extended to the entirety of the bath complex.8
The architectural decoration of the frigidarium
The Historiae Augustae, a collection of imperial biographies, refers to the Baths of Caracalla as being “most splendid” or “most magnificent” (thermas magnificentissimas).9 The glowing description seems to be validated by archaeological excavation, which has revealed both the scale and decoration of the baths, vividly re-created here in a nineteenth-century study by the French architect Guillaume-Abel Blouet (Figure 1.1). The central halls – the frigidarium, tepidarium (room with lukewarm bathing pools), caldarium (room with hot bathing pools), and natatio (large, open-air,10 indoor swimming pool) – ascended upward to heights of 125 feet (Plate 3). In these huge rooms, colossal columns and piers buttressed soaring groin vaults and domes. Enormous expanses11 were enclosed within marble- and stucco-veneered walls. Sculptural decoration, mosaic, and opus sectile floors further embellished the interior spaces. Water flowed from the interior fountain façade into the natatio, lapped in granite and porphyry fountain basins, and was splashed around in the various bathing pools. And light filtered through the clerestory windows to illuminate the spaces and people below in the heat of the Roman sun.
Within the context of this general opulence, certain choices in terms of the scale, the material variety, and the iconography of the polychrome stone decoration within the
frigidarium stand out. Indeed, strategically displayed polychrome marbles – whether used for figural sculpture, furnishings, or aniconic architectural elements – were fundamental to the visual experience and imperial subtext of the Baths of Caracalla. This chapter focuses exclusively on architectural features and furnishings to argue that these polychrome marbles were deliberate design elements meant to convey imperial messages of power, legitimacy, and largess.12
One may take the colossal columns of the frigidarium as a case in point. The columnar screens between Rooms 14 East and West (antechambers leading to the palaestrae, or exercise courts) and the frigidarium itself have been reconstructed as a monolithic Corinthian order of thirty-six-foot gray Egyptian granite columns,13 with two such columns appearing in each doorway opening (see Figure 1.2, above). In the frigidarium itself, the main order of the room originally comprised eight monolithic, fifty-foot Composite columns of the same gray Egyptian granite. Eight thirty-foot monolithic columns of red porphyry, part of a figured Composite order, framed the four cold
Figure 1.2 The frigidarium of the Baths of Caracalla. Reconstruction by Guillaume-Abel Blouet, 1828 pl. XV. British School at Rome.
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Title: A rough sketch of modern Paris or, Letters on society, manners, public curiosities, and amusements, in that capital
Author: J. G. Lemaistre
Release date: January 2, 2024 [eBook #72601]
Language: English
Original publication: London: J. Johnson, 1803
Credits: Sonya Schermann and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A ROUGH SKETCH OF MODERN PARIS ***
A ROUGH SKETCH OF MODERN PARIS.
G W , Printer, Paternoster row.
A ROUGH SKETCH OF
MODERN PARIS; OR, LETTERS ON SOCIETY, MANNERS, PUBLIC CURIOSITIES, AND AMUSEMENTS, IN THAT CAPITAL,
WRITTEN DURING THE LAST TWO MONTHS OF 1801 AND THE FIRST FIVE OF 1802.
BY J. G. LEMAISTRE, ESQ.
SECOND EDITION.
J’ai voulu voir Paris; les fastes de l’histoire
Célébrant ses plaisirs, et consacrent sa gloire.
V .
Nous avons vu Trajan, Titus et Marc Aurele, Quitter le beau séjour de la gloire immortelle, Pour venir en secret s’amuser à Paris.
Quelque bien qu’on puisse être, on veut changer de place; C’est pourquoi les anglois sortent de leur pays. L’esprit est inquiet, et de tout il se lasse; Souvent un bien heureux s’ennuie en Paradis.
LONDON.
PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, IN ST. PAUL’S CHURCHYARD; 1803.
I .
PREFACE.
In june, 1801, while the war between England and France still continued, I obtained his majesty’s license to visit the latter country, in order to ascertain my claims to a legacy left me at Paris. A french passport was likewise necessary; and such were the difficulties which occurred, that, notwithstanding repeated applications to M. Otto on the subject, the instrument in question was not yet arrived, when, on the first of October, an extraordinary gazette announced the joyful intelligence of the signature of preliminary articles of peace. The jealousy of the french government ceased with the war; and, three days after its termination, I received the long expected passport.
Being one of the first englishmen who arrived in France, after a war big with such unparallelled events, I determined to keep a journal of my proceedings. The object which, at first, induced me to do so, was simply to gratify the curiosity of an intimate friend, who had charged me, on leaving England, to forward to him, by every opportunity, detailed accounts pf modern France. Of my correspondence, thus begun, I took regular copies; and, on perusing the materials which I had been able to collect, it afterwards occurred to me, that some of these letters might become not totally uninteresting to the public, if formed into a less objectionable shape, and freed from the many little occurrences, which they originally contained, and which only related personally either to my friend or myself. From this collection I have accordingly culled the following letters. I offer them to my readers, as conveying not a studied view of society and manners, but a rough landscape, drawn by the untutored hand of an inexperienced artist. If the sketch should happen to please, the merit will be less in the execution than in the subject; if it fail, the fault will be in the pencil, and not in the accuracy of the drawer.
