Just as
so much of European history is no more than the praise
of
Rome, so the ancients have an important place in the history
of art
collecting and display. Their temples were frequently
proto-museums
of antiquities, redolent with historical and, by
extension,
political kudos: thus Alexander took some suits of
armour
from the time of the Trojan War from the Temple of Athena
at Troy
(Arrian 1.11.7f.). Their approach could be uncritical:
this is
the case even with Pausanias, who supplies our fullest
account
of many sites of the Greek world. And Wace (1949, 24),
notes
that both the Casa Romuli and the Lapis Niger were taken
at
their face value, `and no efforts, so far as we know, were
ever
made to verify the truth of the legends about them by
excavation
or other archaeological methods'. But what was
important
to the Romans was veneration: we know that the Lapis
was
preserved, and the Casa Romuli re-thatched when necessary;
and
that families and associations considered it their duty to
preseve
some of the other monuments. And although, when the
Romans
plundered (as they did frequently in order to embellish
religious
or civil buildings), they clearly went for quality,
even if
this meant taking copies, they were also interested in
pieces
of sentimental or historical value.
The
Middle Ages could have learned about the Romans'
propensity
for taking artistic spolia not only from written
sources,
but also from the inscriptions displayed on bases of
the
stolen works (Waurick 1975), from surviving works of art,
and
also from representations of them on coins. Contact with
Greece
and especially Constantinople was frequent, and many
mediaeval
accounts survive describing the antiquities to be
found
there (Van der Vin 1980). Parallels between the ancient,
mediaeval
and Renaissance arrangement of sculptural displays are
therefore
to be expected, just as the re-use of antique motifs
may be
interpreted in a `political' manner - as prestigious
recreations
of antique grandeur, which is how Dubourg-Noves
writes
(1980, 338f.) of those church towers of France which he
suggests
are based on tholos tomb forms. It is also likely that,
as
Bozzo remarks for Genoa (1979, 57), antique material was
displayed
in private dwellings as a kind of `title of nobility'
- and
antique sites occupied for the same reason, as
happened
at Brescia (see above, p.00). The `public' parallel
might
be the use of the antique as stylistic inspiration for
contemporary
art (Moskowitz 1983, 61), to complement the display
of
actual antiquities.
We have
already seen how the expansion of cities in the West
threw
up antiquities which were sometimes displayed. To these
should
be added works imported into Italy from the Greek islands
and
from Asia Minor, along with coins and other small
antiquities
- not surprisingly, by those cities which had
trading
contacts there. The scale of the traffic in `art-work'
(as
opposed to building materials) was probably always small,
even
though the Levant was well travelled by Westerners (Borsook
1973).
The one exception was Venice, whose collecting of work
from
the East was a more organised affair, carried on with the
blessing
of the State and sometimes using warships for
transport,
not unlike Lord Elgin (Babelon 1901, 85ff.): the
spolia
included much Byzantine Christian material, which appears
to have
been used as patterns for `forging' similar works and
making
them look old (Demus 1955). Pisan war galleys also
brought
home `marble remains' including sarcophagi, according to
Vasari
(in his Life of Nicola Pisano), although the only
evidence
that they went further afield than Italy for them is
the
material from the Mahdia mosque in the Duomo.
One
important work which was probably brought from the East is
the
Colossus of Barletta, a bronze statue of an Emperor,
recently
suggested to be Honorius (Testini 1974): parts of its
legs
were taken for bell-metal to Siponto in 1309, but the
remainder
(restored nobody knows when) appear to have reached
the
present location by 1442, perhaps being erected as early as
the
fourteenth century (ibid., 313). The statue may have come
from
Constantinople - in which case it may have been on the way
to Venice
as booty after the sack of 1204, for associated
legends
speak of a shipwreck (Gazda 1970, 248). However, the
work is
substantially undamaged and, if it was Venetian booty,
we lack
any explanation of why the Venetians should
abandon
such an imposing prize; and it cannot have been taken
simply
for its metal value because, had this been the case, it
would
certainly have been melted down prior to transport.
