Torre dei Schiavi Monument and Metaphor

Charles C. Eldredge When Benjamin West landed on Roman monuments, precisely 's ancient shores, he was fol- drawn if fancifully rearranged, simi- lowing the path of generations of larly enjoyed great vogue among Grand Tourists. Italy, especially the patrons of his day. Given this , was, after all, the center of widespread enthusiasm for things European civilization and from an- Roman, it was little wonder that cient times had drawn visitors from Benjamin West, the New World's near and far. While but a single pil- first artist-ambassador to Europe, grim in the long line to Rome, West was determined "to visit the foun- was at the same time a pioneer for tainhead of the arts" and in 1760 generations of American artists headed to Rome.1 who would follow in his wake, West, who left Italy for London drawn by the city's special history in 1763, was followed by John Sin- and character. gleton Copley, who arrived in The distinctive nature of central Rome in 1774. The familiar land- Italian light and topography, which marks with which Pannini and col- had profoundly affected Claude leagues had preoccupied them- Lorrain and altered the subsequent selves reappeared tellingly in the course of landscape painting, was background of Copley's portrait of scarcely the sole attraction of the American Italophiles Mr. and which the area could boast. The an Mrs. Ralph Izard, painted in 1775. of the Old Masters was a major The couple posed amid their Old lure for the Grand Tourists of the World finery before a distant pros- eighteenth century, as were the pect of the Colosseum. That such sculpted artifacts and architectural trappings were significant both to remains of the ancients. These artists and sitters of many nationali- reminiscences of the classical ties is suggested by J. H. W. world were everywhere apparent Tischbein's renowned portrait along the and inescapably Goethe in the Roman Campagna molded perceptions and depictions (1787), with the Tomb of Caecilia of the Eternal City. Metella and other favorite sites in As archaeologists exhumed this the background, or Jean Ingres's storehouse of a storied past, artists equally acclaimed portrayal of his delineated the ruins, with exacti- colleague Frangois Granet (1807), tude or caprice. Giambattista posed before the Quirinal. Piranesi's famed views of the antiq- After the turn of the nineteenth uities of Rome excited the imagina- century, the pioneering travels of tions of connoisseurs throughout West and Copley were repeated by Europe and even in colonial Amer- increasing numbers of American Thomas Hotcbkiss, Torre di Schiavi (detail), ica, to which his engravings easily artists, for whom Italy became a fa- 1865. Oil on canvas 22 3/8 x 34 3/4 in. National Museum of American Art, Smith- and readily traveled. Giovanni vorite destination during their Eu- sonian Institution, Museum Purchase Pannini's compositions based upon ropean sojourns. Between 1796

15 Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1 Robert Burford, Explanation of the Pan- EXPLANATION OF TH£ MNOKAMA OF ROM I ANCIENT* MOUEKN orama of Rome Ancient & Modern, ca. 1840, Published in Burford, Description of a View of the City of Rome (New York: William Osborn, 1840)

and 1815, John Vanderlyn spent all effect on the imaginations of but two years abroad, dividing his nineteenth-century Americans and, time between and Rome. In from about 1825 to 1875, motivated Rome in 1807 he composed his ac- the travels and the productions of claimed Marius Amidst the Ruins of many writers and artists. It was Carthage, which reflected the art- James Russell Lowell who perhaps ist s mastery of antique history ren- best explained the American fasci- dered in tight, neoclassical style. nation. "Italy," he wrote, The American taste for figures and ruins, as well as for Italy in general, was classic ground and this not so reached its high point in the mid much by association with great nineteenth century, as seen for in- events as with great men [T]o stance in the work of the expatriate the American Italy gave cheaply William Page. In 1860 he painted a what gold cannot buy for him at romantic image of his wife before home, a past at once legendary> the Colosseum, an edifice that she, and authentic, and in which he has the quintessential Italophile, im- an equal claim with every other for- pressively dominates. While eigner. In he is a poor re- Vanderlyn and Page and many lation ... in France his notions are others worked in Rome, the fascina- purely English... but Rome is the tion with the ancient capital extend- mother country of every boy who ed far beyond the city's bound- devoured Plutarch Italy gives aries. In his Paris studio in the us antiquity with good roads, early 1840s, the fashionable por- cheap living, and above all, a sense traitist George P. A. Healy painted of freedom from responsibility... Euphemia Van Rensselaer—with the sense of permanence, un- Roman ruins in the distance. changeableness and repose.3 Italomania was by then wide- spread, indeed so much so that The whole of Italy, from Etna to Ralph Waldo Emerson worried, the northern lakes, was rich in his- "My countrymen are... infatuated toric associations. But, for the mid- with the rococo toy of Europe. All nineteenth-centurv traveler, as for America seems on the point of em- his predecessors, it was to Rome barking."2 The "dream of Arcadia"— that attention was particularly di- as entitled a key rected. Viewed from the Pincian or work of 1838—exercised a potent other Roman hilltops, or from the

