THE INTERSECTION OF REUSE AND ORNAMENT IN THE FAÇADE OF THE CASINO DELL’AURORA

Brittany Forniotis

A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Art and Art History in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Chapel Hill 2019

Approved by:

Mary Pardo

Hérica Valladares

Victoria Rovine

© 2019 Brittany Forniotis ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ii ABSTRACT

Brittany Forniotis: The Intersection of Reuse and Ornament in the Façade of the Casino dell’Aurora (Under the direction of Mary Pardo)

The façade of the Casino dell’Aurora (1611-1616), a lodge within the garden of the

Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi, originally Scipione Borghese’s summer residence on the

Quirinal Hill in Rome, presents a case study for the reuse of second- and third-century Roman sarcophagi in a late Renaissance architectural setting. In their original context – embedded within the façade of a garden pavilion belonging to a critical actor in the sociopolitical scene of early- seventeenth-century Rome – the panels of these ancient sarcophagi are pivotal to the façade as architectural ornament. This thesis critically examines the intersection of reuse and ornament in the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora. It concludes that through a nuanced reading of the façade, the reuse of the sarcophagi panels participates in the compositional tension of the façade’s composition while advancing a particular image of Cardinal Borghese through their associations with the ancient past of Rome.

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank my advisor, Dr. Mary Pardo, for guidance on this project and her boundless enthusiasm for exploring new intellectual terrain with me. For their thoughtful advice and commentary, I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Hérica Valladares and Dr.

Victoria Rovine. Additionally, I would like to express my gratitude to my dear colleagues in the

Art and Art History Department, particularly my classmates, Adriana Burkins, Avery Close,

Madison Folks, Alex Jones, Devon Murphy, Claire Payne, Colin Post, and Weixin Zhou. Their support and insight made the writing process a gratifying experience.

I would also like to acknowledge my family and friends for their love and encouragement during the duration of my Master’s degree program. My thanks especially go to my husband,

Tanner Fadero, for his unwavering confidence in my scholarship. Finally, I would like to thank

Nikki and Toast for their unconditional love for me and the rectangles that I attempt to use for my work.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………...vii

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1

CHAPTER ONE: A CONTEXT FOR THE CASINO……………………………………………7

Rome in the Early Seventeenth Century…………………………………………………..7

Cardinal Scipione Borghese……………………………………………………………….9

Carlo Maderno & Architecture……………………………………………………….….13

Casino dell’Aurora……………………………………………………………………….15

CHAPTER TWO: REUSE AND THE SARCOPHAGUS

PANELS………………………………………………………………………….……………...20

Sarcophagi…………………………………………………………………………….….20

Antiquarianism in the Renaissance and Baroque………………………………………...24

Frameworks of Reuse……………………………………………………………………25

Implications for the Façade of the Casino Dell’Aurora………………………………….29

CHAPTER THREE: ORNAMENT AND THE FAÇADE OF THE CASINO DELL’AURORA……………………………………………………………34

A Felicitous Discovery……………………………………………………………...…...34

A Framework for Ornament……………………………………………………………...35

Casino dell’Aurora……………………………………………………………………….39

CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………….……….42

The Lives of Roman Sarcophagi…………………………………………………………42

v

FIGURES………………………………………………………………………………………...46

REFERENCES. …………………………………………………………………………………61

vi LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 – The façade of the Casino dell’Aurora………….…….………………………………46

Figure 2 – The courtyard of the Palazzo Mattei Giove…………..………………………....……47

Figure 3 – The façade of the Villa Medici……………………………………………………….48

Figure 4 – The façade of the Casino of Pius IV...……………….……………………………….49

Figure 5 – The water theatre at the Villa Aldobrandini…………….……………………………50

Figure 6 – Wide view of the façade of the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora…………………...51

Figure 7 – Center of the Casino dell’Aurora façade …………………………………………….52

Figure 8 – View of the side wing of the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora……………………...53

Figure 9 – Staircase within the hanging gardens of the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi………..54

Figure 10 – Sarcophagi panels in the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora………………………...55

Figure 11 – Sarcophagus with Hippolytus and Phaedra…………………………………………56

Figure 12 – Sarcophagus of Meleager reused as a fountain trough……………………………...57

Figure 13 – Sarcophagus reused as a fountain trough at the Palazzo Aldobrandini……………..58

Figure 14 – Ceiling of the Hall of Hector and Andromache in the Domus Aurea………………59

Figure 15 – Ceiling of the Piccolomini Library in the Siena Cathedral…………………………60

vii INTRODUCTION

The reuse of architectural fragments and statuary is a long-lived practice, especially in the

Mediterranean, which has been inhabited by various peoples since prehistory. Buildings and objects were quickly transformed to meet the new material and cultural needs of their users.

Reuse of architectural fragments frequently occurs during the decline of a population in a region or following the abandonment of a settlement or religious site. In many cases, these transformations appear “practical” to the modern viewer, such as reusing columns and other architectural elements in new construction. This phenomenon is not unique to the afterlife of ancient Mediterranean material culture; however, much of the scholarship surrounding reuse, recuperation, and spolia has converged upon this material.

This thesis examines the reuse of ancient Roman sarcophagi in the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora (Fig. 1). Set into the geometric, rectilinear façade of the casino, built between 1611 and 1616 by Carlo Maderno (1556 – 1629) under the patronage of Cardinal Scipione Borghese

Caffarelli (1577 – 1633) on the Quirinal Hill in Rome, are at least fifteen panels from late second- and third-century Roman sarcophagi writhing with life. The myths represented on the panels share themes of immortality and love. Bacchanal scenes, lion hunts, scenes of Endymion in his eternal slumber, and reliefs of Ariadne and Dionysus on the island of Naxos adorn the sarcophagi panels.1 However, the meaning of the sarcophagi is transformed by their new context in the façade of the casino

1 Daniela Di Castro, Anna Maria Pedrocchi, and Patricia Waddy, Il Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi e La Galleria Pallavicini (Torino: U. Allemandi, 1999), 44-46.

1 I argue that despite the familiar myths represented on the sarcophagi panels adorning the casino, these panels no longer function solely as narrative images in their architectural context.

They equally function as ornament. In this ornamental mode, the panels convey the wealth, power, and prestige of the patron. They do not, however, do so with references to the specific myths or narratives they illustrate. Standing before the one-story façade of the casino, the viewer is able to read the panels of sarcophagi in multiple ways. Still readable as narrative to the learned viewer, the carvings can also be received as architectural ornament. In making this argument, this project attends to two lacunae in the scholarship of architectural history. Firstly, it treats the ornamentation of the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora with critical analysis that is currently absent in the English-language scholarship on the building. Secondly, it contextualizes the sarcophagi as the deliberate deployment of antiquities as architectural ornament in an early seventeenth-century garden lodge by a renowned architect for a prince of the Church.

When sarcophagi are deconstructed into panels for reuse, they are divorced from their original purpose of containing bodies. Thus, the narrative content and the overall visual program of the sarcophagi loses its connection to Roman funerary customs.2 Art-workers removing and reusing sarcophagi panels do so for their clients, whose choices about which sarcophagi to use were based on perceived value, quality of workmanship, availability, and ornamental and iconographic features – all of which are bound within the aesthetic of the sarcophagi.3 The of the figure in the study of Western art resulted in a plethora of scholarship examining the figural

2 Verity Platt, “Framing the Dead on Roman Sarcophagi,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 61–62 (2012): 213.

3 Michael Baxandall relates multiple examples of this type of informed consumerism in the fifteenth century, and the well-known letters from Cardinal Alessandro Farnese to Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola regarding specific, detailed choices about the construction of the Church of the Gesù (1568 – 1580) indicate a continuation of this behavior. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Clare Robertson, Il Gran Cardinale: Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts (Yale University Press, 1992).

2 representation on sarcophagi in both their original context and the culture in which they were reused.4 Renewed and reinvigorated interest in architectural ornament in the decade and recent developments in the exploration of the agency of art objects have opened intellectual pathways that allow inquiries to address more than the figure in architectural contexts.5 These new directions of inquiry are especially applicable to reused sarcophagi panels, severed from their original three-dimensional forms, and recontextualized as architectural ornament. The after-life of the sarcophagi panels can now be attended to with a critical analysis of architectural ornament.

Previous scholarship treating the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi and the Casino dell’Aurora appears in larger volumes detailing the Renaissance and Baroque palaces of Rome, such as Carlo Cresti, Massimo Listri, and Claudio Rendina’s Palazzi of Rome and Fabio Benzi,

Roberto Schezen, and Carolina Vincenti Montanaro’s Palazzi di Roma.6 Typically, this scholarship concisely details the development of the art gallery within the Palazzo Pallavicini-

Rospigliosi and when discussing the casino, itself, focuses primarily on the frescos within the building. Il Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi e La Galleria Pallavicini presents a more comprehensive review of the palace complex. However, the authors, Daniela DiCastro, Anna

Maria Pedrocchi, and Patricia Waddy provide only general information about the construction of the casino, along with brief descriptions of the architectural elements employed in the structure.

4 The work of Zanker, Calvo, and other scholars examining sarcophagi and sarcophagi panels focuses on the art- historical qualities of the figure, downplaying their original context as containers for the dead and their original framing within Roman tombs and later post-Roman landscapes. Platt explores this phenomenon in “Framing the Dead on Roman Sarcophagi.” Recent scholarship, such as Elizabeth Fisher’s thesis, “Streams of Living Water: The Strigil Motif on Late Antique Sarcophagi Reused in Medieval Southern France,” serves as a much-needed corrective.

5 For renewed interest in ornament, see Gülru Necipoğlu and Alina Payne, eds., Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

6 Carlo Cresti, Massimo Listri, and Claudio Rendina, Palazzi of Rome (Köln: Könemann, 1998); Fabio Benzi, Roberto Schezen, and Caroline Vincenti Montanaro, Palazzi Di Roma (Venezia: Arsenale Editrice, 1997).

3 Here, too, the focus remains on the frescos within the casino, rather than the casino’s architecture. Howard Hibbard’s 1964 article, “Scipione Borghese’s Garden Palace on the

Quirinal,” explores the architecture of the garden, palace, and several casinos. However,

Hibbard’s concern is primarily with identifying the roles of various architects associated with the project and developing a timeline for the construction. My scholarship addresses the lack of critical analysis engaging the architecture of the Casino dell’Aurora.

