The Genesis of Roman Architecture

446 Pages·2016·11.53 MB·English

by  John North Hopkins

The Genesis of Roman Architecture
The Genesis of Roman Architecture
John North Hopkins
Copyright © 2016 by John North Hopkins.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in
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Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014957112
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eISBN 978-0-300-21436-9
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Jacket illustrations: (front, from left) figs. 25, 104, 105 [detail], 16, 5; (back,
from left) figs. 62, 82, 64, 29 [detail], 5; (spine) fig. 110; (background) fig. 86
Frontispiece: Statue of Hercules and Minerva from the site of S. Omobono (fig.
47)
To Ted and Katherine
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Images
Introduction
1 The Makings of a City
2 Coherence and Distinction (ca. 650–550)
3 On a New Scale (ca. 550–500)
4 The Continuity of Splendor (ca. 500–450)
5 The Great Rome of the Romans
6 Integration
Notes
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While writing this book I have had the privilege of reading studies by some of
the greatest art historians, archaeologists, classicists, and humanists—young,
advanced, and long departed. Their work has been a steady source of inspiration,
and their names and contributions can be found in the bibliography. It is a
pleasure to mention here those whom I have had the benefit of working with and
learning from personally. I have been fortunate to study with John Clarke and
Penelope Davies, whose guidance set the foundation for this book. My research
and my conception of these monuments, this art, and this wondrous Roman
culture have been fundamentally shaped by conversations over fragments of
stone and terracotta—and over many meals, drinks, and teas—with them and
with Nancy Winter, Jim Packer, Nicola Terrenato, Christopher Smith, Albert
Ammerman, Patricia Lulof, Nassos Papalexandrou, Ingrid Edlund-Berry, Ili
Nagy, Elizabeth Bartman, Anna Mura Sommella, Gabriele Cifani, Seth Bernard,
Rachel Kousser, Barbara Borg, Ken Lapatin, Claire Lyons, Lynne Lancaster,
Rabun Taylor, Charlotte Potts, Liz Colantoni, Gretchen Meyers, Michael
Thomas, Jeffrey Collins, Christina Ferando, Dan McReynolds, Erik Gustafson,
Gregory Waldrop, Eleanor Rust, Gregory Bucher, and Andrew Riggsby. I owe
these generous scholars a profound debt of thanks. I am also grateful to scholars
who have kindly provided me with as-yet-unpublished research or with their
personal insights; they have allowed me to refer to them in these pages, and I
cite them when I discuss their important finds and conclusions. John Clarke,
Michael Maas, Lucy Bradnock, Nicola Terrenato, and Liz Colantoni read drafts
either of chapters or the full manuscript, and I am grateful for their feedback, as
well as that of the anonymous peer reviewers, whose suggestions truly shaped
the final outcome. Of course, any shortcomings in this study rest squarely on my
shoulders.
This kind of work would not be possible without the support of several
institutions and organizations, which have offered not only great financial help
in a parsimonious academic climate, but also heartwarming and mind-opening
personal support that has had a real impact on the scholarship here. At the
University of Texas at Austin I would like to thank the Department of Art
History for their support toward my PhD and toward a Cullen Trust Endowment
Fund Continuing Fellowship, which made a year’s research in Rome possible. A
two-year predoctoral fellowship at the American Academy in Rome provided
funding and housing for the bulk of my doctoral research, and I must thank
Carmela Franklin, Pina Pasquantonio, Anne Coulson, Giulia Barra, and Lexi
Eberspacher for all that they did while I was there. Of course the Rome Prize is
much more than that, and I am deeply grateful for the many friends, colleagues,
and experiences I have gained through such an exceptional institution. The
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) funded the last year I worked on
my dissertation, and I am grateful for the freedom this gave me to work on my
conclusions back in Austin. The Getty Research Institute was my home for a
year, and I was supported there very generously, not just with funding but also
with an incomparable staff, especially Katja Zelljadt, Alexa Sekyra, Sabine
Schlosser, Peter Bonfitto, and Rebecca Zamora, who always make a return to
Los Angeles a new kind of delight. The ACLS again supported my research and
teaching for two years with a New Faculty Fellowship at Rice University, where
I was able to discuss the ideas in this volume with new colleagues in the
departments of Art History, Classical Studies, and Anthropology. I am truly
thankful for this opportunity. I also wish to thank Nancy and Bob Carney for
their generosity of spirit and intellectualism. At Rice, I have also had support
from the Department of Art History’s Segal Fund and from the office of the
Dean of Humanities, Nick Shumway, for travel to Rome and Los Angeles while
finishing work on this book. Dean Shumway also provided a generous
subvention that allowed for the inclusion of so many images in this volume, and
especially so many in color; I will not forget that generosity. None of this would
have come to fruition, though, without the help of my editor at Yale University
Press, Katherine Boller, who has been an absolute saint throughout the process