3 Fall 1987 far reaches of the Campagna, the herbiage, clinging to its ruins as if dome of St. Peters and the city's to "mouth its distress" completes the fabled ruins inspired hushed rev- illusion. Crag rises over crag, green erence in nearly every visitor. and breezy summits mount into Worthington Whittredges recollec- the sky.5 tions of his first glimpse of the city was typical of most Americans: "To The overgrown arcades attracted as me, born in a log cabin and reared well the admiration of Rembrandt in towns of low flat-roofed houses Peale, who, like most of the artists, of pine and hemlock, the picture of regretted the program of cleaning Rome at last before my eyes was up the monuments that was begun quite enough to inspire me with in the early nineteenth century. In- feelings of reverence and humility. spired by recollections of a "beauti- I could not speak, or did not, and ful wilderness of ruins, vines and observed that the other passengers shrubbery," he suggested that [in the carriage] were similarly "some spots [be] left neglected and 4 affected." covered with plants and shrubs, as Understandably, artists sought to a sample of its former guise." capture the grand sight, on can- Peale's advice, however, went un- vases, daguerreotypes, or even in heeded, leaving later artists, like monumental panoramas, such as Elihu Vedder, to lament that "the that by the noted English specialist ruins were wonderfully beautiful of the genre Robert Burford, which before they were 'slicked up.'" was first exhibited in New York in "Slicked up" or not, the monu- 1840 and shown again in Philadel- ments cast their spell over visitors phia two years later—appropriately for most of the century. The "ro- at the Coliseum (fig. 1). Ameri- mance of ruins" was described as cans, of course, were not alone in "one of the most innocent and in- this fascination. Goethe's "discov- structive pleasures in which one ery" of Rome in the late eighteenth may indulge," and thousands century led to an equivalent migra- succumbed.6 tion of German artists, who min- The fascination with decay was gled in Rome with painters and more sentimental than morbid. Al- sculptors from the Scandinavian though most American artists did countries, France, Russia, and En- not wind up in Rome's Protestant gland, all drawn by the region's pe- Cemetery, many visitors would culiar appeal. have understood the poetic senti- Painters particularly delighted in ment of Shelley (who is interred in the scenic possibilities of decaying Rome): "It could make one in love monuments (fig. 2). For Thomas with death to think of being buried Cole, it was the Colosseum, "beauti- in so sweet a place."7 ful in its destruction," which, he If Rome inspired sweet thoughts said, "affected me most." "From the of mortality, the unsettled Cam- broad arena within," he recalled, pagna outside its ancient walls did not always do likewise. To many it rises around you, arch above early travelers, it was a bleak land arch, broken and desolate, and of "solitude, dust and tombs."8 The mantled in many parts with... wild and hilly Campagna was the plants and flowers, exquisite both domain of and banditti, a for their color and fragrance. It dangerous "desert" whose traverse looks more like a work of nature was required to achieve the art- than of man, for the regularity of pilgrim's goal. Hippolyte Taine art is lost, in a great measure, in thought it like "an abandoned dilapidation, and the luxuriant cemetery... the sepulchre of