As I previously noted, much emphasis has been placed on the reuse of Greco-Roman antiquities, because of their high status in the Western tradition of art. I look to scholarship on reuse and spolia for guidance in contextualizing the reuse of second- and third-century sarcophagi in the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora. I consider the work of Jaś Elsner, Verity

Platt, and Michael Koortbojian to inform my understanding how the sarcophagi panels within the casino façade operate when they are repurposed.7 Several key works exploring the nature of antiquarianism, especially in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, have been consulted to develop a theoretical scaffolding for this project. Among these are Leonard Barkan’s book,

Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture;

Benjamin Anderson and Felipe Rojas’ edited volume, Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict,

Comparison; and Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney’s edited volume, Reuse Value: Spolia and

Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine.8 An analysis and

7 Jaś Elsner, “Decorative Imperatives between Concealment and Display: The Form of Sarcophagi,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 61–62 (2012): 178–95; Michael Koortbojian, Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Platt, 213–27.

8 Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Benjamin Anderson and Felipe Rojas, “Introduction: For a More Capacious History of Archaeology,” in Antiquarianisms : Contact, Conflict, Comparison (Oxford ; Havertown, PA: Oxford Books, on behalf of the Joukowsky Institute, 2017), 1–7; Dale Kinney, “Introduction,” in Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, ed. Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney (London ; New York: Routledge, 2016), 1–13.

4 synthesis of these essays and monographs provides a nuanced understanding of the reuse of antiquities in the premodern era and a framework for conceptualizing the sarcophagi within the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora.

The final area of literature consulted for this project engages with ornament, particularly architectural ornament. Ananda Coomaraswamy’s 1939 essay, “Ornament,” which utilizes etymology to consider the term’s deepest cultural meanings, is fundamental to my understanding of the phenomenon.9 He sets forth an etymological rationale for ornament as a bearer of meaning in the Indo-European language-family. Most compelling is his understanding of the Sanskrit word, alamkāra, which typically means ornament. In Coomaraswamy’s etymology, the word is broken down to “sufficient” and “make,” or in other words, to make sufficient.10 Thus ornamenting an object makes it sufficient. It completes its articulation. Coomaraswamy specifically notes that ornament in Indo-European cultures traditionally meant to furnish something essential to the validity of the object, thereby empowering it. In addition to

Coomaraswamy’s essay, I consult a well-regarded work on the subject, Oleg Grabar’s The

Mediation of Ornament.11 I also look to essays such as “The Passage of the Other: Elements for a

Redefinition of Ornament,” Jonathan Hay’s submission to Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local.12 I draw from these three works especially as I address ornament in my analysis of the casino’s façade.13

9 Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, “Ornament,” The Art Bulletin 21, no. 4 (1939): 375–82.

10 Ibid, 377.

11 Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992). 12 Jonathan Hay, “The Passage of the Other: Elements for a Redefinition of Ornament,” in Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, ed. Gülru Necipoğlu and Alina Payne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 62–69.

13 In future work on the façade of the casino, Early Modern Italian conceptualizations of architectural ornament must be fully explored and integrated into modern and post-modern theories and explanations of ornament.

5 This project is organized in the following manner. The first chapter presents a specific historical and sociopolitical framework for the analysis of the façade. The second chapter investigates the reuse of late Imperial Roman sarcophagi and other antiquities in the architecture of late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Rome and applies theories of the reuse of antiquities to the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora as an examination of a particular moment in the reuse of antiquity. The next chapter establishes a theoretical framework for understanding architectural ornament, and examines how in their current context, the figures of the sarcophagi panels can be viewed as abstractions, melding into the ornament critical to the structure and visual tension of the façade. Finally, the concluding chapter integrates the analysis of the façade of the second and third chapters. Here, the sarcophagi in the façade are understood both as an instance of deliberate reuse and as ornament. In reconciling these two analyses, I seek to achieve a more complete understanding of the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora. Ultimately, the novel recontextualization of the façade of the casino presented in this thesis advances the field’s understanding of ornament and the reuse of antiquities in the Early Modern period through a critical analysis of architecture.

6 CHAPTER ONE: A CONTEXT FOR THE CASINO

In this chapter, I will present a historical context for the Casino dell’Aurora. First, I introduce the city of Rome and the role that the architectural patronage of the papacy played in the city in the early-seventeenth century. Next, I turn to the career and patronage of Cardinal

Scipione Borghese, the patron of the Casino dell’Aurora and the nephew of Pope Paul V (r.

1605-1621). The Borghese family frequently commissioned Carlo Maderno, the architect to whom the Casino dell’Aurora is attributed. Maderno, who designed other important residences in

Rome, such as the Palazzo Mattei di Giove, was instrumental in the development of Rome’s topography in this period. I provide a brief synopsis of Maderno’s work in Rome, the relationship between these structures and the Casino dell’Aurora. Finally, I address the casino itself more specifically. I explore the history of its construction, the form of its façade, and its relation to similar residential buildings in Rome.

Rome in the Early Seventeenth Century

From 1400 to 1650, the urban fabric of Rome changed dramatically. The city’s population grew from 17,000 to 100,000.14 Nobles and ecclesiastics reclaimed land within the ancient walls previously used for viticulture and pasturing livestock. As this reclamation occurred, piazzas, churches, palaces, and villas filled the urban landscape once more, and new wider streets connected these monuments to each other. 15 Citizens began to dwell in the further

14 Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M Richardson, “Introduction,” in The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art 1450-1700 (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 11.

15 Steven F Ostrow, “The Counter-Reformation and the End of the Century,” in Rome, ed. Marcia Hall (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 246.

7 reaches of the city; previously, they clustered around the banks of the ever-flooding Tiber. The return of the papacy to the city from Avignon in 1377 and the subsequent elections of popes hailing from Rome and the Papal States sparked this architectural change in the city.16 By the turn of the sixteenth century, popes were investing vast sums into architectural projects within the city limits. Cardinals competed with the pope and each other to partake in the city’s renewal.17 Construction became a chief industry of Rome at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and one of the largest employers in the city. 18

The expansion in construction drew artists and architects to Rome, enhancing its claim to a place among the artistic capitals of Western Europe. Several families of non-local architects and artisans executed the major Roman architectural projects of the early seventeenth century.

Many of these families originated from the Lombardy-Swiss border and immigrated to Rome.19

After one member of such a family established a successful workshop in the city, skilled younger family members would follow suit and come to take a place in the workshop.

The effects of the Counter-Reformation also weighed heavily on the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century in Rome. At this time the threat of Protestantism seemed at bay and the Church asserted its authority over the political and spiritual matters in the city with renewed vigor.20 A major tool in the Church’s arsenal for creating a dominating urban presence was its ability to fund major projects in the arts across the city.21 Through a variety of

16Ingrid D Rowland, “Cultural Introduction to Renaissance Rome,” in Rome, ed. Marcia Hall, Artistic Centers of the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 2.

17 Ibid, 6.

18 John Varriano, Italian Baroque and Rococo Architecture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 14.

19 Ibid 7. 20 Ostrow, 246.

21 Ibid, 247

8 media, especially architecture, ecclesiastic leaders instructed their flocks. Their promotion of the church extended beyond constructing new churches. The ecclesiastic leaders of the city spent conspicuously on secular architecture, particularly grand palazzos for themselves and their families within Rome and its immediate suburbs.22 As they built up the Roman skyline and molded the urban fabric, officials of the Church effectively demonstrated their wealth and sociopolitical command to visitors and citizens alike.

The construction of the Casino dell’Aurora was a product of these historical changes in

Rome. The casino was one of several architectural features of the gardens of cardinal Scipione

Borghese, adjoining a papal palace on the Quirinal. Like, the casino, much of the palace was designed by Carlo Maderno, who relocated to Rome to work in the architectural workshop of his uncle, Domenico Fontana, as an engineering specialist. The next two sections of this chapter will address the specific circumstances of both the patron and architect of the Casino dell’Aurora.

Cardinal Scipione Borghese

Scipione Caffarelli was born in 1577 to Francesco Caffarelli and Ortensia Borghese. The

Borghese family, which originated in Siena in the thirteenth century, claimed responsibility for his education and upbringing. Consequently, the family allowed Scipione the use of their name and arms. Scipione became a major figure of the Borghese family with control over a large portion of the family finances. His maternal uncle and provider, Camillo Borghese, became Pope

Paul V in 1605. Shortly after his ascension to the papacy, Paul V raised his nephew to the

College of Cardinals and appointed Scipione as the cardinal-nephew, an office with significant power in the early seventeenth century. It was after his appointment to the office of cardinal-

22 Varriano, 15.

9 nephew that Scipione commissioned the palazzo on the Quirinal Hill and thus the Casino dell’Aurora.

The position of cardinal-nephew often came with the title, Secretarius Papae et superintendens status ecclesiasticæ - Pope's Secretary and Administrator of the Estate of the

Church, though the term could apply to any relative nepotistically raised to the rank of cardinal in order to directly serve the pope in his worldly endeavors. In early modern Europe, the red hat of the cardinal’s dress denoted the high social status and immense political influence of its owner. It also allowed them to operate as spiritual and secular authorities in Rome and abroad. A fifteenth-century antiquarian, Flavio Biondo, considered the College of Cardinals, the collective body of all cardinals of the Catholic Church, the heirs of the Senate of Republican Rome.23 The

College of Cardinals functioned similarly to an administrative and legislative body under the elected pope, who often inflated their numbers to shift the dominance of particular factions.

Because the pope appointed cardinals, a cardinal outranked the most senior churchmen of his homeland and even most secular rulers.24 Despite the pope’s ability to alter the political composition of the Roman Curia, the only cardinal whom he could trust with any certainty was the cardinal-nephew.

The trust between the pope and the cardinal-nephew stemmed from their intense familial bonds and interests.25 As the cardinal-nephew, Scipione served as Paul V’s advocate and

23 Hollingsworth and Richardson, 1.

24 Ibid, 2. Despite their supreme authority over religious matters, the authors note that few cardinals in early modern Europe were ordained priests. In the Renaissance, cardinals ranked similarly to the heirs of European secular rules, since the next pope is elected from among the current cardinals. However, cardinals were not necessarily born of nobility, or even in wedlock. For example, Cesare Borgia (1475-1505), the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, was made a bishop after completing studies in law at the age of fifteen, and was raised to the cardinalate after his father’s ascension to the papacy.

25 Michael Hill, “Cardinal Scipione Borghese’s Patronage of Ecclesiastical Architecture (1605-33)” (University of Sydney, 1998), 19-20.

10 representative. Scipione acted as a papal diplomat and oversaw the administration of Rome’s municipal government and internal military matters, which included weapons’ licenses and soldier recruitment.26 This office defined Scipione’s career. It provided him with unmatched political opportunities and the vast wealth required to become a major patron of the arts.

