Academic literature on the topic 'Constantine Arch of Constantine (Rome, Italy) Rome'

The Arch of Constantine in Rome marks the passing of the pre-Christian era in architectural terms, recapitulating imperial traditions while at the same time heralding a new consciousness. It pioneered modes of design that exploited recycled elements for the sake of effects and motives quite beyond purely pragmatic considerations. Long the subject of controversy, the monument is today the focus of a scholarly quarrel over the possibility that its superstructure once belonged to an earlier arch on the same site. This study refutes this hypothesis on the basis of considerations of technique and design, showing instead that its composition depended on the emulation of the nearby Arch of Septimius Severus. The connection between the two buildings is indeed as direct as that between Trajan's Column and its full-scale "copy," that of Marcus Aurelius, and it is possible to unravel the rationale behind the transformation of one arch into the other. Since the composition of Constantine's was in this way effectively resolved, the architect could concentrate on the adaptations necessary for accommodating the various sets of recycled components. And despite their heterogeneous character, the outcome was a project of singular coherence in terms of proportion and geometry. It was the product of a unitarian conception that promoted Constantine's ideological program in the realm of urban design, imperial iconography, and political and religious intent.

Early one bright afternoon, seventeen centuries ago, Constantine stood staring at the sun. According to his self-appointed biographer Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, who claimed to have heard the story from Constantine himself, the emperor was on campaign, when, ‘around midday, as the day was declining’ he saw a shining cross of light over the sun, with the attached text ‘By this conquer’. The understandably startled ruler slept on the matter, whereupon Christ appeared in a dream and instructed him to fashion himself a copy of the holy sign, which would protect him against his enemies. He did as he had been told, took Christian clerics as his advisers and, not long afterwards, set off for Italy to fight his rival, Maxentius. The rhetorician Lactantius, writing about twenty years before Eusebius, presented a different tale in hisDe mortibus persecutorum: Constantine, on the eve of his decisive battle against Maxentius ina.d. 312, at the Milvian Bridge to the north of Rome, was instructed in a dream to ‘mark the heavenly sign of God’ on his shields. Constantine's moment of epiphany, sometimes equated with his ‘conversion’, has traditionally been seen both as one of history's great turning-points and as one of its most enduring enigmas. The interpretation of Constantine's vision(s) is further complicated by an anecdote that appears in an anonymous panegyric of the emperor, delivered ina.d. 310. Having turned off from the road to visit ‘the most beautiful temple in the world’, Constantine was greeted by a remarkable sight: ‘For you saw, I believe, Constantine, your Apollo, accompanied by Victory, offering you laurel crowns, which each brought an omen of thirty years [of life or rule]’.

Abstract This article analyses Francesco Giammaria’s Capitolium Novum, a Latin poem describing a tour of the historic center of Rome in 1933, in its historical, architectural, and intellectual contexts. It offers a detailed analysis of three key sections of the poem, which deal with the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine, and the Ara dei caduti fascisti respectively. The authors show how Giammaria’s poem responds to urbanistic interventions in the city center during the ventennio, and specifically to the Fascist ‘recoding’ of the city as the ‘Third Rome’, with a narrative emphasizing the historically layered nature of Rome. Giammaria offers his own interpretation of the respective importance and interrelation of the city’s historic layers: the rhetoric of his poem is aimed at superimposing Catholic Rome over pagan Rome, and at framing all historical layers of the city, including the Fascist one, as part of its Christian mission and destiny. Thus, Capitolium novum resonates with efforts of intellectuals gathered around Carlo Galassi Paluzzi’s Istituto di Studi Romani, who aimed to promote a cultural reconciliation between Fascism and Catholicism.

At the southern foot of the Palatine Hill in Rome, a little more than one hundred metres due west of the triumphal arch erected by the emperor who is associated more than any other with the Christian conversion of the Old World — Constantine the Great – there stands another arch. Relocated from its original position at the eastern foot of the Palatine, more or less directly across from the biggest remaining ruin in the forum — that of the Basilica of Maxentius — it formed the monumental entrance to one of the most important botanic gardens in sixteenth-century Europe — the Orti farnesiani, which were given their definitive shape between 1565 and 1590. I propose that this second arch has reason to be considered as occupying a similar symbolic significance for the conversion of the New World.