4 Smithsonian Studies in American Art Rome, and of all the nations she like those of Illinois."11 destroyed All antiquity, indis- Along with the tourists, painters criminately, lies buried here under extended their rambles through the monstrous city which devoured the historic landscape, searching them, and which died of its sur- for the perfect fragment of broken feit." Wrote another visitor in 1820, aqueduct, the artistic effect of sun- "Rome ... stood alone in the wil- set across verdant land, the colorful derness, as in the world, sur- herdsman tending his flock amid rounded by a desert of her own the ruins. Van Wyck Brooks created creation ... pestilent with disease a memorable word picture of these and death [L]ike a devouring artists, who, "with Claude on the grave, it annually engulphs [sic] all brain," of human kind that toil upon its haunted the Campagna, painting surface."9 all day until twilight, willing to During the nineteenth century, run the risks of the chill and the as highway safety improved and as night mist, hoping to catch a little methods to deal with the threats of the wonder of the sunset; and of malaria developed, travelers then hurrying in to pass the gates pushed farther beyond the limits before these were closed in the eve- of the city. The Campagna had to ning, man]elling over the purple be crossed to reach the pictur- clouds behind,the purpler Alban esque towns of Tivoli, Albano, and Hills and the mellow golden glow their neighbors in the Sabine Hills, in the sky at the west.12 which drew increasing numbers of travelers. As familiarity grew and se- Ruined aqueducts, the "camels curity improved, the reactions of of the Campagna" that had brought travelers to the Campagnas wastes precious water to changed. Instead of the "fearsome from the distant hills, provided a loneliness" experienced by an ear- favorite motif for nineteenth- lier traveler, William Wetmore century painters, as did the pictur- Story, one of Rome s greatest propa- esque ruins along the old Appian gandists, found the Campagna air Way. Another favored destination, "filled with a tender sentiment of to the east of the city along the Via sadness which makes the beauty of Praenestina, was the remains of the the world about you touching."10 villa of the Gordian emperors (fig. To his many readers Bayard Taylor 3), who reigned from A.D. 237 to recommended the view from the 244. The site, which was known as Campagna. While "there was noth- the Torre dei Schiavi, lay about two ing particularly beautiful or sub- and one-half miles beyond the lime in the landscape," he noted, Porta Maggiore, crowning a rise in "few other scenes on earth com- the landscape above the flow of the bine in one glance such a myriad Acqua Bollicante. It was praised in of mighty associations, or bewilder guidebooks as "one of the most pic- the mind with such a crowd of con- turesque and interesting points in fused emotions." In time, the re- the Campagna."13 gion came to seem almost homey. The complex was constructed Charles Dickens, visiting in the amid and over the remains of ear- early 1860s, noted that one Cam- lier Antonine cisterns and build- pagna view, "where it was most ings. The new imperial country level, reminded me of an American house was remarkable for its size; prairie." Indeed one American tour- the ruins stretched along nearly a ist, familiar with the Midwest, mile of the roadway. Begun by wrote that the Campagnas "wheat- Gordian pere, a cultivated man of fields, extending far and wide, are letters, the villa was subsequently

18 Fall 1987 3 Veduta delle Religuie della Villa dei Gordiani. Engraving in Luigi Canina, Gli edifizj antichi dei contorni di Roma, vol 6 (Rome, 1856), plate 106

4 Terme e Ninfeo della Villa dei Gordiani (elevations, sections, and plans). Engrav- ing in Luigi Canina, Gli edifizj antichi dei contorni di Roma, vol 6 (Rome, 1856), plate 107

occupied by Gordian III, who fifty of Nubian marble." Remnants shared his father's passion for of these colorful, imported stones books, amassing a library of sixty were recovered in archaeological thousand volumes. But the epicu- excavations which began in earnest rean son also collected in other ar- in the early nineteenth century. eas, boasting twenty-two concu- "There were also three basilicas of bines, by each of whom he sired corresponding size, particularly three or.four children—perhaps ac- some thermae, more magnificent counting for the size of the subur- than any others in the world, ex- ban spread. cept those in Rome" (fig. 4).14 Three main elements composed The circular mausoleum was the villa: sumptuous baths; the likened by a number of nineteenth- "heroon" or mausoleum, a circular century travel writers to the Pan- building oriented toward the high- theon, but its modest scale—fifty- way in the best Vitruvian fashion; six feet interior diameter—and and a large colonnaded structure method of construction are more incorporating three basilicas. Of analogous to the Temple of Romu- these, only ruins remained in the lus on the . The brick- nineteenth century, although the work of the Gordian villa and the form of the mausoleum was still engineering of the vaults were char- readily apparent, as was a corner acteristically late Roman; the pio- of an octagonal bath. neering archaeologist Antonio Contemporary descriptions by Nibby even claimed that the the Roman chronicler Julius Gordian mausoleum was "the most Capitolinus suggest the elaborate ancient of this type of construction" scale and decoration of this majes- and served as the model for the tic home. The Gordian villa, he more familiar landmark near the wrote, "was remarkable for the Circus of Romulus on the Via Ap- magnificence of a portico with four pia. Four large round windows, of ranges of columns, fifty of which which two remain intact, permitted were of Carystian, fifty of Claudian, light into the upper story; there, a fifty of Synnadan [or Phrygian], and series of niches, alternating square