Subsequent cardinal-nephews looked up to Borghese, wishing to emulate his career in the papal court. For example, Antonio Barberini (1607-1671), so admired the path of Borghese that in

1629 Tomaso Contarini wrote, “Antonio is eager for fame, as he is greedy for money, whereby he publicly lets it be known that he will never be satisfied until he has surpassed the earnings of

Cardinal Ludovisi and Borghese.”27 Clearly, Borghese’s tenure as cardinal-nephew left a pungent legacy of affluence for his young colleagues to emulate.

Because of his advantageous curial position, Scipione was the most prominent art collector of the Borghese family. His proximity to the papacy, the highest seat of power in

Christendom, allowed him to position himself as the head patron of the Borghese family’s client network.28 By managing this client network and lavishly spending his wealth, Cardinal Borghese achieved extensive power and influence in Rome. Scipione collected avidly across media, time periods, and styles, with particular interest in distinguished young “modernists” of the early seventeenth century.29 For example, in his collection were works by Caravaggio, Reni,

26 Ibid, 20-21.

27 Karin Wolfe, “Cardinal Antonio Barberini (1608-1671) and the Politics of Art in Baroque Rome,” in The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art 1450-1700, ed. Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M Richardson (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 271. Wolfe translates Contarini’s letter to the Venetian senate. Indeed, Antonio’s desire for power was so great that he orchestrated the retirement of Borghese as the protector of the Dominicans before Borghese’s death in 1633.

28 Hill, 33.

29 Howard Hibbard, Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture, 1580-1630, Studies in Architecture 10 (London: Zwemmer, 1971), 53.

11 Antiveduto Grammatica, and Domenichino. Similarly, he commissioned buildings from a variety of architects.30 Scipione’s first private architect was Flaminio Ponzio. Following Ponzio’s death in 1613, Scipione hired Giovanni Vasanzio (stylized from Jan Van Zanten), who previously made inlaid furniture. Carlo Maderno intermittently entered into Scipione’s service to correct engineering mistakes and complete half-finished projects. Scipione’s patronage advanced the careers of a wide network of artists and architects and further established the Borghese as one of

Rome’s most elite families in the early seventeenth century.

The Borghese family owned several palazzos and villas in Rome by the mid-seventeenth century. Paul V’s papacy contributed significantly to this land-holding, particularly with his purchases of the land around the papal palace on the Quirinal Hill.31 Prior to his ascension to the papacy in 1605, the Borghese family owned far fewer properties in the city, the most important of which was the Palazzo Borghese.32 As cardinal-nephew, Scipione added multiple residences to their number, such as the Villa Borghese on the Pincian Hill and the summer residence on the

Quirinal Hill, now known as the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi.

Wealthy cardinals then investing in fashionable Roman dwellings owned several distinct residences. Typically, these residences comprised large palaces, airy summer residences, and villas in the suburbs.33 Summer residences, such as the Scipione’s garden palace on the Quirinal

Hill, emphasized the design of the garden and its accompanying buildings. They were valued both for their luxuriousness and the escape they provided from the heat of Roman summers.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid, 30. This palazzo was begun in 1583 for Pope Gregory XIII; Hibbard, “Scipione Borghese’s Garden Palace on the Quirinal,” 163.

32 Hill, 38.

33 Hibbard, Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture, 32.

12 With its green spaces, clean air, and Roman ruins, the Quirinal Hill supported a number of such

Renaissance summer villas, complete with sculpture gardens.34

Work on Borghese’s Quirinal giardino, or garden palace, began in 1611. Initially,

Cardinal Borghese commissioned Flaminio Ponzio to design the garden palace. Giovanni

Vasanzio seems to have been involved early on, as he is noted as having altered the slope of the plot with the creation of three terraces.35 Within two years of breaking ground, casinos, garden houses, grotto fountains, and fish ponds had been incorporated into the garden of Scipione’s

Quirinal giardino.36 The Casino dell’Aurora stands on one of these terraces and is the largest of four casinos in the garden. In incorporating these forms, the patron and architect draw heavily from the elements of a country villa.

Carlo Maderno & Architecture

Like many of the prominent Roman architects of the period, Carlo Maderno was born in what is now the southernmost region of Switzerland. He began his career in marble quarrying, before moving to Rome in 1588 to assist his uncle, Domenico Fontana, the architect of Pope

Sixtus V (r. 1585-1590). Little is known of Maderno’s early career with Fontana, but the writings of Giovanni Baglione, a contemporary painter and art historian, suggest that Maderno worked as a marble cutter and stucco worker.37 Domenico Fontana’s Roman career abruptly ended

34 Carolyn Valone, “Women on the Quirinal Hill: Patronage in Rome, 1560-1630,” The Art Bulletin 76, no. 1 (1994), 129-130. Among the prominent ruins on the Quirinal Hill were the Baths of Diocletian and the Baths of Constantine.

35 Daniela Gallavotti Cavallero and Carlo Pietrangeli, Monumental Buildings of Rome from the 14th to the 20th Century (Roma: NER, 1990), 154.

36 Howard Hibbard, “Scipione Borghese’s Garden Palace on the Quirinal,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 23, no. 4 (1964), 164.

37 Hibbard, Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture, 36.

13 following the death of his patron, Sixtus V in 1590. His absence left room for Maderno to rise to prominence in the architectural scene of Rome.38 Though primarily engaged in engineering projects, such as the repair of fallen structures, flood prevention, and bridge construction,

Maderno must have also assisted his uncle with architectural design. He quickly began to take over large architectural projects in the city after Fontana’s departure from Rome. A large number of architectural projects in Rome and the surrounding regions feature work by Maderno; however, in this thesis I only give a brief synopsis of the projects directly related to the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora.

Maderno’s first large commission, in which he both planned and finished the building was the Palazzo Mattei di Giove, located on the ruins of the Theater of Balbus. Asdrubale

Mattei, ennobled businessman and avid collector of Caravaggio, commissioned the palace in

1598 or 1599.39 Throughout the palace, Maderno designed a series of specific architectural vistas. Of particular importance to this study is the interior courtyard of the palace (Fig. 2). An abundant collection of antiquities, including sarcophagi panels and portrait busts, occupies the walls of the courtyard. An elaborate stucco frame surrounds each piece of ancient sculpture. The use of stucco in architectural embellishment saw a marked revival in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the varied use of the material is considered an advancement of the period.40 It seems likely that Maderno designed these frames himself, given his experience as a stucco worker, and he probably specified the arrangement of the ancient pieces after Asdrubale selected the pieces from his collection to display.41

38 Ibid, 38.

39 Ibid, 43-44.

40 Varriano, 12. Ancient Roman architecture frequently utilized stucco for ornamental purposes.

41 Hibbard, Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture

14 This type of architectural ornament, and the associated framework, has deep traditions in

Roman Renaissance architecture. It features prominently in the garden-façade of the mid- sixteenth-century Villa Medici on the Pincian Hill, in which Roman bas-relief panels and portrait busts are symmetrically inset into the soaring façade at regular intervals (Fig. 3). Similar layouts feature prominently in the designs of Pirro Ligorio (c.1512-1583), the Vatican Papal Architect under Popes Paul IV and Pius IV, particularly in the Casino of Pius IV in the Vatican Gardens

(Fig. 4). Both Cinquecento examples of embedded ancient material, along with the Palazzo

Mattei, function like opulent outdoor exhibitions of familial collections.

Another Maderno commission that incorporates ancient materials and classicizing ornament is the water theater at the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati (1550-1623), in the suburbs of

Rome (Fig. 5). This water theater effectively imitates the recreational hemicyclic colonnades of

Imperial Roman nymphaea.42 Similar structures were popular additions to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century gardens. The water theatre’s walls are ornamented with relief sculptures, which are complemented by free-standing sculpture. Grottos, like garden building façades, allow for more elaborate embellishment than the external façades of palaces, which were typically austere in this period. Though not inset into the exterior walls of a large palazzo or casino, the water theatre serves as another example of Maderno’s incorporation of ancient materials and classicizing motifs into the garden setting.

Casino dell’Aurora

Conceived of as the fantastical completion of a luxury garden terrace, the Casino dell’Aurora offers an insight into the collecting abilities of Cardinal Borghese and the attentive

42 Ibid, 48. Nymphaea were monuments consecrated to nymphs, divine spirits associated with the air, water, and various landforms in antiquity. Originally, nymphaea were located at naturally occurring grottos, believed to be inhabited by nymphs. Artificial recreational grottoes, including water features and statuary, were built in Roman palatial complexes that mimicked natural ones. Renaissance builders continued this tradition in palatial gardens.

15 design of its architect (Fig. 6). The casino’s façade is a central loggia, with a Serlian three-part entranceway set between two projecting wings with rusticated corners (Fig. 7). The Serlian doorway is supported on a minor order of Ionic columns set on low bases. Pilasters with

Corinthian capitals raised on tall bases, separate the openings of the loggia and create a steady rhythm in the façade. The first register of sarcophagi panel flank either side of the central arch.

Two tiers of panels is set above the rectangular side-openings in order to match the height of the arched main entrance. The acanthus frieze above the architrave features vegetal scrollwork punctuated with escutcheon-shaped masks and a central heraldic eagle. A cornice, featuring prominent corbels, terminates the architrave, above which is an attic set with seven sarcophagi panels. Short pilasters featuring vegetal carvings separate the three panels in the center of the façade’s attic. Stucco frames surround each of the sarcophagus panels.

Flanking the center of the façade are two symmetrical wings, emphasized by heavy, rectangular quoins (Fig. 8). Two windows in each wing continue the symmetric effect created within the center of the loggia. A free-standing sculpture and an inset portrait bust within an oval niche occupy the space between the windows. One large sarcophagus panel, framed with stucco work is centered above each pair of windows. On either side of the reliefs is an inset portrait bust in an oval niche matching the central bust’s. The cornice crowns the entirety of the casino’s façade. Finally, above the cornice is the attic with two more sarcophagi panels. As with the center of the façade, the stucco frames encase the sarcophagi panels. Wreath-like frames surround the niches of the portrait busts.

Rectangles intersect in the horizontal and vertical planes to construct a geometric façade.

From the flat roofline to the striking pilasters and insets along the corners of the façade, the concentration of rectangles and rectangular prisms structures and orders the grand entrance to the

16 casino. Even the curve of the arched main entranceway, through its notable difference in shape, enhances the robust, angular geometry of the design. The sarcophagi panels adhere to the rectangular forms emphasized in the façade due to their original existence as part of hollow rectangular prisms, and therefore participate in the structuring of the façade’s composition.

Simultaneously, the abstracted figures of the reliefs introduce ripples of motion into the unyielding forms, as do their ornate stucco frames and the carvings of the Corinthian capitals and friezes. The juxtaposition of rectilinear geometric forms and textural reliefs generates a compelling visual tension. The façade deftly captures the viewer’s attention through this tension.

