Palazzo Massimo alle Terme: the stoicism of the Hellenistic Boxer

Right by Rome’s Termini central station is one of my favourite museums of ancient Roman art, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme (home to these spectacular Roman frescoes). Palazzo Massimo is part of the National Roman Museum which has four locations (can a museum have branches?) which are all super, and the 10 euro entrance ticket gives you access to all of them over a three day period so it’s also jolly good value.

One of the museum’s too often overlooked superstars recently returned from a trip to the Metropolitan Museum in New York where he was received with great pomp. But you can usually have him all to yourself, a long forgotten hero in Room 7.

The Boxer at the site of his excavation, 1885

The Boxer was found in 1885 as large sections of the Quirinal Hill were being cleared to make way for the building boom of the new capital city. As entire neighbourhoods were being built to house the ministries, and the mandarins, which were the cogs in the new machines of state, archeological work was hurried. But as areas of the former Baths of Constantine were being cleared the extraordinary figure revealed himself to have been sitting, patiently, under the rubble and mud and filth of centuries.

The archeologist who was responsible for saving so much of what might have otherwise been lost in the rush to build the new capital, Rodolfo Lanciani, was present at the excavation:

“I have witnessed, in my long career in the active field of archeology, many discoveries; I have experienced surprise after surprise; I have sometimes and most unexpectedly met with real masterpieces; but I have never felt such an extraordinary impression as the one created by the sight of this magnificent specimen of a semi-barbaric athlete, coming slowly out of the ground, as if awakening from a long repose after his gallant fights.”

This glorious 1st century BC bronze is one of the most poignant sculptures I can think of in Rome. At first we see a muscular figure seated in apparent relaxation, his hands bound indicating that he is a boxer. But look closer and his head, turned towards something we cannot see, tells us this is no triumphant athlete. His cheek is split and his head is bleeding from very recent wounds, superimposed upon older injuries, the details engraved and picked out in applied copper.

His nose has been broken and re-broken, and his misshapen ears bear the signs of multiple fights. This is no generic exaltation of athleticism but an extraordinary psychological study of an ageing boxer nearing the end of his career, as we see him called back into the ring once again.

A guided tour of Palazzo Massimo would offer a wealth of riches for anyone interested in deepening their understanding of Imperial Rome. It could also be combined with other sites on the Esquiline Hill, such as what remains of the Baths of Diocletian.

Palazzo Massimo alle Terme,

piazza del Cinquecento

9am – 6pm closed Mondays

10 euros

 

Paradise regained: the painted garden of Livia at Palazzo Massimo

In a city filled with extraordinary works of ancient art, perhaps one of the most breathtaking is one of the least visited and one of my favourites. After visiting the “Monsters” exhibition (excellent, go) at Palazzo Massimo today I went to the top floor to say hello to the dining room of Livia, wife of the Emperor Augustus.

Triclinium paintings from the villa of Livia at Prima Porta, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme

The room was discovered at the Villa of Livia ad gallinas albas (by the white hen) in the area now known as Prima Porta on 30th April of 1863, just ten days after the celebrated statue of Augustus had also been found close by. The existence and location of the villa is well-documented, amongst others by Pliny and Cassius Dio. They tell us that its name came from a white hen which fell, alive, from the clutches of an eagle into Livia’s lap. The hen, it is said, held a branch of laurel in its beak which was planted and grew with such vigour that it would provide the wreaths for the triumphs of generations to come.

The report of the Pontifical Ministry of Public Works (Rome was still, just, under papal control) recorded that a room

“with painted walls in good condition representing fruit trees and flowers with various birds. The ceiling had entirely collapsed and the stucco decoration which once decorated the vault was found among the rubble which filled the room.”

detail, triclinium of Livia, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme

Such was the state of disrepair of the site that in 1951 the drastic decision was taken to detach the frescoes, and in 1998 they found their way to their present collocation in a room built to the dimensions of the original.

Painted c. 30-20 BC, Livia’s triclinium (dining rooms were so called for the couches arranged in groups of three) was partially underground, a common setting for rooms which were to be used in the scorching summer months. Instead of looking out onto the real gardens of the villa, a garden of the imagination was painted on its walls, just beyond a painted perimeter wall.

detail, triclinium of Livia, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme

The scene is a natural impossibility: fruiting pomegranates and quinces jostle with flowering irises and camomile; palms, pines, and oaks flourish while partridges, doves, and goldfinches feast on their fruit and rest on their branches. Only one bird does not fly free, enclosed in a gilded cage resting on the low wall.

detail showing bird cage, triclinium of Livia, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.

