Pour arriver à gaspiller et à détruire l'inestimable
héritage laissé par la Grèce et par Rome, il avait fallu de longs
siècles d'efforts. (Müntz 1887, 43)


                                 

The scope of the book

This book enquires into what classes of artefacts, from gems to villas, were
available in the West for all or part of the Middle Ages - a period which I
take to be from roughly 500 AD to 1400 AD. It is partly an interpretative
`biography' of various classes of antiquities during that period, and partly an
examination of the circumstances leading to their survival, destruction or
rediscovery. In this context antiquities are defined as structural remains and
objects which have an `artistic' context - that is, sculptural friezes or coins
rather than ploughshares or other utilitarian objects. The survey is not
confined to pagan objects: paleochristian works are included, not simply
because of the revivals of Early Christian work in later centuries (e.g.
Bergman 1974, 171ff.), but also because the Middle Ages sometimes made no clear
distinction between pagan and Christian. Each observation the book contains is
supported by only a few examples (based on documents and other published
material) which could, of course, easily be multiplied by anyone wishing to
pursue particular topics in greater depth than is appropriate in such a broad
survey as this. Background to the earlier Middle Ages is provided by
Ward-Perkins (1984), who discusses changes in the tradition of public building
- one essential measure against which to view the survival of the antique.  

The present work can, however, be no more than an introduction to a subject
which I believe to be important - important because a knowledge of what
happened to antiquities during the Middle Ages must so often be useful in
assessing Renaissance attitudes to what their predecessors had, in effect,
preserved for them, whether by chance or by design. It might provide an
antidote to the all-too-common impression created by students of the
Renaissance that it was their period which (as the name suggests) was the
midwife to the birth of interest in the antique. Even a cursory study of any
period of mediaeval art will show that interest in the usefulness of the
antique had never died.  

The book is restricted to types of art and architecture adopted and popularised
by the Romans, and deals with matters Greek only in so far as Greek material
was imported into Italy by the Romans in growing quantities from Republican
times and highly prized (Waurick 1975; Richter 1982). It is also worth
mentioning that this book is not an attempt to minimise the often strong
Byzantine influences at work in the period (cf. Quintavalle 1964-5, vol 1,
163ff.). With the exception of imports from Byzantium, the exertions of Venice
and a few other trading states, and the great adventure provided by the
Crusades, there appears to have been little trade in antique Greek objects into
Western Europe after Antiquity and before the seventeenth century. The
importation of contemporary material (sometimes in antiquarian style) from the
Byzantine Empire was another matter; and the West was always conscious of the
strength of Greek learning, both religious and secular for, as Erasmus wrote in
a letter to Antony of Bergen in 1501, `we have but a few small streams and
muddy puddles, while they have pure springs and rivers rolling gold'. No doubt
a parallel book could be written dealing with provinces such as Pannonia (cf.
Szekely 1973). But the main reason for restricting this book to the West is
that circumstances in the East were very different: it appears that parts of
the eastern Mediterranean were very prosperous in late Antiquity, and that in
some places the fabric of life continued, accompanied by a decided building
boom: this was the case with Antioch (Brown 1980, 19ff.). Elsewhere, as at
Ephesus, some monuments were well kept and new ones built, while others lay in
ruins for years (Foss 1979, 96ff.).  

Also outside the scope of this book is the broad question of what influence any
finds of antiquities had upon contemporary styles. For, bearing in mind the
antique features of the British crosses (Cramp 1971), of the curious reliefs
from all over the (once) Roman world which Schmitt (1980, 133f.) has dubbed
`random', of relief `stelai' such as that called `of the two architects' of
c. 1200 in Basle Cathedral (Du Colombier 1973, fig. 36), or indeed any
number of European works of the same period, it would be useful to know how
they relate to available antiquities. Mediaeval architects, like the great
fortress builders of the Renaissance, were surely in a prime position to find
antiquities in the course of their work, and it is enticing to suggest that
sculptors engaged on the same project then made use of them. Another question
left unanswered is the broad one of the relationship between antiquities,
fourteenth-century art collecting, and the origins of Renaissance art (cf.
remarks in Alsop 1982, 314ff.).  

As is evident from the bibliography, this study depends to a great extent on
the work of other scholars. As Gibbon wrote of St. Augustine (Book 28), `His
learning is too often borrowed, and his arguments are too often his own.' It is
to that extent a summary of work completed and in progress - a book of the type
of Roberto Weiss's The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity
(Oxford 1969), but for an earlier period.  