According to Hibbard, archival documents show that Maderno also supervised the construction of the staircase leading to the hanging garden (Fig. 9).43 He notes the combined use of curve and rectangle to create a dramatic entrance to the garden as being typical of Maderno.

Hibbard also comments that the “picturesque casino” at the end of the garden was a co-operative design created by Maderno and an architect whom he does not name, though he does not point to specific archival documentation to support his claim.44 The casino makes similar use of a singular arched opening in its façade.

At the same time that construction began on the Casino dell’Aurora, Pope Paul V sponsored the completion of work on the Palazzo del Quirinale, a summer residence that was begun in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII, roughly 120 meters away from Borghese’s giardino.45 In

1592, Clement VIII made the palazzo a seat of the papal court, which it remained until 1870. The close location of the giardino and the Palazzo del Quirinale is significant. As cardinal-nephew, it

43 Ibid, 63.

44 Ibid.

45 Eventually, this colossal palace would become Paul V’s main residence while he was pope.

17 was essential for Scipione to remain near the papal court as it moved between residences.46

Because of the Paul V’s land purchases around the Palazzo del Quirinale, Scipione was able to build a giardino for the family just meters away from the papal summer residence. The proximity of the giardino and the Palazzo del Quirinale in the urban fabric of Rome may have realized the close relationship of the nephew and uncle and created a Borghese conclave on the Quirinal Hill.

Furthering this connection between the giardino and the Pallazo del Quirinale is the fact that

Carlo Maderno also served as architect to Paul V.47 The closeness of the Casino dell’Aurora to the residence of the pope and use of a papal architect link the casino to the power of the papacy.

Additionally, these connections demonstrate that Cardinal Borghese’s architectural patronage solidifies his seat at the right hand of the pope, and announces his authority within Rome and the

Church.

Sarcophagi and ancient statuary fragments appear in multiple palatial façades across

Rome. I have already drawn attention to the prominent reuse of sarcophagi in earlier buildings in

Rome; the Villa Medici, and the Palazzo Mattei. The Villa Medici sits to the north of the Casino dell’Aurora, just seven hundred meters away from the Villa Borghese on the Pincian Hill.

Meanwhile, the Palazzo Mattei sits roughly one kilometer away from the Casino dell’Aurora and two kilometers from the Palazzo Borghese near the banks of the Tiber. Antiquities set into walls punctuate the topography of Rome, and it is likely that Cardinal Borghese encountered these buildings in his daily life traversing the city in his role as cardinal nephew

These buildings incorporate sarcophagi into their façades as an act of exhibition. Stucco frames enclose the reliefs like paintings in on a gallery wall and the panels maintain an ordered

46 Hibbard, “Scipione Borghese’s Garden Palace on the Quirinal,” 164. This behavior closely follows that of European nobility following reginal courts.

47 In this capacity he redesigned the nave and façade of Saint Peter’s Basilica.

18 distance from each other. The façade of the Casino dell’Aurora does not follows these conventions. Instead, the tight placement of the façade’s central components groups the enframed panels together into a composition dependent on their proximity for its visual tension.

The lack of separation between the panels allows them to be viewed as a continuous, abstracted element running throughout the rectangle of the façade’s composition. Thus, the façade of the

Casino dell’Aurora functions less clearly as an outdoor museum and more evidently as an elaborate sculptural composition. In the following chapter, I attend to the sarcophagus panels in the Casino dell’Aurora as instances of reuse and examples of the antiquarian interests of Italian elites in the period.

19 CHAPTER TWO: REUSE AND THE SARCOPHAGUS PANELS

Sarcophagi

In their magisterial volume, Renaissance Artists & Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of

Sources (1986), Bober and Rubinstein catalogue common iconographic motifs in ancient Greek and Roman art and detail how Renaissance artists interacted with them. From the literal insertion of ancient sculpture into walls to drawings and paintings made from the close study of ancient fragments, Bober and Rubinstein diagram the major uses and re-uses of antique sculpture in the

Renaissance. Several of the sarcophagi associated with the Casino dell’Aurora receive treatment in this census. The mythological programs of six of the sarcophagi associated with the Palazzo

Pallavicini-Rospigliosi are detailed, along with limited provenance information. Of the six sarcophagi located on the property that are noted in Renaissance Artists & Antique Sculpture, only four are walled into the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora.48 The remaining nine sarcophagi in the façade of the casino do not yet have a traced history.49

Thanks to Bober and Rubinstein’s painstaking research, we know that the following myths grace the façade of the casino: The Slumber of Endymion, the ‘Indian’ Triumph of

Bacchus, Meleager’s Calydonian Hunt, and a hero hunting a lion (Fig. 10).50 The provenances of

48 Bober and Rubinstein are unclear about the location of the two free-standing sarcophagi. The language they use for these sarcophagi implies that they were part of the Rospigliosi collections, rather than walled into the casino. See catalogue entry #9 and #22 for more information. Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists & Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources (London, England: Oxford: H. Miller; Oxford University Press, 1986), 56; 65.

49 From currently available photographs, it remains unclear how many sarcophagi are set into other three faces of the building.

50 Bober and Rubinstein, 68; 112; 144; 232

20 the sarcophagi are varied. For example, Hieronymus Fabricius, pioneering anatomist and surgeon, noted that he saw the Endymion sarcophagus in S. Giovanni in Laterno in 1587, just twenty-six years before the completion of the Casino dell’Aurora.51 Cardinal Borghese acquired the Triumph of Bacchus sarcophagus from another church – S. Lorenzo fuori le mura.52

Borghese seems to have flexed the authority granted by his position of cardinal nephew to obtain the Lion Hunt sarcophagus, as it stood in the forecourt of Old St. Peter’s from at least the early- fifteenth century.53 Artists in the circle of Raphael made engravings of the Old St. Peter’s reliefs and many subsequent artists made copies of these engravings.54 The illustrious provenances of the sarcophagi confirm that Cardinal Borghese’s position of cardinal-nephew afforded him the ability to purchase and collect significant ancient materials. Indeed, the very inclusion of these sarcophagi in Bober and Rubinstein’s benchmark census indicates the prominence of their reliefs. Unfortunately for those interested in their initial use, Renaissance Artists & Antique

Sculpture does not provide the ancient context of the casino’s sarcophagi, given its focus on antiquities know in the Renaissance. A brief explanation of the ancient Roman construction and use of sarcophagi will suffice for our purposes.

Sarcophagi, box-like containers for the body of the deceased, were made of fine marble and carved in high relief. In the second century CE a shift in burial rituals in Imperial Rome, from cremation to inhumation, incited the widescale production of intricately carved

51 Ibid, 69.

52 Ibid, 112.

53 Ibid, 232.

54 Ibid.

21 sarcophagi.55 Workshops across the empire produced sarcophagi with varying degrees of decoration, indicating that a range of socioeconomic classes purchased these funerary objects.56

The Roman sarcophagi from the second and third century featured iconographic depictions of identifiable mythological narratives, as well as philosophers, muses, dancers, and putti. Often three of the four vertical panels of the rectangular prism were carved, as Roman families generally placed sarcophagi within familial mausoleums with the uncarved face against a richly decorated wall that directed the mourner’s interaction with the deceased.57 Romans lined the roads leading to cities with familial mausolea, creating “streets of the dead” that were visited to celebrate holy days and to perform religious rituals.58 The panels of the Casino dell’Aurora have been identified as originating from this time period. We will return to the myths of the inset sarcophagi panels in the next chapter of this thesis.

The sarcophagus is one of the most commonly repurposed objects from antiquity. The reuse of sarcophagi knows no bounds; they were repurposed with close attention to form and visual programs from Late Antiquity onward. Most immediately, and perhaps most obviously, these Imperial sarcophagi became the tombs of later generations. For example, medieval Pisans brought sarcophagi to the Camposanto Monumentale, a cemetery, specifically to utilize them for burials.59 And in 1076 Beatrice of Tuscany’s family entombed her body in a late second-century

55 Koortbojian, Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi, 16. Inhumation was practiced by the Etruscans and other peoples the Romans encountered. This method of burial was not invented by the Romans. Prior to the use of sarcophagi, cinerary urns held the remains of the deceased.

56 Koortbojian, Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi, 14-15.

57 In the Attic style of sarcophagi, all four vertical panels were carved. The families owning these sarcophagi likely placed them in the middle of a mausoleum chamber; Platt, 214; Zanker and Ewald, 21.

58 Zanker and Ewald, 22.

59 Elsner, 180.

22 sarcophagus depicting Hippolytus and Phaedra (Fig. 11).60 It seems that the imagery, despite lacking clear Christian references, did not deter their reuse in a burial rites essential for the salvation of the soul.61 Other sarcophagi from this period became containers for bodies of water as fountains. The architects of Madinat al-Zahra’ (c. 936-976), the Cordoban palace of the

Umayyad caliphate, used such sarcophagi as fountains in the court’s pleasure gardens (Fig. 12).62

One particularly cunning fountain in Rome at the Palazzo Aldobrandini (now lost) makes use of a sarcophagus featuring reliefs of sea nymphs and sea centaurs holding up a mask of an oceanic deity (Fig. 13).63

Imperial sarcophagi also held value as collectible art objects early on. Elites in fourth- century Ostia decorated their homes with sarcophagi and other funerary statues removed from nearby cemeteries. 64 From Late Antiquity onward, inhabitants of the Roman imperial holdings repurposed sarcophagi for new burials, as domestic ornaments, and as objets d’art.65 These instances of reuse purposefully incorporate the sarcophagus’ ability to contain and oftentimes make conspicuous use of the object’s visual program.

60 Zanker and Ewald, 2.

61 Ibid, 1.

62 Susanna Calvo Capilla, “The Reuse of Classical Antiquity in the Palace of Madinat al-Zahra’ and Its Role in the Construction of Caliphal Legitimacy,” Muqarnas 31 (2014): 1–35.

63 Zanker and Ewald, 6.

64 Christina Murer, “The Reuse of Funerary Statues in Late Antique Prestige Buildings at Ostia,” in The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture: Late Antique Responses and Practices, ed. Troels M. Kristensen and Lea Stirling (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016), 194-195; Despite the official endorsement of the town’s government, imperial edicts attempted to end the practice of destroying public property.