The scene is one of timeless and exotic fecundity; each species frozen in its own moment of glory. We are, the painting tells us, ensconced in the perpetual spring of the glorious reign of Augustus.

detail showing partially eaten pomegranate, triclinium of Livia, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme

A guided tour of Palazzo Massimo would offer a wealth of riches for anyone interested in deepening their understanding of Imperial Rome. It could also be combined with other sites on the Esquiline Hill, such as what remains of the Baths of Diocletian.

National Roman Museum

Palazzo Massimo alle Terme

Largo di Villa Peretti

Tues – Sun 9am – 6pm

10 euros

A foray to the Centrale Montemartini

Last week amid a maelstrom of tours all over the city I spent a morning “off” scootering to the Ufficio Tributario of Rome: the office that deals with fines. Rome is a place where fines are a part of life’s expenses. Sometimes one needs to be reminded that it isn’t all wisteria and ruins, shadowy churches and solemn delicatessens. It’s also relentless bureaucracy enforced with a fervour at odds with the popular non-Italian view of Italian laissez-faire.

So there I was  at the Ufficio Tributario – which as a title does have a rather “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” air to it – where fines are disputed and re-disputed. A place where the length of the languid queue is the stuff of modern Roman legend.

Since you ask mine was a parking fine which I had paid in full, and on time, in 2006. So I was somewhat startled to receive a demand for a vastly increased sum; interest had accrued upon interest, fines for non-payment upon fines for non-payment. All I had to do was find the receipt. From seven years ago. Spurred on by the injustice of the whole thing, and against all odds I, eventually, did find the magic piece of paper.

Not a scene you’ll find in any guide books…

Having taken my ticket (“59 people ahead of you”) I took advantage of the location of this bleak office filled with hordes of disconsolate faces waiting for their numbers to be called. A quick bit of arithmetic told me that I had at least an hour to trot across the road to the Centrale Montemartini, an annexe of the Capitoline Museums in the former Montemartini power plant. Sculptures are displayed alongside the early twentieth century machinery of the plant, the juxtaposition is splendid and, what’s more, and just between you and me: there’s never anybody there.

The Engine Room, Centrale Montemartini

One of the best things about being licensed as a guide in Rome is free entry to museums and archeological sites. To pop into a familiar museum and look at a couple of things is a wonderful luxury.

This time the piece which struck me was one I didn’t remember seeing before. A small bronze goat dating to the late 6th/early 5th century BC and found at a sanctuary dedicated to the Roman funerary goddess Nenia, the personification of funerary laments. This was on the Esquiline Hill, not far from the central railway station, an area then outside the boundaries of the city where, the rules of the Roman religion stipulated, the remains of the dead were to be dealt with.

goat, bronze, late sixth/early fifth century BC. Found Sacellum Nenia, Esquiline

The goat is tiny, smaller than my hand, its scale seeming to emphasise its almost painfully rich detail. This quality suggests that it was made in Greece, or perhaps at Tarentum where the fronds of its beard, the grooves in its horns, the angle of its fetlocks and the forms of its hoofs were all moulded by hands which have been dead for two and a half millennia. Hands which made a piece which found its way across the Italian peninsula to be left as an offering to Nenia outside the walls of Rome. Before eventually concluding its journey at a museum in a former thermoelectric plant across from the Ufficio Tributario.

Where I then returned, feeling sanguine, the fine firmly put in perspective after my foray into the past, to be told that all was well and my debt was to be “extinguished”.

 

Centrale Montemartini

via Ostiense 106

9 am – 7 pm, closed Mondays. 6.50 euros, 15 euros for a combined ticket with the Capitoline Museums.

 

Roman Christian-ness or Christian Roman-ness? The Apse Mosaics of Santa Pudenziana

I have recently been in a mosaic phase, as mentioned in my last post. My mosaic phases are cyclical – all that glittering gold in the gloaming is so wonderfully atmospheric – but this one began last month when watching a BBC documentary about the Dark Ages (specifically this one). It reminded me I had only been to Ravenna once, aged sixteen on a school trip. I remember being impressed but little else. To be honest I probably wasn’t concentrating as much as I should have been. So I earmarked a couple of free days and hopped on a train to explore 5th and 6th century mosaics.