of bringing this book to press, as have Tamara Schechter, Laura Hensley, and the
whole staff.
I would also like to thank the often-unsung heroes of research, the
librarians, particularly Shiela Winchester and Laura Schwartz at the University
of Texas at Austin; Denise Gavio, Christina Huemer, Rebecka Lindau, Paolo
Imperatori, and the staff at the American Academy in Rome; the librarians and
staff at the Getty Research Institute, particularly those in Special Collections;
and Jet Prendeville and the staff at Fondren Library at Rice University. Special
thanks go to two more librarians, Emily Luken and Katherine Hopkins, for their
investigations quite outside the line of duty.
I am deeply grateful to Richard Beacham for his generosity in helping me
to reconstruct some of the temples discussed in these pages through virtual
technology. I also offer my sincere thanks to Janis Atelbauers and Will Wang for
their steadfastness in working to rebuild such troublesome works of architecture.
Throughout the process of virtual reconstruction—which some might see as
supplementary, but which is in fact absolutely crucial to a research project based
in the reimagining of lost monuments—Chris Johanson, Diane Favro, Jim
Packer, Richard Beacham, Jeff Fleisher, Linda Neagley, Farès el-Dahdah, and
Patricia Lulof have been constant companions in the search for a means and a
meaning to virtual reconstruction.
The goodwill of many museums and archaeological superintendencies in
Italy were essential for this project, both at the research stage and when
collecting images of objects in their possession. I would like to thank at the
Capitoline Museums and the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali:
Claudio Parisi-Presicce, Angela Carbonaro, Margherita Albertoni, and Alberto
Danti; at the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia and the Soprintendenza
per I beni archeologici dell’Etruria Meridionale: Alfonsina Russo, Maria Laura
Falsini, and Rita Cosentino; at the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni
Archeologici di Roma: among others, Maria Daniela Donninelli, Rosanna
Friggeri, Roberto Meneghini, Elisabetta Bianchi, and Irene Iacopi; at the
Soprintendenza Archeologica di Lazio, Giovanni Caruso; at the Museo di
Velletri, dott.ssa Germano; at the Comune di Lanuvio: Luca Attenni and
Francesco Graziani; at the Museo di Cerveteri, dott. Fabrizio Paganelli; at the
Museo di Tarquinia, Massimo Magrini, who was so patient and helpful; and at
Roma Sotterranea, Luca Antognoli. In addition I would like to thank Andrea
Giovagnoli, Carla Antonaccio, Erik Gustafson, Bud Skibitzke, Hans Ollermann,
Peter Wiseman, and Patricia Lulof for allowing me to reproduce their
photographs and drawings here.
I owe the greatest debt of thanks to my parents, Ted and Katherine
Hopkins, and to all of my keenly inquisitive family, who taught me from my
earliest days what it means to explore, investigate, and question my place in
history and humanity. All that is good in these pages comes from the intellectual
curiosity you have espoused and the unending support you have given me. You
have made this work truly joyous.
A NOTE ON THE IMAGES
Some of the images in this book present fully rendered reconstructions of
buildings and sculptures that remain in only a fragmentary state. Although the
process of creating them helped answer some important research questions, these
images are presented here as illustrations. They are not included as evidence, and
they should not be used as stand-alone arguments or evidence for these
buildings. Alongside these images are detailed textual analyses of the fragments
(and the potential knowledge they provide for buildings and sculpture) as well as
images of the fragments themselves. This information provides the reader with a
clear understanding of the state of the remains and of the degree to which
extrapolation played a role in each reconstruction. Many elements in the
reconstructions are open to substantially different interpretation, and the
scholarly community should welcome other visual interpretations based on the
evidence and on sound scholarship.
Like any reconstructions, these images will undoubtedly create an
impression that will affect the study of the objects. A body of literature on such
effects has grown impressively since the advent of 3-D computer modeling and
carries with it a debate about the choices one can make in reconstructions of
such fragmentary evidence. I have used this literature to make determinations
about how much detail to provide and when, in a way that I believe is both
beneficial and clear to the reader. Where elements are completely unknown, they
have been left in muted colors and without extraneous elaboration.
Although it has garnered extraordinary attention, in some ways, the use of
3-D technology in the creation of two-dimensional images (as is the case in this
book) presents the reader with an illustration that is no different in its character
than a sophisticated watercolor of Roman baths from the eighteenth century or a
detailed drawing or pastel from the nineteenth or twentieth. All of these—
drawings, watercolors, physical models, and virtual models of varying degrees
of elaboration—present more of a building than exists and more of its
reconstruction than can be conclusively determined from remaining evidence. I
am aware that such images stick in the mind’s eye and influence scholarship, but