I have avoided using footnotes in an attempt to economise on space. Similarly,
I have tried to avoid letting the bibliography get out of hand: the references
in the text are to works I have used in this survey, which tend to be either
the most recent study on the subject, or standard treatments; the reader who
wishes to compile a fuller bibliography on individual subjects can do so
through the bibliographies contained in the works I cite.

The nature of the evidence

Our investigation is hampered by the patchy documentation for the mediaeval
period in general (e.g. Wickham 1981, 6ff. for Italy before AD 1000; Carver
1983 for France), and the dearth of accounts of the discovery of antiquities in
particular. For most classes of objects, we possess no coherent accounts of
what was available at any time during the Middle Ages; but, as Dubourg-Noves
(1980, 325) says of antique tombs, they were incomparably more numerous during
the Middle Ages than later. A similar problem applies to cities, where the
majority of monuments would be concentrated: we lack comprehensive treatments
of their physical history. Lucca is typical, for here there have been no
excavations deliberately to study the city of the high Middle Ages (Belli
Barsali 1973, 461f.). In other words, that author's splendid study was perforce
done wholly through documents - with which, of course, all archaeologists must
develop a close if frequently uneasy liaison. Parma is another case where most
discoveries have been fortuitous. The problem is further complicated by our
lack of knowledge of the confusions of the late antique period, when some
cities disappeared for good, and others - like Naples, Benevento and Capua -
had their walls destroyed (Delogu 1979, 53f., where he estimates that Campania
did not return to urban civilisation before the tenth century).  

What evidence we do possess is therefore of two kinds: written accounts, from
the lives of the saints to straight descriptions; and the results of
archaeological work, which naturally require interpretation. For some areas and
periods we may have historical accounts supported by documents; for others
perhaps the reports of exhaustive modern excavations, or even population
censuses (but not before the late Middle Ages); in some circumstances we might
be able to relate styles of mediaeval artistic production to types of
antiquities which we know to be common in the general locality. It could
conceivably be shown (but not here) that there are links of cause and effect
between various types of evidence: for example, that the changing interest in
antiquities by artists, architects and patrons does indeed follow the curves of
population and prosperity. If this book has any novelty, it is in the attempt
to incorporate the discoveries of archaeology into an historical and
art-historical account, and to weave into these a consideration of economic
factors.  

It is ironical that we would know much more about the mediaeval history of many
sites had archaeologists more frequently paused to record them - on the way
down, that is, to the (in their eyes) much more interesting antique remains
that lay underneath. Our knowledge of actual sites depends on the skill with
which they have been excavated, and the date at which this was done: very
little `mediaeval archaeology' was practised before the Second World War,
especially on Roman sites with mediaeval layers: `All too often the upper
archaeological levels, formed as the cities and rural dwellings of the Roman
Empire fell into decay, were simply shovelled away in the pursuit of the
monumental architecture and associated objects of the classical period' (Hodges
1983, 12; cf. Cramp 1970/2, 34; Février 1974, 43; Ward-Perkins 1984). This
is now changing, and the digs of the next ten years (cf. Blake 1983) should
yield much information about the re-use of antiquities during our period. Thus
Frantz (1965, 194) protests about the lacunae in our knowledge of Christian
Athens: `The excavation of the Asklepieion in 1876, with the single purpose of
exposing the remains of the classical period and recovering ancient
inscriptions and other marbles from the later masonry, effectively destroyed
most of the architectural evidence for the date of the construction of the
Early Christian church' - although we know more about mediaeval Athens than
about most other sites (Setton 1955). A similar protest could be repeated for
sites in Italy (cf. Carandini 1982, 7ff.) and Gaul. One honourable exception is
found in Greece - namely the careful analysis of Corinth in the Middle Ages
(Scranton 1957). This is perhaps the only complete study to date of the history
of a site, discovered through archaeological investigation, which runs from
Antiquity to modern times, although other, shorter ones are now appearing, such
as Foss's general account of post-classical Ephesus (Foss 1979).  

But with the recent development of interest in all periods of the Middle Ages
on the part of historians and archaeologists - the former using archival
material and comparing it with the surviving landscape, the latter analysing
the various layers of material remains and carrying out programmes of
exploration - a `biography' of antiquities becomes possible: twenty years ago
it could not have been attempted, unless its author felt willing to dispense
with archaeological evidence almost completely. The result of such an attempt
will always be an unsatisfactory patchwork, because the evidence is itself
patchy: a lot is known about certain sites, and almost nothing about others
which would seem to be important, but which have not been excavated. We know
little about trading patterns and population levels; and, naturally, many of
those centres about which we would like information, because of their
importance in the ancient world, are still inhabited and therefore impossible
to dig, or with their antiquities jumbled together as a direct result of
centuries of prosperity.  