19 Smithsonian Studies in American Art and round, presumably contained a literal translation with its allusion sculpture. Augustus Hare noted to Roman slavery. Instead, Bruno that the splendid statue of Livia in Schrader traced the name to the the Torlonia Museum was found at wealthy Schiavi family of the fif- the site and that works of that type teenth century, one of whose mem- originally embellished the entire bers, Vincenzo dello Schiavo, was complex.15 A subterranean room prominent in Rome as late as 18 similarly contained straight and 1562. arched niches and was supported The ruins along the Via at its center by a large round pillar. Praenestina lay largely ignored for Adjacent to the circular structure centuries following the construc- were the vast basilican building tion of the watchtower and the raz- and the baths, of which little ing of San Andrea. Few travelers remains. and fewer artists were drawn to the Long after the dissipated site until, in the seventeenth cen- Gordian III was murdered by his tury, Piranesi turned to the ruins troops, his Campagna homesite for inspiration. Among his cele- was put to very different purposes. brated views of the Roman antiqui- Remains of frescoes, which in the ties are several plates featuring the nineteenth century were still evi- ruined villa and its environs (fig. dent in the mausoleums vault, sug- 5).19 He drew the stucco orna- gest that the structure served as a ments of foliation and animals in medieval church. A frieze of saints the octagonal bath, which he mis- and other Christian subjects was took for a tomb, and in his engrav- painted beneath the oculi in what ings of the mausoleum he made was probably the church of San An- the common misidentification of drea, razed in A.D. 984.16 The ruins the site as a temple. served military as well as religious In the following century, tour- purposes. The octagonal room re- ism outside the walls of Rome re- maining from the ornate baths was mained scarce. Francois Joullain transformed into a watchtower in was among the apparent few who the late by building made the pilgrimage to the Torre, walls over the apselike vault, perhaps attracted to it by Piranesi's strengthening it at the center with prints, which remained popular a thick Saracenic column, and top- among Romes visitors and cogno- ping it with a newly constructed scenti. Joullains small panel is char- tower. To Karl Baedeker, writing in acteristic of the views of Roman 1867, this curious pastiche "im- monuments popular with collec- parled] a grotesque aspect to the tors of the period (fig. 6). He has place"—and doubtless enhanced anticipated the later "slickening its allure.17 up" of the ruins by transforming Eventually the Gordian villa site the broken and irregular form of came to be known as the Torre dei the mausoleum into a tidy sheep- Schiavi, a designation originally oc- fold. The rustic, mangerlike setting, casioned by the curious, broken the multiple lamb references, the watchtower but later applied to the gesturing, Magus-like figure at the distinctive mausoleum and ulti- left, and the mother and child with mately to the entire region. The ori- father, combine in an unexpected gins of the name are uncertain. In suggestion of a Nativity on the the nineteenth century it was often Campagna. The villa of a degener- referred to by English-speaking visi- ate emperor would surely be an un- tors as the "Tower of Slaves," al- likely setting for such an extraordi- though at least one travel guide nary event—if that indeed was specifically cautioned against such what the artist intended—and

20 Fall 1987 Veduta degli Avanzi di Fabbrica magnifica sepolcrale... vicina a Torre de1 Schiavi... Published in Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Le antichita romane (Rome: Stamperia di Angelo Rotilj\ 1756), plate 60

FranqoisJoullain, Torre dei Schiavi, n.d. Oil on wood, 9 7/16 x 12 3/4 in. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Bruns- wick, Maine, Bequest of The Hon. James Bowdoin III

Joullain s rare choice of the Torre ducted nearly continuously from setting suggests that in his time the 1830s to the 1870s. there was little understanding of The site simultaneously attracted the site's historical importance. attention for a very different That appreciation did not come reason—it was there that Rome's until the early years of the nine- large community of German artists teenth century, when the ruins at- assembled for their annual tracted the attention of archaeolo- Walpurgisnacht festivals, events gists. The recovery of precious which grew in popularity through decorative materials and of such the middle decades of the century treasures as the Torlonia Livia lent (fig. 7). The German revels quickly new interest to the Torre dei became a popular attraction for Ro- Schiavi, and excavations were con- man visitors of many nationalities,