65 Platt, 213.

23 Antiquarianism in the Renaissance and Baroque

It is now widely accepted that interest in Greco-Roman art and culture began before its

“rediscovery” by the humanist thinkers and artists of the Renaissance. Late antique and medieval individuals maintained a steady interest in classical literature and arts; for example, the court of

Charlemagne was one of the most famous medieval examples of interest in antiquity.66 The

Renaissance continues to receive recognition for rediscovery because of the nearly systematic approach taken to the search for ancient remains and the subsequent societal changes that occurred because of their discovery. The rise of humanism in the fourteenth century, though focused on historical linguistic studies of ancient languages, brought about new methods of interacting with the remains of classical art and architecture.67 Wealthy elites collected intellectually fashionable ancient statuary, gems, and other materials with vigor. Artists and architects studied newly discovered ancient remains to meet the demands of patrons with antiquarian interests. Though only a comparatively small circle of people directly experienced enthusiasm for antiquities in early modern Italy, their eagerness colors our understanding of the visual and material culture of the period.

The previously discussed expansion in construction in Rome consistently brought new ancient materials into circulation. As archaeology makes abundantly clear, Renaissance Rome was built directly on top of medieval Rome, which was built on top of ancient Rome. When construction teams embarked on foundation digging, they frequently uncovered statues, architectural fragments, and whole buildings. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are

66 Barkan, xxi; Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, 2nd ed (Oxford, UK; New York, NY, USA: B. Blackwell, 1988), 1. For example, medieval education centered on the study of Latin authors, such as Livy, Ovid, and Horace.

67 Weiss, 59.

24 particularly noteworthy for the canon-forming discoveries of the Laocoön, the Belvedere statues, and the Domus Aurea. Of course, certain types of ancient remains never left the public eye, such as architectural remains and fragments which included triumphal arches, columns, and friezes.68

By the early sixteenth century, these discoveries – now firmly considered prized works of art – entered the collections of the elite for display in their homes.69

Frameworks of Reuse

Since the 1980s, work on the reuse of materials in architecture has expanded at an exponential rate.70 Art historians, particularly those of the Renaissance and Middle ages developed categories to organize the reuse of Greco-Roman materials in construction.71 “Reuse” serves as a blanket term that describes all acts of employing old materials into new architecture.

Underneath reuse sits “spolia/spoliation” and “recuperation.” Scholars frequently interchange

“spolia” and “spoliation” with reuse; however, spolia entails a forcible transfer of ownership and can more specifically refer to materials acquired through violence, and subjugation.72 Spolia enters English directly from the Latin word spolia, which translates to spoils or booty. Studies on spoliation often emphasize the inherent violence in the act of forcibly dispossessing a culture of its materials.73 They also examine the effects of the physical incorporation of artworks into new

68 Barkan, 1.

69 Kathleen Christian, Empire without End: Antiquities Collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350-1527 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 2.

70 The pioneering work of Arnold Esch in the 1960s brought the initial attention to reuse as an area of study. Dale Kinney, “Introduction,” in Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, ed. Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney (London; New York: Routledge, 2016), 1–13.

71 Michael Greenhalgh, “Spolia: A Definition in Ruins,” in Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, ed. Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney (London; New York: Routledge, 2016), 78.

72 Kinney, 4.

73 Ibid, 7.

25 artistic contexts on collective identity and memory.74 Recuperation, more commonly utilized in post-colonial studies, refers to a process in which artists and architects reclaim materials left behind in the areas they live and incorporate them into their artistic practices. This reclaiming is often an act of defiance or autonomy. Some scholars prefer to elide these distinctions and refer to all reuse as spolia.75 I affirm these distinctions in reuse are essential for effectively discussing reuse.

We cannot tie the façade sarcophagi of the Casino dell’Aurora to either spoliation or recuperation because their origins remain undocumented. Christians may have removed the sarcophagi from mausolea in an act of domination over Rome; however, we cannot know the details of their removal with any certainty. The inclusion of the panels in the façade of the casino does not fall in line with recuperation – it seems unlikely that Scipione, as cardinal-nephew in the seventeenth century, acted to define himself in the face of a trying circumstance. For these reasons, I use the term reuse in addressing the façade of the casino.

In visual and material studies the concept of reuse comes loaded with a set of frameworks for analyzing the lives and afterlives of objects.76 Within these frameworks, certain scholars identify the reuse of marble as either loaded with ideological meaning, or devoid of it.77

Meaningful reuse encapsulates spoliation and recuperation. It asserts that the reuse was

74 Richard Brilliant, “Authenticity and Alienation,” in Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantin to Sherri Levine, ed. Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney (London; New York: Routledge, 2016), 169.

75 Kinney, i.

76 Greenhalgh, 78. Greenhalgh finds similar issues with the terms spolia and spoliation.

77 For example, Greenhalgh asserts that the reuse of marble in the Middle Ages stems from material and engineering needs in his essay, “Spolia: A Definition in Ruins,” while the reuse in Koortbojian’s essay, “Renaissance Spolia and Renaissance Antiquity (One Neighborhood, Three Cases),” holds ideological significance for the patron.

26 motivated by ideologies – political, religious, or anything else. Conversely, meaningless reuse describes a repurposing of building materials predicated on engineering, financial need, pragmatism – for example, the insertion of antique marble fragments into a medieval city wall.

The level of sophistication assumed of a culture can indicate how they interpret reuse when archival documents do not allow for a neat definition of spoliation or recuperation. Reuse of antiquities by early modern European elites is more frequently categorized as meaningful, in part because more documentation exists.78 As perspectives towards medieval people have changed in the recent past, so have understandings of their reuse.79 Even Zanker admits to concrete examples of medieval reuse arising from something more than availability of loose marble or economic value.80 Scholarship, like the work of Bober and Rubinstein, consistently acknowledges that conscious choices framed the decision to incorporate ancient material into new buildings in the Renaissance and the Baroque period, such as those observed in the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora. Nuanced analyses, that incorporates the histories of economics, engineering, and intellectualism is needed to form more holistic understandings of instances of reuse.

Modern sensibilities often color reactions towards reuse. The reuse of funerary objects, empty or otherwise, often reeks of sacrilege and can cause feelings of repulsion to post-modern

78 Beat Brenk, “Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: Aesthetics Versus Ideology,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41, Studies on Art and Archaeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday (1987), 104-105.

79 Barkan is among those to question and negate the use of this binary. He notes practices such as the insertion of figural fragments into the walls of churches in the eleventh century and the importation of antiquities to England by a medieval bishop of Winchester. Barkan, 32.

80 Zanker and Ewald, 1. Here, Zanker refers to Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II’s collection of sarcophagi specifically featuring hunting imagery. Later, Zanker notes that medieval people appreciate classical art.

27 sensibilities.81 Containers for the body of the deceased especially incite repulsion, as they mimic and symbolize the body as it once was while simultaneously suppressing what has become of the body.82 Yet, these bodily responses do not translate to premodern cultures. The reuse of ancient burial goods for quotidian purposes does not appear to raise enough concern to end the practice in cultures across the Roman occupied regions of the Mediterranean. Even in prehistory and antiquity, the inhabitants of Hispania reused and transformed Bronze Age stelae multiple times in new funerary contexts.83 The theft and plunder of grave goods occurred regularly, as did their reuse in new aesthetic contexts.84

Reuse entails a recontextualization that occurs when objects enter into a new culture or sociopolitical context.85 The identity or conceptualization of the object works not as a boundary, which absorbs some things and rejects others, but as a complex network of interactions, meanings, and relations.86 Recent scholarship has sought to understand this recontextualization in terms of the translation that occurs between and within cultures as they interact with reused

81 Perhaps this repulsion stems from death’s removal from our everyday lives. In a Spring 2018 seminar in the Art and Art History Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, discussion of Calvo’s article on the sarcophagi fountains at Madinat al-Zahra’ provoked an averse response from the class and a conversation about the reuse of funerary objects prior to modernity.

82 Elsner, 179-180.

83 Felipe Rojas, “Archaeophilia: A Diagnosis and Ancient Case Studies,” in Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison, ed. Benjamin Anderson and Felipe Rojas (Oxford; Havertown, PA: Oxford Books, on behalf of the Joukowsky Institute, 2017), 14.

84 Kinney, 2.

85 Kinney, 4-5; Esch 14-19.

86 Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 3.

28 materials.87 Moving forward, I will seek to add nuance to a recontextualization of the reuse observed on the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora.

Implications for the Façade of the Casino Dell’Aurora

But what does this contextualization of reuse and antiquarianism in early modern Italy reveal about the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora? We have established that the façade falls under reuse. The reuse was the result of the conscious decisions of Cardinal Borghese and Carlo

Maderno, which were symptomatic of a larger antiquarian aesthetic characteristic of the elites of

Renaissance and Baroque Rome. In making these decisions, Borghese and Maderno drew from the antiquities collection of Cardinal Borghese. Next, we shall look to the collections for elucidation.

Recent work on the collections of early modern elites understands them as active agents of cultural change.88 The speed of collecting in Rome increased exponentially in the mid- fifteenth century, in part because of the volume of antiquities being unearthed in the city.89

Collecting carried on at a heightened pace well into the seventeenth century. Rather than slowly accumulating familial collections over generations, singular family members, like Scipione

Borghese, were able to obtain a plethora of ancient materials during their lifetime. Past work on the collections of Roman elites has searched for iconographic schemas indicating a message the collectors sought to display to informed audiences.90 This analytical framework relies upon ekphrastic readings of sarcophagi, which can be flawed.

87 Ibid, 8.

88 Christian, 4.

89 William Stenhouse, “Visitors, Display, and Reception in the Antiquity Collections of Late-Renaissance Rome,” Renaissance Quarterly 58, no. 2 (2005), 399.

90 Christian, 6. Christian argues against this type of analysis and posits that elites built collections to stimulate the creativity of viewers and to position themselves within early modern Roman society.

29 Mythological scenes adorning sarcophagi held deep cultural meaning in antiquity and yet there is no ancient text directly explaining the intricate relationships between the visual programs observed in sarcophagi panels and ancient Roman beliefs about death. When these panels were translated into a new setting, such as the façade of a garden casino, the relationships are further obscured and new ones formed. Removal from the mausoleum, a landmark serving as a locus of cultural meaning, complicates attempts to derive meaning from their iconography alone.91 The

“cult value” of the panels dissipates and “the exhibition value” replaces it as sarcophagi are recontextualized through disassembly and movement.92 A sense of temporal awareness dissolves that cannot be recovered.93 Recontextualization alters the meaning of the narratives presented, and the iconography within the narratives is already mutable in meaning.