For all these reasons, the standards of `proof' on which this book is forced by
the nature of its raw material to rely are not those which would be considered
acceptable by a historian working in later and better documented centuries. The
inevitable result is that the coverage is unequal, whether in terms of actual
remains, digs or documents: it is largely restricted to the territories
occupied by the Romans in Italy and Gaul, with some excursions into Spain and
Britain. Probably the imbalance in the Western provinces reflects genuine
regional differences, because some provinces were less Romanised than others
and we might reasonably expect the range and quantity of Roman antiquities to
reflect such disparities.
 

The antique in the Middle Ages: other approaches

The possibility of continued currency of Roman antiquities into the Middle Ages
is clearly relevant to scholars other than the nostalgic Romanist: it raises
the question of the impact of such survivals on the material culture not only
of the medieval period itself but also of the Renaissance, the very name of
which proclaims a new interest in antiquity. Indeed, the Middle Ages are
crucial for anybody wishing to assess the availability of antique materials in
the Renaissance, and a closer study of the earlier period might indicate how
the Renaissance differed in terms of the antiquities at its disposal: was it
different in its very nature from its forbears, or simply in the quantities of
material of which it disposed? Did it have more of these, or fewer?  

It is a truism that, throughout the many centuries that we call the Middle
Ages, an interest in pagan and early Christian antiquities never completely
died out: see, notably, Adhémar's Influences antiques dans l'art du
moyen âge français (1939), which studies the connections between
antique artefacts and mediaeval productions. The key word is influences,
for the use of antique forms does not necessarily reflect recent discoveries of
antiquities. As Kitzinger remarks (1982, 668) about antique influence on
Byzantine art (and the point is equally valid for the West), `the chain of
possible intermediaries lengthens as the centuries progress and often it is
uncertain how far a given artist went back in this chain ... The later the
point in time the greater the range of possibilities.' The implication is that
a revival does not require direct antique models. But how can one judge the
difference between survival and revival (Weitzmann 1978; Wessel 1979 for
Byzantium)?  

The centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire are punctuated by a series of
`revivals' - of quickenings of interest in and imitation of elements of ancient
culture - which, although each was short-lived in itself, nevertheless prepared
the ground for the next. The last of these renascences was the Renaissance
proper, the cultural ramifications of which lasted for several centuries. Erwin
Panofsky's Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (2nd ed. 1965) is
the most thoroughly documented of those books which describe and evaluate these
various revivals and plot the course of their rise and decline (cf. comments in
Romanini 1976). His main concern, made clear in the title of his first chapter
(`"Renaissance" - self-definition or self-deception?') is to demonstrate that
the phenomenon of revivals really does exist; his technique is to provide proof
by examining the earlier revivals, some of which were no doubt very sketchy and
sporadic. The title of Panofsky's final chapter (`Rinascimento
dell'antichità: the fifteenth century') makes it clear that the last of
these revivals is the most important.  

Panofsky's book is a study in intellectual history. He shows how the very idea
of antiquity changes, through justly renowned expositions of the processes of
disjunction and union between classical form and classical content. Their
triumphant union in fifteenth-century Italy provides, incidentally, a means of
distinguishing Northern art from that of the South. Because of Panofsky's
approach, the works he illustrates, together with their antique exemplars, are
used to explain either iconography or stylistics - that is, either a greater or
lesser understanding of classical iconography, or a greater or lesser grasp (or
assimilation) of classical style (summary, 106ff.; cf. Settis 1984B, 315ff.).
He charts important episodes in the development of the human mind between
Antiquity and the Renaissance. However, because intellectual history is wedded
to ideas rather than objects, it does not necessarily help us with an
investigation of what antiquities were available during the Middle Ages - but
only with an explanation of the new context given to antique `traditions' and
`influences.'  