21 Smithsonian Studies in American Art 7 Ippolito Caffi, The Artists' Party7 near Tor de' Schiavi, 1839. Oil on canvas, 32 1/4 x 58 11/16 in. Museo di Roma

whose carriages followed the art- ard, with a tall conical hat, and a ists' procession across the Cam- long robe on which were painted pagna to the Torre dei Schiavi. Many lobsters, salads and other sugges- of the era's travel accounts took tions of luncheon.21 note of the colorful event. "I do not think a foreign colony ever or- The crowd of artists and follow- ganized abroad a national festival ers assembled at the Torre dei with spirit and originality to com- Schiavi and from there proceeded pare with this," wrote Francis Wey; across the Campagna for several "the enormity of the farce in it rep- miles to the grotto of Cervara (fig. resents the old German gaiety, while 8). "At the moment of departure," the picturesque display of the spec- wrote Wey, tacle could only have been imag- ined by artists."20 The artists' fol- on a car festooned with garlands lies inevitably attracted other paint- and drawn by four great oxen ers from Rome's international com- whose ample horns have been munity, such as Henri Regnault, gilded, appears the President in the who made illustrations of the Wal- midst of his court of chamberlains, purgisnacht festivities, and Walter of madmen, and poets; he passes Crane, who later recounted one his countrymen in review, makes such May Day spectacle: them a solemn and grotesque dis- course, and distributes to the wor- thiest the knightly order of the The central feature of the one I re- Baiocco; then the procession pro- member was a gorgeous domed ceeds on its way, escorted by its Moorish divan on wheels, with an fourgon of wines, its cooking bat- Emperor of Morocco and his tery, and its cup bearers, towards harem sitting inside; behind and be- the grottos, chosen for a monster fore went a great company of art- festival on account of their fresh- ists of all nationalities in all sorts ness and their darkness, which of costumes—some as seventeenth- is favorable to the effects of century Spanish cavaliers on horse- illumination. back, some as burlesque field mar- shals with enormous cocked hats, Upon arriving at the caves of jackboots, and sabres riding on Cervara, the artists entered: "At the donkeys. The caterer of the picnic bottom of the grotto a high priest (a well-known artists colorman) calls up the Sibyl who, appearing was attired as a sort of white liz- in the midst of Bengal fires, recites

22 Fall 1987 8 Henri Regnault, German Masquerading; The March Past. Wood engraving, in Fran- cis Wey, Rome (New York: D. Appleton, 1875)

^y-viouii^

in comic verses the exploits of the recommended the site to his read- school, and prophesies the desti- ers, for nies of its artists for the following though these ruins are not much in year. A Homeric supper prepared themselves, they are so happily and served by our friends on stone placed that they form a favorite sub- tables in the heart of the cavern, ject for artists. [T]he chief charm of which is lighted by torches and fes- the spot consists in the unrivalled tooned by garlands, precedes the beauty of the distant view which it return."22 The annual outing, how- commands; revealing, as it does, ever frivolous, was also decorous, all the characteristic features of the and George Hillard was able to re- Campagna. On the extreme left, assure his American readers that al- towers the solitary bulk of Soracte, though "the day is spent in the a hermit mountain which seems to wildest and most exuberant frolic, have wandered away from its kin- [it] rarely or never, however, degen- dred heights, and to live in remote erate^] into vulgar license or and unsocial seclusion. On the coarse excess, but preserves] the right dividing it from the Sabine flavor of wit and the spice of genu- chain is the narrow lateral valley ine enthusiasm."23 of the Tiber; and further on the ho- The May Day rites at the Torre rizon is walled up by the imposing dei Schiavi provided an important range of the Sabine Hills, whose occasion for artists of various na- peaks, bold, pointed and irregular, tionalities to celebrate together on have the true grandeur, and claim common ground. Equally impor- affinity with the great central chain tant, the festivities introduced of the Appenines.24 many in the Roman community for the first time to the Gordian ruins With the rise of the landscapist's and their beautiful views across the art in the , such natu- Campagna. It was, after all, the ral splendors predictably attracted scenic splendor of this rise in the increasing numbers of American countryside that had lured the em- painters to the Torre dei Schiavi perors in the first place, and that from the 1840s onward. Almost un- beauty remained undiminished af- failingly these artists included in ter fifteen hundred years. Hillard their views not only the distant