Perhaps,
on the other hand, it stood somewhere in
Puglia
from antique times. As for the bronze ram in the manner
of
Lysippus, now in Palermo, and one of a pair which once
decorated
the outside of the Castello Maniace at Syracuse, its
origin
is unknown: did Frederick II find the pair while digging
Augusta,
or even for the actual Castle foundations (c.
1239),
or were they imported?
The
spolia of S. Mark's Venice, and the imitative nature of
venetian
antiquarianism. suggest that other antiquities
were
imported into the West in the Middle Ages; but the
best
example, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, is somewhat later.
The
Mausoleum was monument visible throughout the Middle Ages,
and its
reliefs were prized by some, for pieces found their way
to the
West. The structure itself was dismantled by the Knights
of S.
John to help build the Castle of S. Peter: this was done
in two
stages, first in 1404, then again in 1523, so that `a
very
considerable amount of the masonry of the castle was made
up of
stones from the Mausoleum' (Jeppesen 1958, 16ff.).
Furthermore,
if we accept the well known account of the
Commandant
de la Tourette (who was in charge of the 1522
repairs),
the tomb chamber was actually discovered leading from
a room
containing much marble decoration and bas-reliefs. It
went
the way of the rest: `having at first admired these works,
and
entertained their fancy with the singularity of the
sculpture,
they pulled it to pieces, and broke up the whole of
it'
(ibid., 12f.). The account makes it clear that the sappers
were
digging downwards for stone - not dismantling any
superstructure;
and, indeed, the characteristic grey-green stone
of the
foundation blocks also appears in the 1404 building, in
all to
a calculated 6,000 cubic metres.
Because
much of the sculptural decoration from the Mausoleum
also
appeared in the castle walls, it is possible that the tomb
stood
almost complete before the first castle was begun. The
Knights
themselves probably liked the sculptured pieces of the
tomb,
for some of them were placed prominently in the walls of
their
castle - just as discovered antiquities were exhibited on
city
walls back home in Europe. They probably took others abroad
with
them. Thus the fragment no. 1023 now in the British Museum
was
found in a Turkish house on Rhodes, only a few hours sailing
away,
and possibly taken there before the Turkish conquest of
1522;
Gualandi believes that it was cut for easy transport,
carefully
leaving intact the figure of an Amazon which it
displays
(1979, cat. 3). Another piece, fragment 1022, reached
Genoa,
perhaps in the same manner. Sufficient sculptures
remained
visible later in the century to prompt the enterprising
project
of Fra' Sabba da Castiglione to take the whole tomb to
Italy,
to beautify Mantua; unfortunately, the Turks got in the
way
(1505-7: cf. Gualandi 1979, 42, n. 2). Sabba, incidentally,
appears
to have acted as the Cyriacus of his generation,
importing
`two little heads of Amazons' into Italy, and sending
to
Isabella d'Este sculptures from Kos, Naxos and Delos
(Gualandi
1979, 19, and n. 3). One thing which
is
certain is that knowledge of the Mausoleum, and the very
tradition
of its site (which was quite well known in the Middle
Ages)
disappeared when the Knights evacuated the area (Hasluck
1911-12).
Although
we often do not know enough about the circumstances
in
which antiquities were assembled to be certain about the
motives,
we can at least be sure that the larger objects were
displayed:
perhaps Charlemagne's bronzes at Aix may be
considered
trophies because, although they are certainly
contemporary,
they must have been modelled directly after the
antique:
the wolf (for its connections with Romulus: it is
really
a remodelled bear); the pine-cone; the eagle; the doors
of the
Chapel; the bronze railings inside it. Braunfels, in a
fine article
(1965), provides parallels for most of these; his
illustration
of a Roman bronze door from Mainz (now in
Wiesbaden,
Städtisches Museum: ibid., Abb. 27) surely
underlines
just how available similar material must have been
over a
thousand years ago. Nor is the political message of such
a
collection difficult to understand (Beutler 1982, 76-127),
given
its manifest connections with ancient Rome. But even if
Rome
was the frame of reference for most antiquities
(from
descriptions or visits), a constant exemplar
for the
beautification of Italian cities must have been
Constantinople,
whence the Pisan community in 1160 deeded some
income,
by a decision of the Consuls, to the endowment of the
Duomo
back home (Müller 1879, documents dated 1141, 1160 and
1166).