Frequently, of course, we are confronted with works of mediaeval art which make
use of antique visual sources (Oakeshott 1959), but are unable to say exactly
what those sources were: this is, for example, the case with Giotto (Kruft
1971; Viani 1984) or Andrea Pisano (Moskowitz 1981). Thus Kitzinger, writing of
the importance of late antique art as a vehicle for conveying the Hellenistic
heritage in Byzantine art, writes that `Increasingly, one is led to wonder
about the extent to which not only sculptures and works of the minor arts but
also large scale paintings and mosaics (including floor mosaics) from that
period were still preserved centuries later and were studied by Byzantine
artists, bearing in mind that there was no such thing as an archaeological
excavation' (1981, 668). Unfortunately, however, the truth is that we do not
possess enough material for a balanced assessment of the place of the antique
in mediaeval art, and even where the evidence is available it has never been
properly examined (Du Colombier 1973, 127, writing on models for sculpture).
Until such work is done, our perspective must be incorrect: Romanini (1976,
206) rightly complains at the narrowness of any view which sees the Middle Ages
as darkness occasionally illuminated by glimmering of the antique past, which
considers the period not according to its originality, but only according to
its capacity to conserve or restore the antique.  

Such a dearth of material often forces us to discuss antiquities only through
their imitations and adaptations, because the source work in the equation is
missing. Only infrequently (as for example in the suggested imitation of
Trajan's Column by the designer of the Bayeux Tapestry: Werckmeister 1976,
535ff.) do we possess both model and derivation. To this should be added the
realisation that imitation is infrequently pose for pose, or motif for motif.
Laurie Fusco has recently (1979) tried to define precisely how Antonio
Pollaiuolo uses the antique: he `did not prosaically copy whole ancient
compositions. He selected figures with a clear axis ... ; he varied the pattern
of pose with reversals and pivots ... Having adapted a pattern from antiquity,
he might resort to it again, with further reversals or pivots.' My
investigation of Donatello's sources suggests that his approach was just as
complicated (Greenhalgh 1982, 200ff.). Are there any indications that the
mediaeval artist's use of the antique is less subtle or involved?  

Scholars agree that revivals of interest in antiquity did indeed occur, but
they rarely explain where the inspirational pieces came from. Alsop (1982,
317f.) sensibly rejects the `intellectual climate' as an explanation for the
prominence of the antique in the Renaissance, and instead suggests art
collecting as the key impulse: research may prove him correct, but it must also
explain the source of the material. Such attitudes are rare, however, and it is
a commonplace to read of `traditional' treatments of certain themes (such as
the Entombment or the imago clipeata), the assumption being that the motif is
handed on from generation to generation like the baton in a relay race (e.g.
Graeven 1902); words frequently employed include `themes', `antique tradition',
`rebirth', `legacy' and `survival' (cf. Crozet 1951). Such accounts are
convenient, but they cannot be called explanations, for they gloss over the
need to address the matter of sources - even if they frequently enshrine the
unstated belief that contact with antiquities was rare and, particularly before
the twelfth century, confined largely to ivories, coins and a few manuscripts
(which are even used to explain the antique form of some mediaeval capitals:
Jalabert 1965, 37f, 42). To invoke imports is another explanation for Western
knowledge of antique motifs: thus Colin (1947, 87) can find no proof that
antique metalwork survived into the Carolingian period, and therefore explains
the transmission of pagan themes and antique forms by the importation of
Byzantine objects.  

It is conceivable that most metalwork in the West was indeed melted down. But
what about frescoes, which have no intrinsic value?  The evidence for the
availability of antique frescoes in the Middle Ages is admittedly weak and
tangential, but surely worth consideration: one clue is the imitation of the
antique in early twelfth-century Roman art, which employs paleochristian motifs
so directly and precisely that there can be no question of manuscripts or
ivories being the main intermediaries (Toubert 1970). Yet even when the subject
under discussion is the Domus Aurea, as in Dacos's excellent book (1969), there
is little more than the acknowledgment that artists earlier than 1480 (the date
given for the discovery) were sporadically influenced by other frescoes in
other locations (ibid., 4); and this in spite of frequent remarks about the
availability of other antiquities - sculptural remains for the carvers of
rinceaux and candelabra, or funerary altars for artists in Siena and then
Urbino, who were interested in monstrous forms (ibid., 57f.; cf. the balanced
suggestion in Schulz 1962, 40f. that Pinturicchio's work is inspired by both
antique texts and actual antique survivals). Dacos's conclusion is that artists
who imitated grotesques had inherited such tastes from their Gothic forbears -
but that it was an interest in sculptural remains from antiquity which prepared
the way for study of antique frescoes. However, when we turn to Gothic
grotesques, we find that these sometimes incorporate elements which are
probably taken directly from the antique - such as the group studied by
Pächt, for which he suggests a Bolognese origin (1943); and since the
fashion cannot be traced further back in the history of manuscript
illumination, the conclusion must be that the artists drew inspiration from
antique relief sculpture.  

