Of course, obelisks were far from being the only foreign trophies imported by the ancient Romans. If it is pardonable exaggeration to say that by the late Empire there were more statues in Rome than people, then it is no exaggeration to say that the majority of these had been imported from all over the Empire, as had most of the sumptuous marbles to adorn the architecture of the city.
The Renaissance was well aware of the funerary overtones of the obelisk, as we can see from drawing, and maps which imaginatively reconstruct the great cemeteries on roads leading from the city such as the Appia and the Flaminia. The circus died with the Empire, and the original funerary connotation was reborn, because everyone knew about the Egyptian pyramids, and there were few who did not believe (by analogy with the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, which was topped by a stepped pyramid) that they had a funerary function. Today we may wish to make a sharp distinction between pyramids and obelisks, but the Renaissance saw them as essentially the same form, and was mightily impressed by the hieroglyphs, which they recognised as secret writing although they could not read it (nor could anyone, until Champollion in DATE). Hermetic knowledge, it was believed, began in Egypt, passing through Old Testament figures and then through Sibyls and offering great treasures once it was deciphered. Hence the great mosaic floor of Siena Cathedral, the conjunction of prophets and sibyls on the Sistine Ceiling, and the awe in which obelisks were held. Just how classical antiquity and Egyptian hermeticism collide is plain from the illustrations in that most fascinating of Renaissance love- and adventure stories, the Hyperotomachia Polifili of 1499 PROVIDE IMAGES.
Instead, a decided innovation of the Renaissance is the use of some of these, the largest monoliths then known, as the foci of town-planning schemes and the piazze which these entailed. Death turns into life, as obelisks are used as giant markers rather like front and rear gunsights, visually "tying together" large swathes of the City in a successful attempt not only to provide the foci for radiating plans, but also to give apparent coherence to what was in fact in 1400 the least-planned and most generally chaotic city surviving from the Roman Empire (itself something of an irony, of course, that an Empire noted for and often recognised by rigorous grid-plans had no such clarity of design at home).
As we view Rome today, it is even possible to be drawn around the City by following the "obelisk lines" from church to church and square to square. Starting at Trinita dei Monti, the Via Sistina and its successors lead straight as an arrow to SM Maggiore and its obelisk, whence the Via Merulana takes us down to the Lateran, with its own obelisk. Equally, turning north from Trinita dei Monti, we can sight down to Piazza del Popolo and, from there, view the great trident, the easternmost arm of which leads along Via del Babuino up to the Quirinal; proceeding along Via Ripetta eventually brings into sight the Vatican obelisk and, looking the other way up Via Condotti, the obelisk at Trinita dei Monti. Continuing down Via Ripetta, we reach Piazza Navona, with the most perilously mounted of all obelisks (see below). Going down the central spine, the Corso, we soon come to the obelisk at Monte Citorio, vying for attention with the Column of Marcus Aurelius. But we must be aware that the patterns we now see have been built up over more than two hundred years. Of the obelisks named above, the first was moved into place in 1586, the last in 1792. A glance at the table of Roman obelisks will also give us some indication of the most industrious town-planners amongs the Popes - namely Sixtus V and Pius VI.
Of course, the concept of joining important monuments by markers was in existence long before all the obelisks got erected: see Bordini's 1588 print, which shows the roads connecting the great basilicas - although it should not be considered in any sense a blueprint for actual town planning schemes. Far better to rely on the fresco in the Salone Sistino in the Vatican, which lays out the schemes actually completed by Sixtus V (cf. d'Onofrio 1992 fig.99 for the fresco, and overlay of roads).
Such an attitude could not fail to impress Baroque artists as well. Bernini made a career of producing stunning works of sculpture, many of which were also a display of difficulty triumphantly overcome. Thus his famous Apollo and Daphne in Villa Borghese is not only a illusion of flesh as it turns into bark, twigs and leaves, but also a demonstration of just how nonchalantly the forward thrust of the whole group could be counter-balanced by the swirling drapery of Apollo, which provided the essential counter-weight that stopped the group toppling forward. To a signal feat of carving was added a finely-judged demonstration of statics.
Bernini played the same game with obelisks. The small one in the piazza in front of S Maria sopra Minerva (finished 1667) eventually ended up on the back of an elephant (an idea we can trace back to the Hypnerotomachia Polifili as well as to the learned disquisition of Athanasius Kircher, who published his Obelisci Aegyptiaci ..interpretatio in 1666. But Bernini's preparatory sketches show that he wanted almost to project the obelisk into the air with seemingly insubstantial supports. Earlier drawings on the elephant theme show the obelisk firmly and vertically on the beast's back, but with air between the four legs whereas, in the finished monument, the saddlecloth touches the podium at the sides, offering additional support. Earlier drawings by Bernini and his shop, now in the Vatican, show four figures seated each at one corner of the pedestal, and each offering one hand to hold the obelisk up. A variant design has two seated figures supporting the obelisk on their backs. But the strangest of all involve Hercules with a non-vertical obelisk. In the one design the obelisk base rests on top of an irregular rock as Hercules gives it a wrestler's hold to make it vertical. In the other, Hercules with his knees semi-bent is hoisting the slanting obelisk upwards, perhaps with the intent of resting it on his shoulders as would Atlas the world; but he looks much more like a contestant at the Highland Games who is about to toss the caber. Even with an obelisk as small as the Minerva one (just over five metres in height), it is doubtful whether such a scheme could have worked.
Yet more exciting had been his treatment of the obelisk in Piazza Navona. Borromini had made designs for conjoining this, the obelisk of Domitian with a fountain; but these were for a fountain built into the solid pedestal supporting the obelisk. Bernini's solution was much more dramatic, perhaps because he considered that the higher the obelisk the greater the impression it would make in such a long piazza and, perhaps, be more assertive by echoing in its scale some of the features of S Agnese, the facade of which was projected but not yet built. Thus his Fountain of the Four Rivers hoists the obelisk nearly six metres above the level of the pavement, and higher still by resting its extended and profiled base (which approaches the level of the entablature of S. Agnese) on a vault-like grotto of travertine, decorated by representations of the Rivers which lounge against it. Not least amongst this fountain's many attractions is that one can look right through the grotto, past the flying water spray, to the other side - for example, through from the east toward the facade of S Agnese in Agone. If Fontana's moving of the Vatican obelisk was published as an account of difficulties overcome, then Bernini's Four Rivers is a perpetual display of sculptural nonchalance - and one, moreover, that nobody ever thought it safe to try and imitate. If we try and picture Piazza Navona with Bernini's obelisk rising from ground level, it is easy to believe that its effect would have been deadened by the length of the piazza as well as by the exuberance of the twin belltowers flanking the facade of S Agnese (designed by Borromini), and themselves open to the air at both their levels.
So impressive were Bernini's obelisk designs both projected and built that we find Carlo Fontana in 1700 making designs (now Vatican) for placing the Antinoous Obelisk (finally erected on the Pincio) in the gardens of Palazzo Barberini. In both schemes draped strongmen hoist up the obelisk in their arms; and in the more elaborate, again taking the hint from the 'skying' of the Piazza Navona obelisk, Fontana has the obelisk with its strongmen set four or five metgres above the pavement, with the water gushing from a similarly rocky travertine base.
For this aspect of the new life given to obelisks by Sixtus V's decision to start
using them as town-planning features, see the section on
water and fountains<\a>.
Kerisel 1991 on pyramids through the ages; Dibner 1950
on moving the Vatican obelisk; and chase up Mercati 1589;
