Selected

Topics in Italian Studies 17

Ancient Monuments and Italian Renaissance 2

· From the beginning of the 15th century, various people in Rome tried to get hold of pagan relics.
· Antiquity collections (coins, inscriptions on stone and bronze, and sculptures) were displayed in the
antiquarian's houses, palaces, and suburban villas.
· By the later 16th century, these collections had become a celebrated feature of the Roman landscape.

· The Capitoline antiquities (1471): Pope Sixtus IV
· The papal collection of the Belvedere (c. 1510): Julius II

■ From Spolia to the Collection

Spolia: architectural fragment which is taken out of original context and reused in a different context

... the process by which ancient sculptures changed their status in the transition from ruins to
collections ... was both much slower than we usually think and much more dramatic, prompted less by
aesthetic admiration than by political expediency. The artistic value of ancient sculpture became an
important factor only after connotations of prestige were added to it through its purposeful reuse in a
number of contexts whose significance was usually determined by power rather than by taste.
Salvatore Settis, 'Collecting Ancient Sculpture: The Beginnings'. in N. Penny and E. Schmidt (eds.)
Collecting Sculpture in Early Modern Europe, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008, 14.

· the late 15th and early 16th centuries were the “transitional period": the status of antique images changed
from building materials to collectable art objects through purposeful reuse"
· Purpose of reuse: to demonstrate collector's magnificence, their liberality, their appreciation of beauty;
to show their commitment to the development of the city; to emphasize their connections with antiquity

Here the streets are full of statues, images of the ancient heroes cover the walls of houses [...] walking
through the city, one’s eyes are drawn from one work to another.
Manuel Chrysoloras, Epistolæ tres de comparatione veteris et novæ Romæ, c. 1400

· Lorenzo Manlio: apothecary, built his new house with ancient inscriptions, reliefs, and a portrait of a
freedman in 1468

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· Giuliano della Rovere: in the late 1470s, displayed various inscriptions in front of his family's complex and
several statues and inscriptions in the courtyard
→ He became the Pope Julius II in 1503, and created a statue court, at the Belvedere courtyard in the
Vatican palace.

■ Renaissance Artists and the study of Ancient Art in Rome

· the Belvedere Courtyard in the Vatican: the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoö n, the Cleopatra, the Hercules
Commodus, the large rivers Tiber and Nile, the Belvedere Antinous and the Belvedere Torso

· Discovery of Laocoö n on 14 January 1506

The first time I was in Rome when I was very young, the pope was told about the discovery of some very
beautiful statues in a vineyard near S. Maria Maggiore. The pope ordered one of his officers to run and tell
Giuliano da Sangallo to go and see them. He set off immediately. Since Michelangelo Buonarroti was always
to be found at our house, my father having summoned him and having assigned him the commission of the
pope's tomb, my father wanted him to come along, too. I joined up with my father and off we went. I climbed
down to where the statues were when immediately my father said, "That is the Laocoö n, which Pliny
mentions." Then they dug the hole wider so that they could pull the statue out. As soon as it was visible
everyone started to draw, all the while discoursing on ancient things, chatting as well about the ones in
Florence.
Francesco da Sangallo, Letter to Vincenzo Maria Borghini, 1567

· Pietro Bembo (1525): Michelangelo and Raphael and the study of ancient Art in Rome

At all times of day [Rome] witnesses the arrival of artists from near and far, intent on reproducing in the
small space of their paper or wax the form of those splendid ancient figures of marble, sometimes bronze,
that lie scattered all over Rome, or are publicly and privately kept and treasured, as they do with the arches
and baths and theatres and the other various sorts of buildings that are in part still standing: and hence,
when they mean to produce some new work, they aim at those examples, striving with their art to resemble
them, all the more so since they believe their efforts merit praise by the closeness of resemblance of their
new works to ancient ones, being well aware that the ancient ones come closer to the perfection of art than
any done afterwards. These have succeeded more than others, Messer Giulio [de' Medici], your
Michelangelo of Florence and Raphael of Urbino [...] so outstanding and illustrious that it is easier to say
how close they come to the good old masters than decide which of them is the greater and better artist.
P. Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua, Venice, 1525, p. XLII r

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· Giorgio Vasari (1568): Sculptural collection in the Belvedere Courtyard

After them indeed, their successors were enabled to attain to it through seeing excavated out of the earth
certain antiquities cited by Pliny as amongst the most famous, such as the Laocoö n, the Hercules, the Great
Torso of the Belvedere, and likewise the Venus, the Cleopatra, the Apollo, and an endless number of others,
which, both with their sweetness and their severity, with their fleshy roundness copied from the great
beauties of nature, and with certain attitudes which involve no distortions of the whole figure but only a
movement of certain parts, [p. 82] and are revealed with a most perfect grace, brought about the
disappearance of a certain dryness, hardness, and sharpness of manner, which had been left to our art by
the excessive study [...].

