The Partial Historians🏺

ALT MOSAIC OF THE EASTERN APSE, 432-440 CE. LATERAN BAPTISTERY, PORCH This splendid mosaic was recently (2021-2023) restored to its original glory, replacing the painted plaster infill with glass mosaic tesserae so it looks as it did when this hall was built during the pontificate of Sixtus III in the C5 when it served as the entrance porch of the Lateran Baptistery. This is a glorious decoration of vegetal curls, green against a blue background, springing from behind the C18 sculptural group of angels and cherubs holding a cross, where an acanthus plant grows. In fact this is a sort of Acanthus of Paradise. A central shoot goes straight up, the stem of the flowers which are hinted at in gold tesserae. At the peak is a semi-roundel containing a folded cloth representing the empyrean, the undepictable part of heaven where God the Father dwells, the ultimate penthouse condo. Along the rim of the border are four doves representing the Evangelists, and at the centre is a little Lamb of God.

ALT HOLY-WATER STOUP CARVED FROM SEATING IN THE COLOSSEUM, C10(?). COLOSSEUM Not only was the Colosseum a huge mine of marbles in the Middle Ages, there were numerous religious structures built into the amphitheatre over the course of the Middle Ages. This might have come from S. Salvatoris de Rota Colosei, first recorded in 1192 but probably extant far earlier, during the phase of the Colosseum's life in the C9-C10 when it was a huge apartment building, extra floors with wood-beam inserts in the travertine and brick walls, all in the ownership of the local powerful church, S. Maria Nova. A church called S. Salvatoris de Insula, noted in the same inventory, may have also been built into the "insula" that the amphitheatre had become. Here we have a strip of Luni marble that is larger than a staircase step, big enough to hollow out a basin for holy water at the top. A worn cross of four inward-pointing triangles is still visible.

ALT FRIEZE WITH GIGANTOMACHIA, C. 10 BCE. CENTRALE MONTEMARTINI An excavation in 1887 in the area of the Colosseum uncovered a kiln and, next to it many Luni marble fragments, waiting to be burnt to lime powder. Pieced together, the fragments showed a badly damaged but magnificent frieze of the gods defending Olympus from the rebel giants. This section shows, from right to left, the foot and hand of Hephaestus, holding a hammer; a female figure, probably the Titaness Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis, and at left Artemis herself, unexpectedly winged but reaching to pull an arrow from her quiver. At far right, a low relief of a laurel tree implies the proximity of Apollo. Literary sources describe such a relief on the scenæ frons of the theatre of Balbus, so these pieces may have been brought into the wilderness near the Colosseum for burning after the city centre, and specifically the Calcararia or lime-burners' district at largo Argentina, was built up in the later C14.

ALT MUSE IN ARCHITECTURAL SETTING, 64-105 CE. MUSÆUM UNDER THE BATHS OF TRAJAN In 2011, explorations behind the "Painted City" fresco in a cryptoporticus under the Baths of Trajan discovered a gigantic mosaic, 16 metres long by 6 metres tall, which showed female figures in an architectural setting rather like a scenæ frons, with one heroically nude male figure, Apollo. The fragmentary mosaic, the largest mural mosaic ever found in the Roman world, must have belonged to an important public building which archaeologists have hypothesised as a Musæum, a place for concerts, poetry readings, and other events. The area pictured shows one of the Muses, nude but for a blue drapery over one knee, standing against a background of columns, including one decorated with a male comic mask. This is a tiny part of the mosaic.

ALT SPOLIA IN THE CARAFA CHAPEL, S. MARIA SOPRA MINERVA, 1489-1492 The C15 was a period of rediscovery of the ancient city, on the one hand, and one of constant destruction and demolition of ancient ruins on the other. The Comune, the city government, was the defender of Rome's ancient monuments, and it found itself in constant conflict with papal authorities bent on obtaining marble from the often still-intact shells of ancient buildings. Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, the powerful cardinal of Naples, was able to silence the Capitoline authorities on their own hill, and had white Pentelic marble and blocks of purple-veined pavonazzetto removed from the ruins of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, which were carved into the frame and balusters of his family chapel. His sculptors, from the workshop of Andrea Bregno who is also buried in this church, recarved the ancient marbles into imitations of ancient marbles, proving the old adage that good artists borrow but great artists steal.