Orthodox Baptistery, Ravenna. Mosaics mid-5th century

The Orthodox Baptistery (also known as the Neonian Baptistery) set me thinking about apostles shown, somewhat ironically given the treatment the Empire meted out to the early Christians, in the opulent togas of Roman senators.

Senatorial apostles, detail, Orthodox Baptistery, Ravenna

It also has some glorious Roman architectural elements, for example here framing the hetiomasia, the empty throne which awaits Christ on the day of Judgement.

Hetiomasia, detail, Orthodox Baptistery, Ravenna

When I came back to Rome, my appetite whetted and ready for more, I returned to some mosaics here in Rome of roughly the same period with a new perspective. The oldest of these is at the church of Santa Pudenziana, now the church of Rome’s Filippino community (Pudenziana was declared patron of the Philippines by the Conquistador Miguel López de Legaspi). She is a poorly documented figure, indeed her very existence is questionable. Believed to have been the sister of Santa Prassede (whose church is on the other side of Santa Maria Maggiore, and about which I wrote this), the sisters were the daughters of a Roman senator called Pudens. He is said to have harboured St Peter at his house on this spot. Nearly a century after Peter is said to have stayed here (c. 60 AD), the house was replaced by a bath complex, which was itself subsequently partially incorporated into the basilica.

Tucked away behind Santa Maria Maggiore, it contains the earliest major Christian mosaic decoration in Rome. Despite major and multiple remodellings in the intervening sixteen centuries, the church’s ancient foundation is attested to by the fight of steps which leads one significantly below the nineteenth century street level.

Once inside, the apse mosaic beckons. It dates to the church’s construction under Pope Innocent I (402-417) and offers a glimpse into the very origins of Christian art. If earlier Christian decorations had been largely restricted to funerary chapels in the catacombs and sarcophagi, commissioned by relatively humble patrons, the decree of Theodosius of 380 saw Christianity declared the only religion of state. This marked a major shift in every aspect of Roman culture, including art: patronage was now in the hands of the very wealthy, and the expensive art of mosaic was at the disposal of a Church which now had an institutional role.

Apse mosaic, Santa Pudenziana

Christ is enthroned in the centre of the scene. He wears a toga of gold and purple, both colours associated with Imperial power, and is shown bearded. This marks a dramatic departure from earlier depictions (such as the Good Shepherd at the catacombs of Sts Peter and Marcellinus) where Christ is a fair, clean shaven, and youthful figure. Here institutional recognition of the Church sees him imbued with a new gravitas.

Christ, detail, apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana

The scene appears to be set in the atrium of a grand Roman house. With his left hand Christ holds a book, on which is inscribed “DOMINUS CONSERVATOR ECCLESIAE PUDENTIANAE” (Lord protect the church of Pudenziana), while his right hand is raised in a gesture of benediction. Six apostles are seated on either side. Robed in the togas of Roman noblemen and senators, they emphasise the dynamic nature of the scene by turning to one another and gesturing vehemently.

Sts Peter (to the left) and St. Paul (to the right) are closest to Christ. Behind them St Prassede is in the act of placing a crown upon the head of Peter, and St Pudenziana does the same behind St Paul.

Santa Pudenziana crowning St Peter, detail, apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana

The faces of the women follow faithfully in the expressive tradition of Hellenistic art, the flush of their cheeks, the parting of their hair and the generous folds of their robes tangible in their realism. In the background the roofs of a Roman cityscape stretch into the distance, just the kind of view which would have been seen on the walls of the villas of the Roman haut-bourgeoisie, for example this fresco from Boscoreale, near Pompeii.

Cityscape from the Boscoreale frescoes, 1st century. Metropolitan Museum, New York

This lower part of the scene could show an orator instead of a god. The discussion might be one of earthly legislation instead of the divine. The language and hierarchy of Roman art has been transplanted in the service of the new religion of the State. However, look up and the mystical nature of the subject matter is clear. Above Christ a jewelled cross floats amid fiery clouds, itself a bombastic symbol of triumph, another thoroughly Roman concept. On either side, heavily damaged by later remodelling, are the winged symbols of the evangelists; this is no earthly Imperial cityscape, we are told, this is the new Jerusalem.