· Domenico Bernini (1713): Gianlorenzo Bernini and his study in the Belvedere Courtyard

There now opened before him in Rome a marvellous field in which to cultivate his studies through the
diligent observation of the precious remains of ancient sculpture. It is not to be believed with what
dedication he frequented that school and with what profit he absorbed its teachings. Almost every morning,
for the space of three years, he left Santa Maria Maggiore, where Pietro, his father, had built a small
comfortable house, and travelled on foot to the Vatican Palace at Saint Peter’s. There he remained until
sunset, drawing, one by one, those marvellous statues that antiquity has conveyed to us and that time has
preserved for us, as both a benefit and dowry for the art of sculpture. He took no refreshment during all
those days, except for a little wine and food, saying that the pleasure alone of the lively instruction supplied
by those inanimate statues caused a certain sweetness to pervade his body, and this was sufficient in itself
for the maintenance of his strength for days on end. In fact, some days it was frequently the case that Gian
Lorenzo would not return home at all. Not seeing the youth for entire days, his father, however, did not even
interrogate his son about this behaviour. Pietro was always certain of Gian Lorenzo’s whereabouts, that is,
in his studio at Saint Peter’s, where, as the son used to say, his girlfriends (that is, the ancient statues) had
their home. The specific object of his studies we must deduce from what he used to say later in life once he
began to experience their effect on him. Accordingly, his greatest attention was focussed above all on those
two most singular statues, the Antinous and the Apollo, the former miraculous in its design, the latter in its
workmanship. Bernini claimed, however, that both of these qualities were even more perfectly embodied
in the famous Laocoö n of Athenodorus, Agesander, and Polydorus of Rhodes, a work of so well-balanced
and exquisite a style that tradition has attributed it to three artists, judging it perhaps beyond the ability of
just one man alone. Two of these three marvellous statues, the Antinous and the Laocoö n, had been
discovered during the time of Pope Leo X amid the ruins of Nero’s palace in the gardens near the church of
San Pietro in Vincoli and placed by the same pontiff in the Vatican Palace for the public benefit of artists
and other students of antiquity.

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■ Colosseum and Renaissance Architecture

· Flavio Biondo, Roma instaurata, 1446.
· Andrea Palladio, Antiquitates Urbis Romae, 1554.

It was built by emperor Vespasian, and the name Colosseum derives from the colossal statue of Nero
once situated nearby. Gladiator combats and animal fights were performed here, and 5,000 wild animals
were slaughtered in its opening ceremony. Only half of the original structure in travertine still stood at
that time; the building is round on the outside and oval on the inside, and almost as tall as the adjacent
Caelian hill. The Colosseum could seat 85,000 spectators.

· Amico Aspertini, Elevation of the Colosseum, 1530-40.
· Giovanni Antonio Dosio, View of the Colosseum, 1560-65.
· Sebastiano Serlio, Parts of the Colosseum, I Sette libri dell'architettura, Terzo libro, nel quale si figurano e
si descrivano le antiquità di Roma, 1540.
· Giuliano da Sangallo, Plan of the Colosseum, Libro di Giuliano da Sangallo, early 16th century.

→ Colosseum appears as the absolute model of architecture, which confirms the two paradigms:
the canonical sequence of the architectural orders and the arch framed by the order.

order: any of the five classical styles of architecture (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan, and Composite)
based on the proportions of columns and the style of their decoration.

· Palazzo Rucellai (Firenze: 1446-1451): Leon Battista Alberti
· Palazzo Piccolomini (Piezna: 1459): Bernardo Rosellino
· Palazzo Altemps (Roma: 1480): Melozzo da Forli
· Palazzo della Cancelleria (Roma: 1513): Bramante
· Palazzo Farnese (Roma: 1541): Antonio da Sangallo
· Convento della Carità (Venezia: c. 1560): Andrea Palladio

· Palladian architecture and neoclassical architecture

■ Conclusion

· Rediscovery of Antiquity changed the landscape of Rome
· Antiquarians (Popes, aristocrats, citizens) displayed their ancient collections to show their power and
their connection to the city.
· Study of ancient architecture during the Renaissance influenced also in later times