In a justly famous paper published in 1961, Peter Brown set out a model for understanding the historical process whereby the formerly pagan aristocracy of imperial Rome became overwhelmingly Christian during the course of the fourth and fifth centuries. Brown's paper has deeply influenced all who have subsequently studied this historical phenomenon, at least in the English-speaking world. Since this article argues that the Roman aristocracy became Christian significantly earlier than Brown and most recent writers have assumed, it must begin by drawing an important distinction. Brown's paper marked a major advance in modern understanding because it redirected the focus of scholarly research away from conflict and confrontation, away from the political manifestations of paganism culminating in the ‘last great pagan revival in the West’ between 392 and 394, away from episodes which pitted pagan aristocrats of Rome against Christian emperors, away from ‘the public crises in relations between Roman paganism and a Christian court’, towards the less sensational but more fundamental processes of cultural and religious change which gradually transformed the landowning aristocracy of Italy after the conversion of Constantine. This change of emphasis was extremely salutary in 1961, it has permanently changed our perception of the period, and it entails a method of approaching the subject which remains completely valid. Unfortunately, however, Brown also adopted prevailing assumptions about the chronology of these changes which are mistaken, on the basis of which he asserted that the ‘drift into a respectable Christianity’ began no earlier than the reign of Constantius. The evidence and arguments set out here indicate that the process began much earlier and proceeded more rapidly than Brown assumed, but they in no way challenge the validity of his approach to understanding the nature of the process.