Returning to the idea of the collection presented on a façade, we must again look to the

Casino’s contemporaries. The Palazzo Mattei is a particularly effective example, as the Casino dell’Aurora’s construction happened simultaneously, both buildings are attributed to Carlo

Maderno, and they sit roughly 1.2 kilometers apart. As we have seen, a large number of antiquities bedeck the courtyard of the Palazzo Mattei (Fig. 2). The arrangement of the sarcophagi panels and portrait busts form a repetitive grid, sorted by the size and shape of the fragments. Horizontally, sarcophagus panels and busts in niches repeat themselves in certain columns, and in others portrait busts and windows alternate. Columns repeat themselves along the expanse of the courtyard’s walls. Yet, a distance is maintained between the rows of

91 David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 446.

92 Dorothy Verkerk, “Life after Death: The Afterlife of Sarcophagi in Medieval Rome and Ravenna,” in Roma Felix: Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome, ed. Éamonn Ó Carragáin and Carol L. Neuman de Vegvar, Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 81-88; This idea resonates with Walter Benjamin’s 1939 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility.”

93 Lowenthal, 448.

30 sculptures. This separation evokes the interior picture gallery and allows for individual study of particular reliefs. One can imagine the Mattei family inviting associates into the courtyard to study and discuss the antiquities.

In 1616, as work on the Palazzo Mattei drew to a close, an inscription was installed stating: “Asdrubale Mattei, Marchese di Giove, adorned his house with ancient sculptures, as if spolia taken from antiquity, that victor over all things, and he left these behind for his descendants as an inducement to ancient virtue. In the year of our Lord 1616.”94 Of note here is

Mattei’s conception of the sculptures and their purpose in their current context. Mattei’s inscription describes the sarcophagi fragments and portrait busts in the courtyard of the palazzo as spolia, with antiquity as the victor. Furthermore, Mattei envisions his progeny viewing these sculptures and being led toward “ancient virtue.” According to this inscription at least, this courtyard was meant for focused viewing and contemplation of the imagined ancient context of the works. Their assembly into a grid, where each sculpture can be read somewhat separately, advances his goals.

The prominent display of antiquities recalled the grandeur of ancient Rome while asserting the position of the collector through the strategic deployment of splendor.95 After the

Counter-Reformation accusations of corruption circumscribed the lavish display of antiquities by cardinals. To justify the great expense of procuring and displaying antiquities, Church officials

94 Michael Koortbojian, “Renaissance Spolia and Renaissance Antiquity (One Neighborhood, Three Cases),” in Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, ed. Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney (London; New York: Routledge, 2013), 149. The Latin inscription reads as follows: ASDRUBAL SPOLIIS EX ANTIQUITATE OMNIUM VICTRICE DETRACTIS DOMUM ORNAVIT AC PRISCAE MATTHAEIUS MARCHIO JOVII VETERUM SIGNIS TANQUAM VIRTUTIS INVITAMENTUM POSTERIS SUIS RELIQUIT ANNO DOMINI MDCXVI.

95 Stenhouse, 400.

31 returned to Pope Sixtus IV’s (r.1471-1484) argument that preserving antiquities benefitted Rome as a whole. It seems that this line of thinking was a factor in display choices made within the residences of cardinals.96 Ancient sculptures in particular were typically displayed in villa gardens and palatial courtyards, as I have noted at the Villa Aldobrandini and the Palazzo

Mattei.97 Scholars frequently made use of these outdoor collections for their research on the ancient past. For example, in Romae Urbis topographia, Jean-Jacques Boissard (1528-1602) recounts his research in the villa of Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi on the Quirinal Hill, where he inspected the antiquities in the garden with a larger group of scholars.98 In opening their homes to viewers, cardinals and other elites established their residences as destinations worth visiting, bringing themselves and their collections praise and prominence.99

Unlike the Palazzo Mattei’s inner courtyard, the sarcophagi of the Casino dell’Aurora are not displayed in a manner which makes them accessible for individual inspection (Fig. 7). The close position of the sarcophagi integrates them into the overall composition of the façade. It does not leave room for the kind of individualized viewing experience Maderno and Mattei cultivated in the courtyard of the Palazzo Mattei. Cardinal Borghese also does not provide us with an indication of the intentions of the display of his collection in the form of a pointed inscription.

Attempting to understand the façade sarcophagi of the Casino dell’Aurora as a reuse of iconography displaying a precise message determined by Scipione Borghese fails to capture the

96 Ibid, 400-401.

97 Ibid, 402. Smaller antiquities, such as carved gems, jewelry, and coins were displayed in studios, where close looking could be overseen by members of the house.

98 Ibid, 406-407.

99 Ibid, 424.

32 ornamental effect of the panels and of the façade. It fixates on the word, rather than on the contemporary context of the image, and ignores the form of the object. While the Casino dell’Aurora’s façade participates in the display of antiquities seen in contemporary palazzos, villas, and casinos, it does so in a significantly different manner. In the next chapter, I turn to an analysis concerned with the sarcophagi as players in a precisely composed façade. In examining the form of the façade, I return focus to the ornamental role sarcophagus panels can play with set into walls.

33 CHAPTER THREE: ORNAMENT AND THE FAÇADE OF THE CASINO DELL’AURORA

A Felicitous Discovery

Sometime around 1480, construction crews refurbishing the Basilica di S. Pietro in

Vincoli discovered the ruins of the Domus Aurea (64-68 CE), the palace of Nero.100 Though initially misidentified as the Palace of Titus, the Domus Aurea gripped the imagination of

Renaissance Rome. Artists such as Raphael and Giovanni da Udine participated in tours of the rooms, only accessible by tunnels. The subterranean frescos, left unexposed atmospheric variations in temperature and humidity, retained their brilliant colors and fine details in a way not seen in ancient painting before this time.101 The frescos are rich in ornament. Friezes, coffers, and bands surrounded by patterns of figures frame the mythological scenes of the ceilings (Fig.

14).102 The initial fascination with these ornamental framing devices, which developed at their discovery, continued to impact artistic and architectural practices in the sixteenth and early- seventeenth century. Pinturicchio’s Piccolomini Library in the Siena Cathedral (c. 1501-1506), with its dizzying array of encircling ornamental bands stands as one example (Fig. 15).103 The framing elements of the ceiling of the Domus Aurea was part of the matrix of the visual arena of

100 Michael Squire, “‘Fantasies so Varied and Bizarre’: The Domus Aurea, the Renaissance, and the ‘Grotesque,’” in A Companion to the Neronian Age, ed. Emma Buckley and Martin Dinter (Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley- Blackwell, 2013), 446-447.

101 Ibid, 450.

102 Ibid, 444.

103 Ibid, 452.

34 display façades. Quotations of this enframing ornament exist in the predecessors and contemporaries of the Casino dell’Aurora discussed in previous chapters. The framing devices of the antique fragments emulate the frescos of the Domus Aurea. The façade of the Casino dell’Aurora implements framing devices; however, it draws on the imagery of the sarcophagi panels themselves to create a composition that hinges on the ornamental effect of the panels.

A Framework for Ornament

In the past few decades, architectural historians, particularly those interested in early modern Europe, have developed a renewed interest in engagement with ornament.104 In a move that builds upon the detailed formal studies of Alois Riegl in the nineteenth century, new scholarship seeks to critically analyze the relationships between ornament and the fundamental facets of human experience, including power structures, self-defining practices, and cross- cultural exchange.105 Architecture receives particular focus in the new study of ornament, in part because it is such a public and visible art. Architectural ornament also comes to the fore in response to the twentieth century condemnation of ornament incited by the work of Adolf

Loos.106 In this section, I examine three authors’ theorization of ornament to situate my discussion of the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora.

I look to Coomaraswamy’s 1939 essay, “Ornament,” for the foundations of the art historical analysis of the significance of ornament.107 According to Coomaraswamy, the modern

104 Necipoğlu and Payne, 1.

105 Ibid, 1-4.

106 In his 1913 essay, “Ornament and Crime,” Loos responds to the highly ornamented architecture of Art Nouveau. He advocates for smooth surfaces, devoid of ornament. For Loos, ornament dated buildings and would eventually render them obsolete. Furthermore, he attributed a sense of degeneracy and immorality to ornament. By suppressing such degeneracy, Loos argued that modern society could be regulated. He concluded that “…Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strength.”

107 Coomaraswamy, 375–82.

35 understanding of decoration is that it is not an essential or necessary part of an object. Words used to describe ornament in 1939 connoted luxuriousness does not add to the utility or efficacy of the object. Coomaraswamy challenges the application of this modern notion of ornament to premodern art, arguing that these words originally implied “a completion or fulfilment” of the object. Essentially, he finds that to conceptually divorce ornament from utility would have been inconceivable in pre-modern periods.108 Coomaraswamy guides us through a series of philological observation for the Indo-European language family that articulate how ornament fulfills objects. His understanding of the Sanskrit word, alamkāra, which translates to ornament, is his most effective example. Coomaraswamy notes that the word is broken down to “sufficient” and “make,” or in other words, to make sufficient.109 Ornamenting an object makes it sufficient; it completes its articulation. In completing the articulation of the object, ornament empowers the object.

In The Mediation of Ornament (1992) Oleg Grabar argues that decoration and ornament differ fundamentally. Decoration comprises anything applied to the structure of an object that is not necessary for the stability, use, or understanding of the object.110 Ornament, as a definition, is a motif that has no referent outside of the object on which it is found.111 Grabar then explains that ornament is an aspect of decoration with the sole purpose of enhancing the object or structure.112 He notes that decoration and ornament are identified by what they do not do –

108 Ibid, 375-376.

109 Ibid, 377.

110 Grabar, xxiii-xxiv.

111 Grabar makes an exception for technical manuals demonstrating ornament, xxiv.

112 Ibid, 5.

36 represent or signify something else.113 Grabar argues that artists do not repeat formulas when making ornamented work, but consciously create.114 He finds that formal distinctions carry multitudinous meanings, even if we do not possess the tools to understand why. In the study of the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora, Grabar’s understanding allows for characterization of the creation of multivalent meanings in the ornamental quality of the abstracted sarcophagi reliefs.

Grabar concedes that decoration “seems to complete an object,” through the quality that it provides.115 Each example of decoration may provide a different “quality” to the work. He finds that organizational and compositional characteristics of decoration, such as sizes or locations of marks, exist in a separate sphere of logic from the subject matter of the work of art. For Grabar, these visual components demonstrate a hierarchy of importance of the decorative motifs to the viewer.116 He also introduces the term “terpnopoietic,” which he describes as a “neologism to mean ‘providing pleasure.’”117 Decoration and ornament, until proven otherwise, at least provide pleasure. Because the Casino dell’Aurora sits within the garden of a luxury palace, meant to provide an escape from summer heat, the role of pleasure cannot go unnoted.