With some revivals, such as the Renaissance itself (or those periods of intense
Roman interest in things Greek: Rizzo 1947), it can easily be demonstrated that
exemplars were readily available to act as catalysts. We might suspect a
similar situation in various periods of the Middle Ages, bearing in mind that
the restricted nature of urban living - civilisation - may have been the
controlling factor in the ephemeral nature of revivals, rather than a shortage
of works to imitate. We know that the population of mediaeval Europe, at least
in areas once colonised by the Romans, often lived in ex-Roman urban or villa
sites, travelled along the old roads, re-used their cemeteries and their
buildings, and re-worked their land. And although he never studies in depth how
antiquities came to be available, the fact that they did is fundamental to
Hamann-Maclean's admirable survey (1949-50), as it is to that of Hans Wentzel
(1955).

 

Objects not ideas

For all these reasons, this book takes a much simpler path than does
Panofsky's, and bypasses Romanini's criticism because it does not weigh
mediaeval art in the balance and find it wanting: instead of dealing with the
realm of ideas (which, though often undoubtedly potent, are frequently
self-propelling), it concerns itself with objects - with the survivals and
rediscoveries from the ancient world, both pagan and Christian, which were
available during the mediaeval centuries. It is not, therefore, an
investigation of mediaeval imitation of the antique, which is frequent,
particularly during the aptly named Romanesque period (cf. Crozet 1956), but
only of the quantity and range of antiquities available. Of course, ideas can
never be ignored completely: we must, for example, always remember the vision
of ancient glory nurtured by classically minded men of the impoverished
mediaeval West - a vision which could be seen active and flourishing in the
wonders of the Byzantine Empire (Frankl 1960, 198f.).   

A comparison with later centuries (when scholars have the luxury of arguing
just which Small Herculaneum Woman was used by Rubens, or David) highlights the
dearth of contemporary written accounts or other evidence which might help with
our subject - a dearth which probably accounts for the lack of attention it has
been accorded by scholars. Nevertheless, the difficulties should be tackled,
because the Middle Ages form as important a link between ourselves and the
ancient world as the Romans did in their appreciation of the art of the Greeks
(Pollitt 1978, especially 170ff.). Continuity of interest in the antique
throughout the Middle Ages cannot be proved, but the thesis that the
Renaissance was impelled to investigate further the works of antique art and
architecture preserved or disinterred for them during the Middle Ages is worthy
of investigation.  

The process continued into Renaissance times, when there are more references to
antiquities, including narrative accounts of finds during wall and ditch
construction, such as Vasari's on the finding of the Chimaera at Arezzo, or
Berlette's on the discovery of a villa (?) and statues during work at Soissons
(Enaud 1979, note 18). Even further north, the building of fortifications in
1608 by the river Escaut brought forth some marbles, including (perhaps) an
urn, and some pottery, all of which was kept and, at the end of the century,
carefully drawn by Louis van Caukercken (Rantz 1979, note 2, pl. 10). Finds
were made in similar circumstances during the Middle Ages, as will be
demonstrated; but we usually know of them by inference rather than by
contemporary description.  

Antique artefacts have always been available in varying quantities, and it can
surely be argued that the quantity of them before the eyes of the Middle Ages -
from pins to villas - may well have been greater than that known at any later
date, at least until the blossoming of archaeology. Indeed, fascination with
the antique, often mixed with a belief in magical properties (Faral 1967,
307ff.), is a regular feature in mediaeval literature. Just as deep ploughing
has destroyed more sites in the past hundred  years than were (perhaps)
affected in the previous millennium, so the urban expansion of the past three
hundred years has destroyed urban and suburban properties, including mosaics,
by the score. Again, it is accepted that the monuments of ancient Rome suffered
much more at the hands of the church-building popes of the Renaissance and
Baroque periods than ever they did in the Middle Ages; indeed, the documents
for cartage of antique materials for the new S. Peter's are often explicit,
both in terms of `quarries' and quantities: the latter were enormous, and there
seem to have been few sites in Rome which were left alone (Cascioli 1921).  