The historical research of the illustrated Nuremberg Chronicle [Schedelsche Weltchronik (English: Schedel’s World Chronicle)] of Hartmann Schedel com­prises the complex historical knowledge about numerous woodcuts which pre­sent views of various cities important in the world’s history, e.g. Jerusalem, Constantinople, or the European ones such as: Rome, some Italian, German or Polish cities e.g. Wrocław and Cracow; some Hungarian and some Czech Republic cities. Researchers have made a serious study to recognize certain constructions in the woodcuts; they indicated the conservative and contractual architecture, the existing places and the unrealistic (non-existent) places. The results show that there is a common detail in all the views – the defensive wall round each of the described cities. However, in reality, it may not have existed in some cities during the lifetime of the authors of the woodcuts. As for some further details: behind the walls we can see feudal castles on the hills shown as strongholds. Within the defensive walls there are numerous buildings with many towers typical for the Middle Ages and true-to-life in certain ways of building the cities. Schematically drawn buildings surrounded by the ring of defensive walls indicate that the author used certain patterns based on the previously created panoramic views. This article is an attempt of making analogical comparisons of the cities in medieval painting. The Author of the article presents Roman mosaics and the miniature painting e.g. the ones created in the scriptorium in Reichenau. Since the beginning of 14th century Italian painters such as: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Giotto di Bondone, Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted parts of the cities or the entire monumental panoramas in various compositions and with various meanings. One defining rule in this painting concerned the definitions of the cities given by Saint Isidore of Seville, based on the rules which he knew from the antique tradition. These are: urbs – the cities full of architecture and buildings but uninhabited or civita – the city, the living space of the human life, build-up space, engaged according to the law, kind of work and social hierarchy. The tra­dition of both ways of describing the city is rooted in Italy. This article indicates the particular meaning of Italian painting in distributing the image of the city – as the votive offering. The research conducted by Chiara Frugoni and others indica­ted the meaning of the city images in the painting of various forms of panegyrics created in high praise of cities, known as laude (Lat.). We can find the examples of them rooted in the Roman tradition of mosaics, e.g. in San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. They present both palatium and civitas. The medieval Italian painting, especially the panel painting, presents the city structure models which are uninha­bited and deprived of any signs of everyday life. The models of cities – urbs, are presented as votive offerings devoted to their patron saints, especially to Virgin Mary. The city shaped as oval or sinusoidal rings surrounded by the defensive walls resembled a container filled with buildings. Only few of them reflected the existing cities and could mainly be identified thanks to the inscriptions. The most characteristic examples were: the fresco of Taddeo di Bartolo in Palazzo Publico in Siena, which presented the Dominican Order friar Ambrogio Sansedoni holding the model of his city – Siena, with its most recognizable building - the Cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of Mary. The same painter, referred to as the master painter of the views of the cities as the votive offerings, painted the Saint Antilla with the model of Montepulciano in the painting from 1401 for the Cathedral devoted to the Assumption of Mary in Montepulciano. In the painting made by T. di Bartolo, the bishop of the city of Gimignano, Saint Gimignano, presents the city in the shape of a round lens surrounded by defence walls with numerous church towers and the feudal headquarters characteristic for the city. His dummer of the city is pyramidally-structured, the hills are mounted on the steep slopes reflecting the analogy to the topography of the city. We can also find the texts of songs, laude (Lat.) and panegyrics created in honour of the cities and their rulers, e.g. the texts in honour of Milan, Bonvesin for La Riva, known in Europe at that time. The city – Arcadia (utopia) in the modern style. Hartman Schedel, as a bibliophile and a scholar, knew the texts of medieval writers and Italian art but, as an ambitious humanist, he could not disregard the latest, contemporary trends of Renaissance which were coming from Nuremberg and from Italian ci­ties. The views of Arcadia – the utopian city, were rapidly developing, as they were of great importance for the rich recipient in the beginning of the modern era overwhelmed by the early capitalism. It was then when the two opposites were combined – the shepherd and the knight, the Greek Arcadia with the medie­val city. The reception of Virgil’s Arcadia in the medieval literature and art was being developed again in the elite circles at the end of 15th century. The cultural meaning of the historical loci, the Greek places of the ancient history and the memory of Christianity constituted the essence of historicism in the Renaissance at the courts of the Comnenos and of the Palaiologos dynasty, which inspired the Renaissance of the Latin culture circle. The pastoral idleness concept came from Venice where Virgil’s books were published in print in 1470, the books of Ovid: Fasti and Metamorphoses were published in 1497 and Sannazaro’s Arcadia was published in 1502, previously distributed in his handwriting since 1480. Literature topics presented the historical works as memoria, both ancient and Christian, composed into the images. The city maps drawn by Hartmann Schedel, the doctor and humanist from Nurnberg, refer to the medieval images of urbs, the woodcuts with the cities, known to the author from the Italian painting of the greatest masters of the Trecenta period. As a humanist he knew the literature of the Renaissance of Florence and Venice with the Arcadian themes of both the Greek and the Roman tradition. The view of Constantinople in the context of the contemporary political situation, is presented in a series of monuments of architecture, with columns and defensive walls, which reminded of the history of the city from its greatest time of Constantine the Great, Justinian I and the Comnenus dynasty. Schedel’s work of art is the sum of the knowledge written down or painted. It is also the result of the experiments of new technology. It is possible that Schedel was inspired by the hymns, laude, written by Psellos in honour of Constantinople in his elaborate ecphrases as the panegyrics for the rulers of the Greek dynasty – the Macedonians. Already in that time, the Greek ideal of beauty was reborn, both in literature and in fine arts. The illustrated History of the World presented in Schedel’s woodcuts is given to the recipients who are educated and to those who are anonymous, in the spirit of the new anthropology. It results from the nature of the woodcut reproduc­tion, that is from the way of copying the same images. The artist must have strived to gain the recipients for his works as the woodcuts were created both in Latin and in German. The collected views were supposed to transfer historical, biblical and mythological knowledge in the new way of communication.