Santa Pudenziana could be incorporated into a walk focussing on early Christian art on the Esquiline

Santa Pudenziana,
via Urbana 160

Open 9am-12noon, 4.30-7pm

The Auditorium of Maecenas

I was delighted to be asked to lead the first in Context Travel’s Rome series of “Tours in the Public Interest” last month at the Auditorium of Maecenas. It embodies the idea behind Context’s initiave which seeks to draw under-visited sites to public attention. In a city where a few places are so heavily visited, a panoply of gems are entirely overlooked; hidden behind railings, and only open to the public by appointment, the Auditorium is the kind of site that Rome residents can unwittingly walk past for years.

The “Auditorium” was discovered during the major building works which followed Rome’s creation as capital of the new Italian state in 1870. The Esquiline hill rose above the overcrowded and filthy winding streets of the medieval and Renaissance city. The site of the new Termini railway station – the very cutting edge of nineteenth century technology – it was the ideal site to house the new machines of state. Government buildings and ministeries grew up across the hill, and a sparkling new quartiere, centred around the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele (named for the new King) was hurriedly constructed to house the senior civil servants and mandarins piloted in from the north of Italy to set the wheels of the new bureaucracy in motion.

In 1874, as work to widen via Merulana and create the Largo Leopardi was underway, a partially underground structure came to light. Identified as one of the pavilions of the vast gardens of Maecenas, it was spoken of as an Auditorium. Maecenas was an independently wealthy scion of a noble family which vaunted its Etruscan roots. He served as a close advisor and ally of Augustus, and was also a great patron of the arts and it is in this role that he is chiefly remembered. He is a key figure in the formation of a cultural mood which characterizes, and indeed can be said to have in part sustained, the Augustan age.

Maecenas presenting Augustus with the Liberal Arts, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1743. The Hermitage, St Petersburg.

His was one of the grandest of the elaborate villa complexes which spread across vast estates on the edges of town, and the first to develop on the Esquiline hill. Spread across the Esquiline, the complex was a patchwork of formal gardens, of partially open courtyards, and enclosed structures.

Cornucopia of Greek manufacture, 1st century BC. It once decorated the gardens of Maecenas. Capitoline Museums.

It was here that Maecenas’ entourage of poets gathered. At the heart of his circle was the poet Virgil, whose poem “The Aeneid” best expresses the spirit of Maecenas’ patronage as a fundamental tool in Octavian’s rise to his reign as Augustus. Perhaps commissioned by Augustus himself, in 12 books it details the meandering journey across the Mediterranean of Aeneas, hero of Troy. The story is not just an elaborate rendering of the ancient and illustrious origins of the city, however; Augustus was the heir of Caesar, and Caesar had claimed descent from Aeneas himself. This was thus the mandate of the new Emperor in poetry. How could his rule be called into question with such a provenance?

The “Auditorium” was imagined in the late nineteenth century as a place in which Maecenas had hosted readings of the poets for whom he was such an important patron. This identification comes in part from the theory that the stepped curved end of the structure was an area of seating. A later, albeit by no means certain, identification has suggested instead that this was a semi-sunken dining hall, set into the hillside against the fierce rays of the summer sun. This identification as a summer dining room does not entirely remove the theorised “Auditorium” function, indeed in many ways it renders it more evocative; in this reading the curved stepped end, once clad in marble, gushed with water cooling the area while couches in the main hall saw Maecenas’ guests enjoying opulent meals, the walls on either side painted with architectural features framing landscapes, as if looking out onto the gardens beyond. At the end opposite the nymphaeum, the vaulted room opened on to a terrace which looked out to the Alban Hills in the distance. The very place where Aeneas’ son Ascanius had founded Alba Longa, where Romulus, legendary ancestor to Augustus, would be born. A splendidly fitting view for the diners as they were entertained with tales of Augustus’ illustrious origins in those blue remembered hills.

The curved end, once clad in marble. Variously interpreted as seating for an Auditorium, or as a cascade of a decorative fountain. Paintings in the niches show garden views.

The building acts a sort of Narnian wardrobe, drawing one far away from the fierce traffic and prosaic solidity of the nineteenth century Via Merulana, and into a wildly evocative past, on the cusp of history and legend.

This would make a super inclusion to an itinerary themed around Augustus, or as an addition to a tour based on the “Trojan Legacy”
By appointment only
Auditorium of Maecenas, Largo Leopardi