An
early display of antique sculptures which illustrates their
prestige
value was that of Justinian, who is said to have built
a
`court' on the Sea of Marmara, outside the city of
Constantinople,
and decorated it with `great numbers of statues,
some of
bronze, some of polished stone, a sight worthy of a long
description.
One might surmise that they were the work of
Pheidias
the Athenian, or of the Sicyonian Lysippus or of
Praxiteles'
(Procopius Buildings 1.xi.7). In so doing, of
course,
the Emperor was following his predecessors in the West,
who had
imported original Greek statues or modern copies to
grace
their public and private areas. In Athens, the builders of
the
fifth-century `University' on the Agora re-erected the great
tritons
from the Concert Hall of Agrippa - although they did not
have
far to move them (Frantz 1975, 34). In the East, the
Emperor
had priestly functions; in the West, the works once at
the
Lateran and those later to form the basis of the Capitoline
collections
help underline the status of its owner, the Pope, as
the
inheritor of that Imperial power which the very objects
exuded.
Although papal use of the trappings of Imperial power
dates
from no earlier than the eleventh century (Krautheimer
1980,
192-4), it occurs much earlier in civic contexts, such as
the
display of funerary stelai in the Longobard walls of
Benevento,
where the use of antique funerary sculptures set in
the
fourteenth-century castle may help underline continuity
(Rotili
1979, 38f.). The accounts of chroniclers (like those
which
underlined the continuity of the new Capua with the old:
Cilento
1979, 15) support the thesis that such display was
indeed
political. Further confirmation of this view is provided
if we agree
with Werckmeister (1976, 540), that the designer of
the
Bayeux Tapestry was inspired by Trajan's Column `in order to
gather
the basic concept of the continuous political narrative
as well
as the scenic typology of the methodically planned
victorious
campaign'. Different in kind, but equally strong, is
the
antique frame of reference maintained in literature - such
as the
explicit parallel between Roman and Pisan conquest in the
epic
describing the Pisan Mahdia Campaign of 1087, or the Pisan
theft
from Amalfi in 1137 of a manuscript of the Pandects of
Justinian
(Repetti 1841, 4.320f.; Camera 1876/81, 330ff.).
Classical
echoes need not be visual, but rather parallel the
collecting
of objects, such as the sarcophagi now in the Campo
Santo
(Settis 1984, 9ff.).
One
important (and very Roman) way of acquiring antiquities and more
recent
art objects was therefore war-booty, such as Robert the
Guiscard's
sacking of Bari in 1073. The Chronicon Romualdi
Salernitani
says he `caused to be taken iron gates and marble
columns,
several with capitals, to Troia, on account of his
victory'
(RIS 7.1.188: the Chronicle erroneously
says
the material came from Palermo, which was then the seat of
the
Emirate of Sicily). Similarly, the antique bronze equestrian
statue
of the Regisole may have found its way from Ravenna to
Pavia
as booty of the Longobards; Opicinis de Canistris refers
to the
statue as having been `gilded of late' - surely an index
of the
high esteem in which it was held as a trophy (Bovini
1963,
141f.). In the same category would be the chains of the
port of
Pisa, hung by the Florentines in 1362 from the
Baptistery
`pro magnificentia civitatis' (Bruni 1925, 201); the
great
beasts of Perugia, displayed for the same reason, and
discussed
below - they also had enemy chains hung from their
feet;
and the head of Ares in Pisa, supposedly taken in battle
from
Genoa in 1282 (Settis 1984, No. 75). The Saracens
frequently
reciprocated by carrying off what their Christian
enemies
prized most highly - hence the altar-tables inserted in
the
walls of a mosque in Damascus, although
these
were certainly not antique: Barb 1956, 44).