Figure 35 shows one of the most famous of Roman monuments, the Arch of Constantine in Rome. Ironically it is largely famous for being bad art. This arch was dedicated in AD 315 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Emperor Constantine’s elevation to power, and more specifically his victory in a civil war which gave him control of Italy in AD 312. The inscriptions in the upper, attic portion of the arch record that it was dedicated in traditional fashion by the senate and people of Rome for Constantine’s divinely inspired defeat of his rival, the ‘tyrant’ Maxentius. Perhaps there is an allusion here to his new patronage of the growing Christian religion. The arch is next to the Colosseum, not far from the older arches of Titus and Septimius Severus, and it resembles the latter in general design. So in many respects it fits in the Roman monumental tradition, yet it is a highly problematic structure.

Abstract This article proposes that nearly all of the sculpted frieze of the Arch of Constantine in Rome, generally regarded as Constantinian, derives from a triumphal monument of Diocletian commissioned shortly after his Vicennalia in 303 CE. The basis of the argument is the sculptural technique evinced by the frieze, especially the separately-worked heads of the emperor in four of the frieze slabs, together with the missing legs and feet of several of the other figures. These anomalies suggest that much of the frieze was spoliated from another monument that had honored a different man; Diocletian is the only emperor whose career fits the iconography. A Diocletianic date for most of the frieze blocks necessitates a reconsideration of long-standing interpretations of the spolia on the arch and, in turn, its historiography.

This study traces the genesis and development of the History of Constantine tapestries designed by Pietro da Cortona and woven on the looms established by Francesco Barberini shortly after his return from France in December 1625. The circumstances surrounding the creation of the series provide a foundation and a framework for exploring its meaning and purpose. Though inspired by an earlier Constantine suite of tapestries designed by Rubens, the "Cortona" panels should be read as an independent entity, the significance of which can only be fully appreciated within the context of the gran salone of the Palazzo Barberini, which I propose was their intended destination. This conclusion is supported by the many links between the tapestries and Barberini ideology, papal politics, the palace and the ceiling fresco in the Salone. Like the Divine Providence fresco, the "Cortona" series is a summa of the virtues and religious, political, intellectual and social initiatives of the family. The series emerges finally as a promotionally Italian endeavour, a showcase of Italian art and culture.

Eastern Roman control of central Italy became increasingly tenuous as the eighth century progressed. The result was a series of popes gradually exercising greater independence from Constantinople. By the middle of the century, popes had begun using the rhetoric of Roman restoration to provide grounds for papal assumption of territorial control over stretches of central Italy taken from the Lombards by the Franks. Papal temporal authority then rested on a forged document called the Donation of Constantine, a document whose claims underpinned Leo IIl’s crowning of Charlemagne as Roman emperor in 800. Although Charlemagne’s Roman imperial title was manufactured, his new Western Roman Empire was framed as a restoration of traditional Western Roman prerogatives that had fallen away—and his new capital at Aachen embodied this transition with buildings constructed from old Roman materials taken from Italy.

This chapter analyzes the Arch of Constantine in Rome. First, it focuses on the roles of the SPQR and the emperor in the arch's design. In particular, the chapter deals with Constantine's role, or his conception of his role in the urbs, in the arch's imagery. Second, this chapter examines the meaning of the claim triumphis insignem—that is, that an arch, still customarily associated with triumph by the fourth century, was in this instance bestowed for a new purpose with a unique rationale, in a particular historical context, despite a lack of any persuasive evidence that an official triumph was actually celebrated. And finally, this chapter elucidates the arch's evocation of the emperor's role, both at home and abroad, as both civilis princeps and imperator exercitus.

This chapter examines a development in European diplomacy that proved critical to Western–Byzantine relations: between the seventh and eighth centuries, successive bishops of Rome abandoned their traditional alliance with Constantinople and turned instead to the Franks. Since 731 bishops of Rome had condemned the iconoclast policy adopted in the Eastern capital, which led to more increasingly bitter correspondence between Old Rome and New. Religious antagonism then led to the decision to involve the major force north of the Alps in the defense of Rome, which was increasingly threatened by the Lombards, established in northern Italy. To counter this break with tradition, Emperor Constantine V sought to win over the Franks to a more considered position. The chapter discusses the efforts of several embassies to persuade the Frankish king Pippin III and later Charles/Charlemagne into an alliance with Byzantium that would be sealed by a marriage.