News from Hadrian’s World
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| the Madonna di Loreto and Trajan's Column, from Piazza Venezia |
I’m winding up my manuscript on Emulation to deliver to the publisher. It’s been rewarding writing the book, largely because I have learned
so much about the nature of emulation, and learning about it has been fueled by
trying to describe it in action (as I see it), in historical examples of
painting, sculpture, and architecture. I plan on posting examples of the kind
of explications I’ve made in the book as a series, at least once a month, until
the publication date in year or so. I’ll welcome comments, especially those
that will help hone the argument before it’s too late!
But
a recent news story has amplified my excitement about one of the book’s
speculations, and I’m posting here a trial run of an interpretation of some newly
unveiled archeological excavations around the Piazza Venezia (stories in
Italian at Corrriere
della Sera, in English at The
Guardian).
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| Trajan's Column and fragment of a column from the temple's portico (?) |
One
of the examples of emulation that I’ve treated is the Imperial Fora in Rome.
The Fora seem to be classic cases of urban architectural emulation, as Caesar
rivaled the Roman Forum, then Augustus Caesar’s, etc., culminating in the Forum
of Trajan, the ne plus ultra of the fora, but also a case apart. In the
emulative spirit, I tackled a vexing aspect of Trajan’s Forum, the fact that no
temple has been found (presumably beyond the Column, wherein were interred the
emperor’s ashes). It is said Hadrian designed the temple posthumously for his
revered predecessor, and that it was the building of which he was most
proud—which is saying something for the patron/architect of the Pantheon.
My
insight is that the reason the temple has not been found, even though it
presumably would have been on axis and thus partly under what is today open
ground (i.e. relatively easy to excavate), is that it is in fact under the
Renaissance church of the Madonna di Loreto. Antonio da Sangallo’s round (or
really octagonal encased in a square) church is the largest, complete
Renaissance centrally planned church in Rome. It is twinned by the eighteenth-century
church of Ss. Nome di Maria, about which I will have more to say in a future
post.
The
reason no one to my knowledge has conjectured this is that the church is not on
the axis of the Forum. And it is round. My speculations are based on the architecture
we associate with Hadrian, his penchant for round or centrally-planned
buildings and complexes, and his villa’s capacity to reconcile disparate axes.
What if Hadrian’s temple to Trajan was
round, was oriented perpendicularly toward the Forum’s axis, and was encased in
a partially encircling precinct wall (not unlike Bernini’s church at Ariccia)?
The plan here shows a conjectural reconstruction, with a peripteral colonnade
to address the fact that the fragment of a 2m diameter column shaft of green marble
lying near Trajan’s Column has always been assumed to belong to the portico of
the temple, and its size implies an unusually large temple. But if the church,
relatively modest in size, is built over the cella, then the temple’s scale
could be increased by the colonnade wrapping it, a precursor to the Temple of
Venus at Baalbek. See the plan.
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| the recently revealed curved wall edging the auditoria |
But
here’s where it gets really interesting, and topical. In recent weeks the
Italian press has covered the unveiling of the excavations near the Loreto
church for the building of a new metro line. And what I saw for the first time
in person last Friday was a part of what has been found, supposedly the site of
an auditorium of Hadrian’s (used especially for philosophical discourses). The
most exciting part for me is a curved bit of wall that seems to be centered on
the Loreto church, and it has been described as part of a street wall. Which,
to my mind, seems to confirm my conjectural reconstruction of the precinct wall
of the presumed temple.
Find
the site at 41°53'45.61" N
12°29'01.10" E
Note
that the orientations of the buildings beyond the Trajanic complex are roughly
north-south, parallel and perpendicular to the ancient Via Flaminia/Via Lata
(the modern Via del Corso); this is, of course, also the orientation of the
monumental complexes of the whole Campus Martius.
As
the drawings for my Forum plan have evolved only over the last few of months while
illustrating the evolving manuscript, it seems downright providential that this
new evidence has come to light just now. I would welcome any constructive observations,
including illustrated ones, that can help make sense of what seems to be the
beginning of a whole new understanding of how the Imperial Fora plugged into
their contexts, and even more importantly, the spirit of adventure in the classical tradition that Hadrian's architecture represents.
And, at the start of the
new year, I wish everyone who strives to emulate
Buon Anno
Nuovo!