Another problem with any mediaeval accounts of the finding of antiquities is
how to interpret their vagueness. Very frequently, the actual material has been
lost for centuries, so how can we discover what exemplars were available to
artists, and what factors might have influenced their choice? Can we ever
detect a policy in the use of certain antiquities rather than others and, if
so, decide the reasons for which that policy was developed? How can the
apparent rise and fall of interest in antiquities be explained? How can we
distinguish between sources which simply survived and were reinterpreted, and
those which were uncovered perhaps in the century of reinterpretation? In other
words, how do we weigh the relative importance of survival, with all that
implies of formulated traditions, against the novelty of revival or discovery?
Perhaps by concentrating on objects rather than ideas, disputes of a `chicken
and egg' nature (did the object provoke the interest in it? Or did the interest
lead to the recovery of the object?) can be kept to a minimum.  

This approach should also provide a better background against which other
scholars may review the revival of interest in the antique which is such a
feature of the Quattrocento: for if Panofsky sees the intellectual origins of
the Renaissance in several preceding generations of classical revival, then any
examination of the context of those revivals will enable us to compare the
materials available to the Renaissance with those available earlier. One might,
for example, examine the traditional Early/High Renaissance opposition between
relief sources on the one hand and three-dimensional sources on the other - an
`explanation' for stylistic differences beloved of art-historians since Vasari
- or perhaps the widespread belief that most Ottonian `revivalist' styles are
dependent on objects often no larger than ivories or miniatures; although it is
undeniable that small objects were sometimes the models for larger ones - for
example, panels of the tomb of the abbé Arnoult in Saint-Père,
Chartres, c. 1220-30, which derive from antique gems (Coche de la
Ferté 1966, 445ff.).
  

The organisation of the book

                        
Were we dealing with the Cinquecento or Seicento, a
straightforward catalogue would be suitable, listing the
antiquities we know were available, with details of when and
where they were found, who owned them, and early comment about
them. This, indeed, is the approach of the Warburg Institute and 
New York Institute of Fine Arts Census of Antique Works of Art
Known to the Renaissance (which has now been extended to include
Antique Architecture, using the material at the Biblioteca
Hertziana, Rome). Such an approach is possible because many
antiquities to be listed in such a census have been prized and
protected since the Renaissance. Unfortunately, the same cannot
be said of conditions during the Middle Ages: works which might
have been admired and even imitated at one time could have
been lost subsequently through war or neglect - as could, in
their turn, an unknowable quantity of imitations. We might be
left with mediaeval works of art which are clearly closely
dependent upon antiquities, but for which the actual sources are
no longer available. Because we are surveying the whole range of
antiquities and how they survived or were rediscovered, we shall
frequently study articles which were not particularly prized
until at least the nineteenth century - such as the plainer
types of pottery and wall painting, terracottas, or mosaics.
Lacking techniques of preservation, earlier centuries were
constantly faced with the stark choice between destruction (in
the case of frescoes) and refurbishing (as with mosaics); thus
reuse has left us with much architectural sculpture, but few
frescoes.
 

This book cannot therefore be a catalogue; rather, it
surveys the survival of Roman antiquities from the end of the
Empire until the fifteenth century, paying attention to the
circumstances which aided preservation or encouraged
destruction. The canvas is progressively narrowed by moving from
a description of the landscape to a treatment of small movable
antiquities. `Fixed' antiquities which are large are treated
before small ones which can be moved from place to place: thus
town walls precede temples, and statues precede gems. Hovering
between the fixed and the movable are those objects - such as
inscriptions, or sarcophagi - which were intended to remain in
one place, but have subsequently been moved for some reason;
spolia used as building materials are naturally dealt with in
this section.
 

Woven into the text is a thesis which argues that it is the
centuries of population expansion of the later Middle Ages
(rather than those of relative stagnation like the Renaissance)
which are crucial for the discovery if not always the
appreciation of antique art; such expansion, when occurring over
antique sites, brought to light antiquities in two main ways: in
Gaul, the demolition of sections of Gallo Roman wall revealed
antiquities built into them; in Italy, where there was not in
the later Imperial period the large-scale wall building which
occured in Gaul (although there are exceptions), it was the
antique extra-mural cemeteries which were a focus of
discoveries. And in both Gaul and Italy, the need for stone and
marble to serve the expanding population provoked far-flung
searches for antique spolia.
 

We must begin, however, with an account of how the Romans of
the late Empire sought to protect works of earlier centuries
from would-be builders in search of materials, and then proceed
to survey the cultural landscape, so to speak, which the Middle
Ages inherited.