There
are also some instances where standing monuments were
protected
from depredation for motives of civic pride. One such
is the
Roman senators' decree of 1162, already noted, protecting
the
Column of Trajan (De Bouard 1911, 241; Cavallaro 1984,
73f.),
and another the Roman people's expulsion of monks from
the
Colosseum, when they tried to take it over during the
pontificate
of Eugenius IV (Rodocanachi 1913, 173). The Roman
municipal
statutes of 1363 have a section De antiquis
aedificiis
non diruendis, perhaps particularly necessary in a
city
where power was divided between the municipality and the
papacy
(cf. Rodocanachi 1913, passim). Control was not
effective,
and Schiaparelli points out (1902, 18) that there is
no
indication in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century statutes
of the
Magistri Aedificiorum Urbis that they had official care
of any
of the city's antique buildings. In more stable cities,
consciousness
of the past as reflected in monuments was a factor
in
local pride - as when a clear distinction is made in Campania
between
Salerno, refounded by Arechi, and Naples, where the
citizens
knew of the true antiquity of their city (Delogu 1979,
56); or
when the Modenese in 1353 found a sarcophagus which they
believed
to be that of that ancient fighter against tyranny, M.
Junius
Brutus (Rebecchi 1984, 332, 345). .
Of
course, what is considered art display depends on the
point
of view adopted. Thus, for Poleggi (1973, ch. 5), the
collection
of antique pieces in the church of S. Maria di
Castello
at Genoa makes it no less than a mediaeval
`antiquarium'.
And when we add to such antiquities the
prominence
given to two Cufic inscriptions on two columns of the
nave
(ibid., 101f.), probably taken from a mosque, we may
parallel such works with the trophies displayed in
Venice,
especially
the bronze horses from the Hippodrome, and the
Tetrarchs,
which may have come from the site of the palace of
Romanus
Lecapenus (Goodwin 1977, 18); for just as the Venetians
thereby
proclaimed their control over the East and its
treasures,
so the Genoese could remind themselves of their
victories
on the coast of North Africa, in a running war for
control
of the sea.
When
did the collecting of antiquities relinquish political
for
artistic significance? Miglio's comments (1982, 179) on
Sixtus'
restitution of statues to the Roman people offer a clue:
he
suggests that 1471, the date of the gift, is the first
milestone
in the transformation of the hill from the supreme
political
centre of the city into `a scenic and erudite museum
of
Rome'. The hill lost its market in 1477 to Piazza Navona, and
it was
henceforth used to display curiosities - not simply the
colossal
statue fragments from 1486, but also the marvellously
preserved
body of Aurelia the previous year. The gloss might be
that
antiquities separated from the seat of power become simply
art-objects.
Occasionally
the Middle Ages incorporated sculptures and
inscriptions
(sometimes as trophies of war after the Roman
fashion:
Waurick 1975, 40ff.) into later structures so that they
are
displayed for admiration, and convey a message. The earliest
location
was, as we have seen, city walls and gates - one thinks
immediately
of the (Eastern) lion at Pisa, or the walls of Lucca
(i.e.
the second circle), admired by Cyriacus of Ancona when he
visited
the city in 1442, including the marble lion on top of
one of
the gates (Repetti 1833ff., II, 894); this was indeed a
trophy,
the gate concerned being that `which old inhabitants
call
the Roman Gate,' as Cyriacus says. Indeed, reliefs set in
houses
may sometimes have taken on a specific meaning, as with
that of
the `Donna Kinzica' at Pisa (Parra 1983, 468).
But
`museum' implies a greater diversity of trophies, and it
was to
be principally important churches which, by their display
of
antiquities, reflected the continuing prestige of their
cities.