The third approach that I look to is Jonathan Hay’s essay, “The Passage of the Other:

Elements for a Redefinition of Ornament” (2016). Hay proposes that ornament is the

“affirmation and articulation of surface.”118 As an articulation of surface, ornament and surface

113 Ibid, 9.

114 Ibid, 16.

115 Ibid, 25.

116 Ibid, 30.

117 Ibid, 37.

118 Hay, 64.

37 are one. Thus, ornament participates in the articulation of the form of the object. It is a three- dimensional logic, rather than a two-dimensional pattern applied to the surface. 119 He also asserts that treatment of iconographic elements of ornament can efface the sensory experience of form.120 In this essay, Hay advocates for a more holistic approach to ornament as an integral aspect of an object or structure – ornament as part of the artwork, rather than a veneer. Hay’s conception of ornament is vital to the study of the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora. The façade of the Casino dell’Aurora presents the viewer with narrative reliefs brimming with iconography.

Researchers have expended great efforts to interpret the iconography and narrative presented in sarcophagi panels, as seen in the brief surveys of the Casino dell’Aurora and the work of Bober and Rubinstein.121 In this effort, scholarship focusing on the iconography of the sarcophagi panels can minimize the importance of the sensory experience of the composition of the façade.

In pursuing ornament, my overall goal is to move beyond an examination of the iconography of the sarcophagi as a locus for meaning and attraction in the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora. I aim for a more holistic approach to the façade that incorporates both the antiquarian significance of the sarcophagi panels and their abstracted, ornamental function. I posit that ornament, a quality of the surface of the structure, is one way in which the façade is articulated and made complete. As in Grabar’s characterization, the reliefs carry multivalent and mutable meanings rooted in their iconography, their reuse value, and their usage as ornament.122

119 Hay also remarks that the aforementioned motifs may contribute to that limit, 62-64.

120 Grabar, 18-19.

121 Koortbojian, Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi, 4-5.

122 In Refiguring the Post Classical City: Dura Europe, Jerash, Jerusalem and Ravenna, Wharton notes that research seeking to identify singular meanings of iconographic images often give too much power to literary texts and can repress alternative interpretations. She terms these acts “scholarly policing”; 42-45. In recognizing the multiple, dynamic meanings of the sarcophagi panels and the façade, I hope to avoid such issues. Annabel Jane

38 Working in concert with the iconographic nature of the sarcophagi panels, ornament is critical to the aesthetic of the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora.

Casino dell’Aurora

The liveliness of the imagery of second- and third-century Roman sarcophagi is undeniable. Figures actively twist, bend, leap, and gesture across the deeply carved surfaces of the sarcophagi as they act out auspicious myths. As I have noted previously, the iconographic and narrative imagery of sarcophagi panels allowed sarcophagi to operate as functional and appropriate tombs in Roman society. In their original cultural context, their iconographic imagery articulated the sarcophagi and created a culture-specific meaning. The lengthy journey through time and/or space that the panels embedded in the Casino dell’Aurora façade embarked upon to reach the point of reuse may have made them more alluring and valuable, but also may have rendered the iconography unreadable as it would have been to ancient Romans.123 In each stage of reuse, whether in the collection of a church or incorporated into the wall of a structure, the iconography of the panels is reinterpreted within the frameworks of its current cultural context.

In cultures that value antiquarianism the acts of collecting, possessing, curating, and displaying objects from the past are significant. As we have seen, palaces and villas contemporaneous with the Casino dell’Aurora utilize sarcophagi panels in a public display of patrons’ ability to collect fashionable art-objects. Implicit in the collections are the wealth and status of the collectors. Not only were they able to collect stylish antique statuary, they were also able to disburse large amounts of funds to construct palaces displaying said antiquities. In the

Wharton, Refiguring the Post Classical City: Dura Europe, Jerash, Jerusalem and Ravenna (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

123 Flood, 6-7.

39 façades and courtyards of buildings such as the Palazzo Mattei and the Villa Medici, the separation between the sarcophagi panels allows for individual viewing of iconography and narrative, a function of the collection-style display of the panels.

The composition of the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora allows for allows for another type of viewing. Because of the sarcophagi panels’ arrangement within the façade, they function multivalently. Unlike in the courtyard of the Palazzo Mattei, the panels in the façade of the

Casino dell’Aurora are not provided with large amounts of space for separate viewing. Instead, they are compressed within the façade in a way that creates an active composition. The sarcophagi panels no longer act as images of iconographic narrative alone; they also operate as ornament. In this ornamental mode, they continue to reflect the wealth, power, and prestige of

Cardinal Borghese.

Less accessible to the unaided eye, the detailed iconography of the mythological figures can transform into abstracted textures woven into the surface of the façade, while still maintain legibility as repurposed antiques. This transformation does not mute the panels. The highly energetic lines of the panels contrast distinctly with the repeated rectangular forms that construct the façade, retaining and transforming their vibrant potency. Their animated surfaces attract the gaze of the viewer and affirm the high quality of the luxurious reliefs. Cardinal Borghese’s ability to obtain and display such costly antiquities in the courtyard of his palace speaks to his place within the society of Rome and the Church, as well as his family’s wealth and nobility. The sarcophagi panels in the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora denote this reality through their existence as ornament. In capturing the viewer’s attention through this tension, the façade seizes a moment in which it can fulfill the action of conveying a message about the social status of

Cardinal Borghese. Ultimately, the composition of the façade relies on the visual tension created

40 by the integration of rectangular, geometric forms and the blurring of the relief carvings into organic, ripple-like forms.

Regardless of the viewer’s awareness of the mythology presented in the reliefs of the sarcophagi panels, they act to communicate Cardinal Borghese’s prestige. A knowledgeable viewer, for example, a humanist scholar or another prince of the Church, standing in the garden would be familiar with the textured reliefs of pagan sarcophagi and their function as containers for the dead. For this viewer, the reliefs would create an aura of antique refinement essential for visual pleasure in a garden of the period. However, he would also know that these revetments cost Cardinal Borghese a great deal to obtain and install, and would develop an understanding of the cardinal from this knowledge. Viewers less conversant in the classical revival style might be familiar with the general nature of antiquities – or fashionable copies – and would also glean an understanding of Borghese’s social and financial command.124 The sarcophagi’s action can be effective for even the most unfamiliar viewers. As Michael Baxandall makes clear, premodern laypeople of their time were acutely aware of both the time and financial cost of producing material goods.125 The rich relief carvings of the casino façade, convey intricacy from their height above the viewer. This intricacy can only be obtained through many man-hours of skilled labor, which was especially expensive in the early seventeenth century. Cardinal Borghese’s ability to afford building with such lavish materials, regardless of their period of origin, speaks volumes to his status within Roman ecclesiastical and aristocratic society.

124 Greenhalgh, 90. Greenhalgh reminds us that it is “not necessary to believe that every…Christian in the Italian peninsula had any clear ideas about the pagan or early Christian past.” They lived in a landscape populated with ancient structures, especially within the city of Rome.

125 Baxandall.

41 None of these proposed viewing scenarios require Borghese to verbally explain the iconography or figural representations of the panels for the ornamental sarcophagi to do their work. The abstracted figures, now fully realized as architectural ornament, effectively communicate without distinctive references to a narrative. Standing before the one-story façade of the casino, the viewer is able to read the panels of sarcophagi in multiple ways. Still legible as narrative imagery to the learned viewer, the carvings can also be received as architectural ornament. The inclusion of sarcophagi panels in the walls of a building, as seen in the Casino dell’Aurora, is a common occurrence from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, especially in regions occupied by the Roman Empire in the late second and third century, during the peak of the popularity of carving-rich sarcophagi. Along with the value arising from their rich iconography and connections to the Roman past, the sarcophagi panels can also be understood in their new context, as architectural ornament vital to the communicative purposes of the Casino dell’Aurora. In their current context, the figures of the panels can become non-figural, melding into ornament critical to the structure and visual tension of the façade. Through their iconography, value as antiquities, and ornamental function, the panels demonstrate the elevated social standing of the casino’s patron within the larger framework of the façade.

42 CONCLUSION

The Lives of Roman Sarcophagi

The sarcophagi panels in the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora, as with those in the courtyard of the Palazzo Mattei and the façade of the Villa Medici, began their lives as containers for deceased Romans in the second and third centuries. The biography of each sarcophagus panel varies considerably. Unfortunately, incomplete historical records leave little way of divining the specifics of the panels’ existences, though it is likely that each panel fulfilled various purposes in different stages of use and reuse until they reached the Casino dell’Aurora.126

We have seen sarcophagi reused for burials and as fountains in palatial gardens. At least two of the panels from the Casino dell’Aurora were displayed in Roman churches before Borghese purchased them towards the end of the sixteenth century.127 The reliefs in the façade of the

Casino dell’Aurora travelled over a millennium before reaching the current phase in their lives, architectural ornament.

It is in part because of their remarkable journey through time, and perhaps space, that late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Roman elites, like Cardinal Borghese, found such value in the sarcophagi panels. As construction crews unearthed new fragments and renovated medieval buildings, sculptural pieces of Rome’s past entered the market as fashionable and

126 Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Lives of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 17.

127 Bober and Rubinstein do not specify if these panels were set into the interior walls of churches, if they were on display as three-dimensional sculptures, or if they were kept in the churches’ collections out of sight.

43 desirable art objects. Only elites able to marshal significant sums of money and navigate well- constructed client networks could procure such antiquities.128 A cardinal or nobleman without enough funds or without knowledge of antiquities dealers, active construction sites, and ancient

Roman topography would not be able to acquire appropriately fashionable antiquities. Indeed, at the Palazzo Mattei several of the inset fragments are not antique, but reproductions.129 Others were augmented with restorations shortly before their incorporation into the palazzo’s courtyard walls. Koortbojian observes that such replication and modification indicate an eagerness for complete, unfragmented, ancient sculpture. Presenting his acquired sarcophagi panels as complete attests to Cardinal Borghese’s elevated social status and the range of his authority in his position as cardinal nephew.

Amassing a collection of well-preserved ancient sculptures is only the first step in the public display of one’s social status, wealth, and prestige. Display of antiquities within the palazzo or villa demonstrated the prominence of the collector, but only to esteemed guests – nobility, intellectual elites, and men of the Church – and household servants. 130 The antiquities can be exhibited outside of the interior domestic space. We have seen free-standing statuary displayed in gardens, following the style of Imperial Roman villas, in the water theatre of the

Villa Aldobrandini and in the courtyard of the Palazzo Mattei, and noted that interested individuals had enough access to tour the collections. Free-standing sculpture placed in close proximity to a domestic structure deeply tied to the prominence of a singular family – Borghese,

128 Weiss, 180.

129 Koortbojian, “Renaissance Spolia and Renaissance Antiquity,” 151.

130 Weiss notes that the Renaissance was a time when extravagant displays of wealth were acceptable and even endorsed as “tangible evidence of magnificence and the power that went with it.” This concept occurs most notably in ostentatious building practices. Weiss, 180.

