Clas 1120Q / Arch 1707 the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
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CLAS 1120Q / ARCH 1707 THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD MWF 2 – 2:50 p.m. Rhode Island Hall 108 Prof. John Cherry Class 27 April 2 Imagining and Visualizing Lost Wonders Joint presenta,ons in class, April 7, 9, and 11 “Other Ancient Wonders” Monday 7 April Samantha Gay & Gillie Johnson (Stonehenge) Ted Gilbane & Joe Mello (Library of Alexandria) Tyrone Smith & Siyi Zhang (Great Wall of China) Wednesday 9 April Sophie Cohen & Rob Weiner (Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae) Obasi Osborne & Lauren Morgan (King Solomon’s Temple, Jerusalem) Rudy Cuellar & Tanya Olson Friday 11 April Mahew Knowlton & Marissa PeeruS (Petra, Jordan) Walker Mills — presenSng solo Drawing by Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) The artist Deinokrates* and Pietro da Cortona deliver to Pope Alexander VII (1655-1667) Deinokrates’ plan to carve Mount Athos in the image of Alexander the Great * Also called Stasikrates or Diokles Another version: Imagining and visualizing what no longer exists — or may never have existed Ekphrasis: A rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another, by describing it — e.g., the descripSon of the Shield of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, or (here) the dramac visual recreaon of a story told by several ancient authors. Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) Historic Architecture Book 1 Dinocrates’s plan to carve Mt. Athos into a giganSc seated statue of Alexander the Great, holding an enSre city in his hand. Vitruvius, On Architecture (27-23 B.C.) Plutarch, Life of Alexander, ch. 72 A.D. 75 Mt. Athos Drawing by Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) The artist Deinokrates* and Pietro da Cortona deliver to Pope Alexander VII (1655-1667) Deinokrates’ plan to carve Mount Athos in the image of Alexander the Great * Also called Stasikrates or Diokles Another version: Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) Historic Architecture Book 1 Anthropocentric rendering of the Dinocrac myth. Francesco di Giorgio MarSni, Traa di architectura (ca. 1476) Rennaissance humanist, Siena Translated Vitruvius in to the vernacular and published it. The human body as the architectural canon, or unit of measure. • Lysippan stance • Herakles’ lion-skin Drawing by Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) The artist Deinokrates* and Pietro da Cortona deliver to Pope Alexander VII (1655-1667) Deinokrates’ plan to carve Mount Athos in the image of Alexander the Great * Also called Stasikrates or Diokles Another version: Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) Historic Architecture Book 1 Allegorical Portrait of Pope Alexander VII Ciro Ferri, ca. 1660 Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome • The ponSfical body, imagined as Athos • The seven bodies and their aributes allegorically represent the seven hills of Rome Mao of Eastern Mediterranean and its ancient monuments, J.B. Fischer von Erlach (1712) Drawing by Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) The artist Deinokrates* and Pietro da Cortona deliver to Pope Alexander VII (1655-1667) Deinokrates’ plan to carve Mount Athos in the image of Alexander the Great * Also called Stasikrates or Diokles Another version: Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) Historic Architecture Book 1 • The physical locaon of myth in the late Baroque geographical imaginaon • Athos’s imaginary seng on the border between two (imaginary) worlds: Greek anSquity and the Orient Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes Mount Athos Carved as a Monument to Alexander the Great, ca. 1796 (Art InsStute of Chicago) • A purely fantasSc mountain painted as a pastoral Arcadian landscape of the western imaginaon Which of the Seven Wonders would be easiest for an arSst to visualize? The Great Pyramid? MarSn van Heemskirck, Pyramids of Egypt Later 16th century Another 16th-century imagining of the Pyramids of Egypt The only place European arSsts could see a pyramid was in Rome. Cesus’s mausoleum did not have the right proporSons, so this is why in the Middle Ages and Renaissance visualizaons of ancient Egypt have too pointed monuments (some almost like obelisks) Pyramid of Cesus (18-12 BC), Rome Joseph in Egypt 100 Roman feet (30 m) high Mosaic, San Marco cathedral, Venice Heemskirck Self-portrait at the Colosseum, 1553 Heemskirck, The Pantheon in Rome Maarten van Heemskirck (1498-1574) was on the Grand Tour 1532-1536 in Northern and Central Italy, and especially in Rome He later made a cycle of engravings of all Seven Wonders; printers later found it profitable to reproduce them Heemskirck’s Seven Wonder cycle of engravings (some of them hand-colored in later reprinSngs) Which of the Seven Wonders would have been hardest for an ar,st of Heemskirck’s era to visualize? Great Pyramid — sSll in existence, but inaccessible to western arSsts Hanging Gardens at Babylon — gone by 1st century BC, Babylon inaccessible Artemision — destroyed 3rd century AD, buried, inaccessible Zeus statue, Olympia — site buried by 5th-6th century AD, statue destroyed by fire at ConstanSnople Mausoleum — picked apart for building materials 15th century, inaccessible Colossos of Rhodes — collapsed 226 BC, materials carted away in late anSquity, inaccessible Pharos of Alexandria — collapsed into the sea by 14th-15th century, inaccessible • Since all of these wonder-monuments were totally destroyed, or buried, or at places to which travel by westerners was not possible, arSsts had to rely on ancient descripSons alone. • Texts of Greek and Lan authors became increasingly available with the Renaissance and their wide disseminaon with the invenSon of prinSng in the 15th century • APempts to re-create individual Wonders as images begin shortly thereaer .