One such was Modena (Rebecchi 1984, 333); another museum
embellishes
the outside of S. Mark's, Venice (Perry 1977) - a
city
whose origins in legend were held to be Trojan, and
projected
by her apologists as a New Rome (Marx 1980). In the
matter
of materials, this was no less than the truth, for many
of the
spolia brought from Ravenna had their origins in Rome. It
is
clear that the bronze horses, once erected on S. Mark's, were
to be
interpreted as trophies, yet it seems uncertain whether
they
were indeed brought from Constantinople with such a
specific
aim in view, for they appear to have stood in the
Arsenal,
and risked melting down until, as a Renaissance account
has it,
they were admired by some Florentines who were
`intendenti
della scoltura' (Perry 1977, 28). If there was
indeed
hesitation about their use, could it be because they were
supposed
to be pagan, and therefore unsuitable for a Christian
building?
But the rest of the display consists very largely of Christian
pieces:
the famous `pilastri acritani' have recently been shown
to
come, not from a civil site at Acre, but from the early
sixth-century
church of S. Polyeuct in Constantinople (Deichmann
1977-8;
although cf. Kalligas 1981, who claims support from the
chroniclers
for their location at S. John, Acre); indeed, the
tradition
associating them with Acre can be traced back no
further
than the sixteenth century. Venetian craftsmen touched
them up
when they arrived, which was presumably after the sack
of
1204. In their extravagant decoration, the `pilastri' show a
taste
for the exotic which could not be satisfied (at least in
such a
compact form) by Roman antiquities: from the remains
found
in the recent excavations of S. Polyeuct, it is clear that
the
decoration of that church was much more sumptuous than
anything
available in Ravenna and, to that extent, a worthy
target
for the Venetians; indeed, it was one of the most
sumptuously
decorated of Byzantine churches, as a long epigram
proclaimed
(Gnoli 1971, 31f.). The Venetians may have stipulated
Christian
rather than pagan work (although conveniently with
pagan
overtones) for their destined place flanking the entrance
to the
Baptistery - which would agree with the
thirteenth-century
Venetians' interest in early Christian art,
and the
`short-lived attempt on the part of the state to
establish
artificially a politically inspired, archaizing,
pseudo-national
art' (Demus 1955, 359). In this instance the
Venetians
did not destroy a working Christian church for their
spoils,
for it was already ruinous at the end of the twelfth
century;
but they did strip the Proconnesian marble slabs from
the
west façade of Hagia Sophia, and used them to decorate S.
Mark's
(Goodwin 1977, 17f.). The Pisans did much the same within
Italy
in 1168, when they sailed up the Tiber `and devastated
villas
and churches' (Maragone 1936, 44).
Two
works arguably erected as expressions of political power are
the
great bronze lion and griffon on the Palazzo dei Priori in
Perugia:
first mentioned in the later thirteenth century, they
were
placed in 1281 on Arnolfo's fountain, and moved to their
present
location in 1301 (Magi 1971-2). They were venerated by
the
people: this included clothing them, and then selling the
vestments
as relics - just as the statue of Mars on the Ponte
Vecchio
in Florence, according to an account of c. 1330, was
festooned
with wreaths each year on the last day of March (Weiss
1969,
209). Yet in spite of this, and of their weight and size,
there
is no record of who made them. Magi, while
scrupulously
fair in
his presentation of the evidence, clearly believes them
both to
be antique, partly on grounds of style, and partly
because
they were already fragmentary in the thirteenth century.
However,
I can find no hint in the local historians that they
were
ever considered to be antique: Ciatti, for example, in the
course
of his very antiquarian book, has a long discourse on the
meaning
of the griffon in the history of Perugia (1636, 44ff.),
and
would surely have mentioned our pair had he considered
them to
be Etruscan products.