To divest myself, as much as possible, from every prejudice, has been a duty which I have strictly endeavoured to fulfil; yet I fear, such is the effect of early habit, that many marks will still be discovered of national predilection. I beg leave, as a check against faults of this kind, which I may have involuntarily committed, to request my reader to remember, that the observations now laid before him, are those of a man accustomed to english opinions, english society, and english manners. In judging of another country, a foreigner cannot help making a comparison between what he has known at home add what he sees abroad. In doing so, the partiality, which he naturally entertains for his own customs, may lead him to condemn, as faults, what may be simply deviations from the former. That such is the general bias of the human mind, I am fully aware, and I cannot flatter myself that mine has escaped it. This consideration must plead my excuse with the french, if I should sometimes appear severe; and the same ought to prevent my countrymen from placing too implicit a confidence in my judgments, where it may be my misfortune to condemn. My hand has faithfully drawn what my eye beheld; but the sight may be jaundiced, and, in that case the picture will be incorrect.
To conclude—The intention of this work being simply to describe the internal situation of the french capital, all religious and political discussions will be avoided. The causes, events, and consequences of a revolution, which has no parallel in history, I leave to abler and more experienced writers. To point out to strangers the objects most interesting at Paris, to convey some previous information to those who intend going thither, and to lay before such as are prevented, by their other occupations, from undertaking the journey, an account of the pleasures, festivals, buildings, and mode of living in that metropolis, is the task I have undertaken, a task which, however comparatively humble, is neither useless nor unimportant. Had it fallen into other hands, the public would feel the truth of this remark. As it is, I fear they will easily discover, that the subject deserved an abler pen.
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The first edition of this work appeared anonymously Its rapid sale and the favourable manner in which “The Rough Sketch,” has been received induce the Author, as a mark of respect and gratitude to an indulgent Public, to affix, his name to this second impression. In doing so, he begs leave to apologize for the typographical errors found in the first edition, and which he can only correct in that which is now issued, by means of an errata. These faults may, perhaps, be pardoned, when it is known that the Author was in the most distant part of Italy at the time of the first publication, and that most of the sheets which compose the present impression, were struck off previously to his return.
In reading the following pages the Public will also have the goodness to remember the period at which they were written. When the Author speaks of Bonaparte, he speaks of him in other days. In May, 1802, when these letters were concluded, the First Consul was the elected first magistrate of France, the professed friend of England, and the acknowledged pacificator of Europe. He had not at that time overturned the form of government which he had solemnly sworn to maintain, by assuming for life the reins of power. He had not then violated the laws of nations and the rights of a free, virtuous, and independent people by the subjugation of Switzerland. He had not then insulted his Majesty and the British nation in the person of our ambassador. He had not yet dared to ask for changes in the most valuable and purest parts of our excellent constitution, nor had he sunk the dignity of his character by a conversation which at once betrayed his vanity, rashness, and unbounded ambition. In one word, the laurels of Marengo were yet unfaded. He was then a great man. Without enquiring what he now is, one may be permitted to apply to him what Virgil said of the Trojan hero after his defeat:
⸺Heu quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore, qui redit exuvias indutus Achillis!
Upper Seymour Street, Sept. 21, 1803.
CONTENTS.
LETTER I.
Reflections on landing at Calais.—Custom house officers, municipality, commissaires, Dessein’s, theatre.— Montreuil.—L’hôtel d’Angleterre at Amiens.—Chantilly. —State of the roads.—Difficulty of getting lodgings at Paris.—M. Peregaux. p. 1.
LETTER II.
The palace and gardens of the Thuilleries.—The Louvre.— The musée central des arts, or picture gallery.—Maria Cosway.—Gallery of antiquities.—Apollo Belvidere.— Laocoon.—List of pictures. p. 10.
LETTER III.
The fête of the 18th of brumaire in honour of the preliminaries, and of the anniversary of the consular government.—Apathy of the people.—Fireworks.— Accident which happened to an english gentleman.— Postscript.—The death of the gentleman last named. p. 40.
LETTER IV.
State of society at Paris.—The three sets, l’ancienne noblesse, the governmental class, and les parvenus ou nouveaux riches.—Description of a house belonging to one of the latter. p. 53.
LETTER V.
Opening of the legislative body.—Election of the president. —Lord Cornwallis.—Reflections of the people in the gallery. p. 63.
LETTER
VI.
The abbé Sicard, and the institution in behalf of the deaf and dumb.—His favourite pupil, Massieu.— Examination of a young woman, who had become deaf at six years old.—Reflections on the establishment. p. 69.
LETTER VII.
A thé or evening party.—French remarks on Shakspeare and Mr. Fox.—Dullness and pedantry of parisian society. p. 74.
LETTER VIII.
Bonaparte.—The monthly review or parade in the court of the Thuilleries. p. 81.
LETTER IX.