44 Mattei, Aldobrandini – conveys the might of that particular family. Integration of the sculptures into the fabric of the structure itself amplifies this act exponentially.131 Unlike free-standing sculpture, the sarcophagi panels and portrait busts made a part of the walls of buildings could not be easily moved or reconfigured. Unless deconstructed, the embedded collection stands as a permanent gesture towards the status and capabilities of the family within the network of elite

Roman society.

Incorporated into the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora, the sarcophagi panels operate both as ornament and as deliberate reuse of ancient Roman iconography. The inclusion of the reliefs realizes the tension of the façade’s composition while advancing a particular image of their patron, Cardinal Borghese through their associations with the ancient past of Rome.

Although the myths of the sculptural reliefs were well-known in the early-seventeenth century, the panels also operate in an ornamental mode because of their placement above the natural sightline of the viewer. At their current height, the highly energetic carvings of the sarcophagi appear to be abstracted into vegetal-like motifs. However, the panels do not shed their complex biographies; they continue to emblematize the ancient past of Rome. The visual abstraction of the iconography of the sarcophagi of the façade transforms the panels into symbols of a generalized antiquity. The abstraction of form and of history observed in the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora coincide in a manner that demonstrates the prestige of their patron, Cardinal

Borghese, to a public audience.

131 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (Third Version),” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott, vol. 4: 1938- 1940 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), 268.

45 FIGURES

Figure 1. Casino dell’Aurora, Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, Rome, 1611-1616.

46

Figure 2. A view showing the multiple registers of embedded ancient materials and free-standing sculptures in the courtyard of the Palazzo Mattei di Giove, Rome, 1598-1617.

47

Figure 3. The façade of the Villa Medici, Rome, 1544.

48

Figure 4. Partial view of the façade of the Casino of Pius IV demonstrating Ligorio’s inclusion of classical elements, Rome, 1562.

49

Figure 5. The water theatre at the Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati, 155-1623.

50

Figure 6. Wide view of the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora, Rome, 1611-1616.

51

Figure 7. Center of Casino dell’Aurora façade, Rome, 1611-1616.

52

Figure 8. View of side wing of the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora, Rome, 1611-1616.

53

Figure 9. Staircase within the hanging gardens of the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, Rome, 1611-1616.

54

Figure 10. Sarcophagi panels in the façade of the Casino dell’Aurora, in present sequence – Endymion, Bacchanal Scene, Meleager, Lion Hunt, marble, second to third century CE.

55

Figure 11. Sarcophagus with Hippolytus and Phaedra, marble, Camposanto, Pisa, late second century CE.

56

Figure 12. Sarcophagus of Meleager reused as a fountain trough at Madinat al-Zahra’, marble, Cordoba, third century CE.

57

Figure 13. Sarcophagus reused as fountain trough at the Palazzo Aldobrandini, now lost, Rome, late second century CE.

58

Figure 14. Ceiling of the Hall of Hector and Andromache in the Domus Aurea, Rome, 64-68 CE.

59

Figure 15. The ceiling of the Piccolomini Library in the Siena Cathedral, Bernadino di Giago, known as Pinturicchio, Siena, 1501-1506.

60 REFERENCES

Anderson, Benjamin, and Felipe Rojas. “Introduction: For a More Capacious History of Archaeology.” In Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison, 1–7. Oxford; Havertown, PA: Oxford Books, on behalf of the Joukowsky Institute, 2017.

Appadurai, Arjun. “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value.” In The Social Lives of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Arjun Appadurai, 3–63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Arioli, Kristin A. “Jacopo Ripanda, Trajan’s Column and Artistic Fame in Renaissance Rome.” In The Legacy of Antiquity: New Perspectives in the Reception of the Classical World, edited by Lenia Kouneni, 125–47. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

Barkan, Leonard. Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (Third Version).” In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, edited by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, translated by Edmund Jephcott, 4: 1938-1940:251–83. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.

Benzi, Fabio, Roberto Schezen, and Caroline Vincenti Montanaro. Palazzi Di Roma. Venezia: Arsenale Editrice, 1997.

Bober, Phyllis Pray, and Ruth Rubinstein. Renaissance Artists & Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources. London, England: Oxford: H. Miller; Oxford University Press, 1986.

Brenk, Beat. “Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: Aesthetics Versus Ideology.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41, no. Studies on Art and Archaeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday (1987): 103–9.

Brilliant, Richard. “Authenticity and Alienation.” In Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantin to Sherri Levine, edited by Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, 167–78. London; New York: Routledge, 2016.

Burroughs, Charles. The Italian Renaissance Palace Facade: Structures of Authority, Surfaces of Sense. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Calvo Capilla, Susanna. “The Reuse of Classical Antiquity in the Palace of Madinat Al-Zahra’ and Its Role in the Construction of Caliphal Legitimacy.” Muqarnas 31 (2014): 1–35.

61 Christian, Kathleen. Empire without End: Antiquities Collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350- 1527. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. “Ornament.” The Art Bulletin 21, no. 4 (1939): 375–82.

Courtright, Nicola. “Imitation, Innovation, and Renovation in the Counter-Reformation: Landscapes All’antica in the Vatican Tower of the Winds.” In Antiquity and Its Interpreters, edited by Alina Alexandra Payne, Ann L. Kuttner, and Rebekah Smick, 126–44. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Cresti, Carlo, Massimo Listri, and Claudio Rendina. Palazzi of Rome. Köln: Könemann, 1998.

Davies, Penelope J. E. Death and the Emperor: Roman Imperial Funerary Monuments, from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius. Cambridge, U.K.; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Davis, Richard H. Lives of Indian Images. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Di Castro, Daniela, Anna Maria Pedrocchi, and Patricia Waddy. Il Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi e La Galleria Pallavicini. Torino: U. Allemandi, 1999.

Elsner, Jaś. “Decorative Imperatives between Concealment and Display: The Form of Sarcophagi.” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 61–62 (2012): 178–95.

Esch, Arnold. “On the Reuse of Antiquity: The Perspectives of the Archaeologist and of the Historian.” In Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, edited by Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, 13–33. London; New York: Routledge, 2016.

Findlen, Paula. “Possessing the Past: The Material World of the Italian Renaissance.” The American Historical Review 103, no. 1 (n.d.): 83–114.

Fischer, Elizabeth L. “Streams of Living Water: The Strigil Motif on Late Antique Sarcophagi Reused in Medieval Southern France.” M.A., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011.

Flood, Finbarr B. Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Gallavotti Cavallero, Daniela, and Carlo Pietrangeli. Monumental Buildings of Rome from the 14th to the 20th Century. Roma: NER, 1990.

Grabar, Oleg. The Mediation of Ornament. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. Greenhalgh, Michael. “Spolia: A Definition in Ruins.” In Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, edited by Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, 75–96. London; New York: Routledge, 2016.

62

Haskell, Francis, and Nicholas Penny. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

Hay, Jonathan. “The Passage of the Other: Elements for a Redefinition of Ornament.” In Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, edited by Gülru Necipoğlu and Alina Payne, 62– 69. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Hibbard, Howard. Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture, 1580-1630. Studies in Architecture 10. London: Zwemmer, 1971.

———. “Scipione Borghese’s Garden Palace on the Quirinal.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 23, no. 4 (1964): 163–92.

Hill, Michael. “Cardinal Scipione Borghese’s Patronage of Ecclesiastical Architecture (1605- 33).” University of Sydney, 1998.

Hollingsworth, Mary, and Carol M Richardson. “Introduction.” In The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art 1450-1700, 1–16. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.

Kinney, Dale. “Introduction.” In Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, edited by Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, 1–13. London; New York: Routledge, 2016.

Koortbojian, Michael. Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

———. “Renaissance Spolia and Renaissance Antiquity (One Neighborhood, Three Cases).” In Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, edited by Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, 149–65. London; New York: Routledge, 2013.

Kopytoff, Igor. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commodification as Process.” In The Social Lives of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Arjun Appadurai, 64–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Kouneni, Lenia. “Introduction.” In The Legacy of Antiquity: New Perspectives in the Reception of the Classical World, edited by Lenia Kouneni, 1–7. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

Lowenthal, David. The Past Is a Foreign Country Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

63 Murer, Christina. “The Reuse of Funerary Statues in Late Antique Prestige Buildings at Ostia.” In The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture: Late Antique Responses and Practices, edited by Troels M. Kristensen and Lea Stirling, 177–97. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016.

Necipoğlu, Gülru, and Alina Payne, eds. Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Ostrow, Steven F. “The Counter-Reformation and the End of the Century.” In Rome, edited by Marcia Hall, 246–320. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Platt, Verity. “Framing the Dead on Roman Sarcophagi.” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 61– 62 (2012): 213–27.

Robertson, Clare. Il Gran Cardinale: Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts. Yale University Press, 1992.

Rojas, Felipe. “Archaeophilia: A Diagnosis and Ancient Case Studies.” In Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison, edited by Benjamin Anderson and Felipe Rojas, 8–30. Oxford; Havertown, PA: Oxford Books, on behalf of the Joukowsky Institute, 2017.

Rowland, Ingrid D. “Cultural Introduction to Renaissance Rome.” In Rome, edited by Marcia Hall, 1–15. Artistic Centers of the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Squire, Michael. “‘Fantasies so Varied and Bizarre’: The Domus Aurea, the Renaissance, and the ‘Grotesque.’” In A Companion to the Neronian Age, edited by Emma Buckley and Martin Dinter, 444–64. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

Stenhouse, William. “Visitors, Display, and Reception in the Antiquity Collections of Late- Renaissance Rome.” Renaissance Quarterly 58, no. 2 (2005): 397–434.

Summers, David. Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism. London; New York: Phaidon, 2003.

Valone, Carolyn. “Women on the Quirinal Hill: Patronage in Rome, 1560-1630.” The Art Bulletin 76, no. 1 (1994): 129–46.

Varriano, John. Italian Baroque and Rococo Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Verkerk, Dorothy. “Life after Death: The Afterlife of Sarcophagi in Medieval Rome and Ravenna.” In Roma Felix: Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome, edited by Éamonn Ó Carragáin and Carol L. Neuman de Vegvar. Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West. Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007.

64 Weiss, Roberto. The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity. 2nd ed. Oxford, UK; New York, NY, USA: B. Blackwell, 1988.

Wharton, Annabel Jane. Refiguring the Post Classical City: Dura Europe, Jerash, Jerusalem and Ravenna. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Wolfe, Karin. “Cardinal Antonio Barberini (1608-1671) and the Politics of Art in Baroque Rome.” In The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art 1450-1700, edited by Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M Richardson, 265–93. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.

Zanker, Paul, and Björn Christian Ewald. Living with Myths: The Imagery of Roman Sarcophagi. Translated by Julia Slater. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

65