Nevertheless,
it is possible that they formed part of some
antique,
perhaps Etruscan, scheme, and were found during the
period
when the city was expanding. Rather like the horses in
Venice,
they serve as trophies, and have been placed in a
position
of civic prominence: one proof of this is that, from
1358,
pieces of ironwork and chains - spoils of war taken from
one of
the gates of Siena - were hung from their feet, `as a
continuing
reminder of that deed' (Crispolti 1648, 27). Similar
beasts
are not rare on mediaeval cathedrals; were these one not
placed
on a religious structure because they were known to be
pagan?
Tangential evidence is to hand in the coat of arms of the
city, a
crowned griffon rampant, adopted only in 1378; and in
those
of a griffon passant adopted by various guilds in the
thirteenth
century (Johnstone 1962, 342): it is the passant
beast,
therefore, which is the earlier form - and one found on
Perugian
tombs, but only from the twelfth or thirteenth century
(ibid.,
339). Indeed, because griffons are a constant feature of
Etruscan
tombs in the region (Johnstone compares the motif of
the
Moneychangers' Guild with a tomb in Tarquinia: ibid., 346),
this
evidence suggests that such tombs came to light and were
used as
exemplars not only for modern tombs, but also for the
very
symbol of the city. The lion might also be from a funerary
source;
lions were a common feature of Romanesque churches, and
some of
them (as at Modena: Rebecchi 1984, 344) are indeed
antique;
and compare a gloss on the Lion of Brunswick, which is
called
colossal: `It is a colossus - that is an object in memory
of
somebody dead, as in the tumuli and statues of the ancients'
(L-B
no. 2544).
The
complexion of the milieu in which our beasts were either
made or
unearthed is illustrated by the undoubtedly mediaeval
figures
of water-carriers on top of the Fontana Maggiore itself
(Nicco
Fasola 1951, pl. 97-9), made in the late thirteenth
century,
perhaps by Giovanni Pisano. These are strongly inspired
by the
antique, and perhaps dependent upon local discoveries of
antiquities.
The triple group is certainly an idea seen
elsewhere
in the Middle Ages (cf. the one set of Patriarchs and
two
sets of Evangelists on the Camposanto, Pisa; also the
`atlante'
theme discussed in Wentzel 1955, 47ff.), but not in
this
form, which must be inspired by images of a funerary
goddess,
perhaps Hecate. The general arrangement, the
double-tucked
chiton, the hair-style with diadem, the
positioning
of the arms (cf. statues of Demeter) and the water
jug
they carry - all declare an antique source, conceivably
something
found in the local cemeteries. The original group need
not
have been of a goddess: compare the similar fourth-century
support
for a sacrificial offering showing dancing maidens as
caryatids,
now in Delphi Museum. The `flexibility' of the
iconography,
and its continuing funerary connections, are seen
in the
use of the motif for the urn of Henry II of France (cf.
Goldberg
1966, pl. 47b, 48a-b). There was arguably a late
mediaeval
fashion for setting antique statues atop modern
fountains:
the Venus in Siena (said to have been discovered when
digging
foundations for a house, and soon to be buried on
Florentine
territory by the decree of 1357, in an attempt to
tranfer
bad luck to the enemy) had been set on the Fonte Gaia;
and the
headless antique statue known as Madonna Verona was
placed,
as already related, on the fountain in Piazza Erbe by
Cansignorio
della Scala in 1368.
The
research of Perry, Demus and others has studied an important
aspect
of the mediaeval display of antique works of art. Much,
however,
remains to be done, for arguably the Venetian material
is
exceptional only because it has survived almost intact into
our own
day. What is more, Venice had no land walls and gates ,
and so
lacked one of the main display sites for sculptural
material.
At other cities, antiquities which once occupied
positions
of prestige similar to that at S. Mark's have been
removed
into museums, thereby destroying part of the meaning
they
once held for their inhabitants. The material exists to
write a
general survey of this fascinating subject, and the
present
author hopes to begin this work by examining the display
of
antiquities on city walls and in public places in mediaeval
Europe.