The tribunate.—Speech of Portalis on presenting the code civil in the corps législatif.—Debate in the tribunate on the same subject. p. 87.
LETTER X.
Bal des étrangers, (a public subscription ball).—Thinness of the ladies’ dresses. p. 92.
LETTER XI.
New year’s day.—The Palais royal. p. 98.
LETTER XII.
L’institution des travaux des aveugles, or establishment for the support and employment of the blind.—Their different occupations.—The plate glass manufactory.— Description of another meeting at the hospital of the deaf and dumb.—Massieu taught galvanism and stenography. p. 103.
LETTER XIII.
The young savage, or wild boy of Aveyron.—His history.— The state in which he was found, and the means used to restore him to the use of his senses.—The success with which these efforts have been attended. p. 109.
LETTER XIV.
Detailed account of all the theatres or spectacles. p. 116.
LETTER XV.
The play of Henry IV, read by le Texier. p. 133.
LETTER XVI.
Party at a fournisseur’s.—Ball at a ci-devant noble’s. p. 137.
LETTER XVII.
A play acted for the first time, called “Edouard en Ecosse,” the hero of which was the english pretender, full of royalist sentiments, performed twice, and highly applauded; “God save the King,” played on the French stage; plot of the play, which was forbidden on the third day. p. 146.
LETTER XVIII.
The carnival.—Masks in all the streets.—Account of the different characters, processions, &c.—Masqued ball at the opera house. p. 152.
LETTER XIX.
Bonaparte’s audience.—His address to the english gentlemen presented to him.—First appearance, this season, of Vestris.—Madame de St—l’s concert. p. 158.
LETTER XX.
The antichamber of the Musée Central, now filled with an p. 166.
additional collection of fine pictures.—Account of the wonderful recovery of some chefs-d’œuvre.—List of pictures in this room.
LETTER XXI.
Bois de Boulogne.—Account of that promenade.—Order of the police against english footmen wearing laced cocked hats.—Cannon fired in honour of the definitive treaty.—Illuminations in the evening.—Little effect produced at Paris by the peace. p. 175.
LETTER XXII.
The palais du Luxembourg.—Théâtre d’Odéon.—The pantheon or St. Généviève.—Tombs of Rousseau and Voltaire. p. 181.
LETTER XXIII.
Concordat with the Pope ratified by the legislative body after an eloquent speech by Lucien Bonaparte.— Madame Bonaparte’s first drawing room.—Appearance of Dehayes at the opera, after a long absence. p. 188.
LETTER XXIV.
Versailles.—St. Cloud.—Sèvre.—Petit Trianon.—Specimen of an extravagant bill.—Curious trial.—St. Germain.— Malmaison.—Waterworks of Marly. p. 192.
LETTER XXV.
Long Champ, account of that annual promenade, date of its origin, and of the great preparations made this year for attending it.—The bustle and gayety which it produced at Paris. p. 205.
LETTER XXVI.
Te Deum sung at Notre Dame, in honour of the peace and the reestablishment of religion.—Military insolence.— p. 213.
Account of the ceremony.—Illuminations in the evening.—Indifference of the people.
LETTER XXVII.
Palais de Justice.—Account of the different tribunals or courts of law. p. 222.
LETTER XXVIII.
The gardens and walks of Paris. p. 227.
LETTER XXIX.
The manufactory of Gobelins, the observatory, les Enfans trouvés, Champ de Mars, les Invalides, and the temple of Mars, containing the colours taken from different nations, and the tomb of Turenne.—Le Musée des Monumens françois, or collection of monuments.—List of the most esteemed of these.—Note to this letter contains the account of a dinner at the first consul’s. p. 235.
LETTER XXX.
General account of literary establishments at Paris.— National library.—Manuscripts.—Memoirs of his own times, by Lewis XIV.—Fac simile of a love letter of Henry IV.—Cabinet of medals.—Cabinet of engravings, &c.—Library of the Pantheon.—Mazarine library.—Library of the Institute. Libraries of the senate, the legislative body, and tribunate.—The Lycées, now called les Athénées.—Admirable lectures given at one of them.—Professors Fourcroy, Cuvier, and la Harpe —L’Institute national.—Jardin national des Plantes. Collection of birds, plants, fossils, and insects, in the house attached to the Jardin des Plantes.—Cabinet de l’École des Mines, à l’Hôtel des Monnoies.—Great opportunities afforded at Paris of cultivating science and literature in all their various branches. p. 249.
LETTER XXXI.
Calculation and estimate of expenses at Paris.—List of hôtels, traiteurs, &c. p. 266.
LETTER XXXII.
General view of Paris, principally taken as compared with London. p. 282.
A ROUGH SKETCH OF MODERN PARIS.
LETTER I.
Reflections on landing at Calais Custom house officers, municipality, commissaires, Dessein’s, theatre —Montreuil —L’hôtel d’Angleterre at Amiens.—Chantilly.—State of the roads.—Difficulty of getting lodgings at Paris. M. Peregaux.
Paris, october the 30th, 1801 (4 brumaire, an 10.)