10 Smithsonian Studies in American Art 24 Fall 1987 11 Edward Lear, The Tor di Schiavi on the Via Campagna prospect but also the ru- ruinous structure. The fabled Labicana, 1842. Oil on canvas, 9 1/4 X ined circular mausoleum, a power- golden sun of central Italy rises be- 17 1/2 in. Present whereabouts unknown fully evocative object within the hind the tower and over the Sabine Campagnas expanse. Hills, accentuating the unbroken The excavations at the Torre fig- oculus and suffusing the landscape ured in several views of the site. In with its glow. In both point of view an expansive canvas attributed to and mood, Cole differs strikingly John Gadsby Chapman, workers from the Chapmans and from busily retrieve fragments of statu- Edward Lear, who also painted the ary, urns, and even a human skull Torre in the same year (fig. 11). from the columbaria (fig. 9). Such The urbane Englishman depicted recoveries from "the glory that was the more familiar broken facade, Rome" inevitably fired the imagina- past which peasants amble toward tions of visitors from the New the city in the distance, suggesting World and made a special magnet the monument's placement in com- of the Torre and the entire munity and in a historical contin- Campagna. Chapman, a longtime uum, linking the ancient past to the resident of Rome, was so taken colorful present. Despite the with the archaeological activity at crowds of peasants, archaeologists, the Torre dei Schiavi that he visited and painters that often attended 9 (opposite) Attributed to John Gadsby Chap- the site frequently and his enthusi- the site, Cole populates his view man, Excavations in the Campagna, 1837. asm inspired his son, John Linton with but a lone goatherd, seem- Oil on canvas, 30 5/8 x 55 5/8 in. Paul Chapman, to paint the ruin as well. ingly lost in timeless contemplation Moro, Inc., New York In 1842 Thomas Cole discov- of the romantic scene. ered the Torre. His depiction of Cole's lonely herdsman became 10 (opposite) Thomas Cole, Torre dei Schiavi, it (fig. 10) shows a less busy, a favorite motif for a number of Campagna di Roma, 1842. Oil on wood, 14 3/4 x 24 in. Private Collection more contemplative scene than Torre painters at mid century. He Chapmans. Cole's view of the mau- reappeared in 1849 in two draw- soleum from its unfractured "back" ings by Jasper Francis Cropsey (fig. side is unusual, presenting a less 12), perhaps studies for an unlo-

25 Smithsonian Studies in American Art 12 Jasper Francis Cropsey, Torre dei Schiavi: cated painting of the scene that the light of its relative neglect over The Roman Campagna, 1849. Pencil, artist exhibited in Buffalo in most of the preceding millennium. broum wash and Chinese white on brown 1861,25 as well as in views by San- One reviewer, for instance, singled paper, 41/8x5 11/16 in. The Metropoli- tan Museum of Art, Charles and Anita ford Gifford (fig. 13), Thomas out Tiltons painting of the ruins Blatt Fund Hotchkiss, George Yewell (fig. 14 ), for special praise: "Among the and David Maitland Armstrong. The smaller pictures in oil... we are herdsman's thatched hut is neigh- inclined to value most the Torre bor to the monument in John dei Schiavi, on the Campagna, Rollin Tiltons version of the Torre which is distinctly drawn, and has (fig. 15). During the middle de- infused into it an impressive sense cades of the century, many other of solemnity and lonely memo- Americans painted at the ruins, ries."26 The Torre painters often among them John F. Kensett, admired each others efforts. For in- Christopher Cranch, William S. stance, his friends particularly val- Haseltine, Elihu Vedder, Eugene ued Vedders small landscape com- 13 (opposite) Sanford Robinson Gifford, Torre Benson, Conrad Wise Chapman, positions for their " taken di Schiavi, Campagna di Roma, ca. 1864. Oil on canvas, 8 1/2 x 15 3/4 in. Henry and Thomas Hicks. directly from nature and studied Melville Fuller The frequent appearance of profoundly, [such as]... the Roman these views at mid century indi- Campagna with Tor de Schiavi 14 (opposite) George Yewell, Torre dei Schiavi, [s/c]." And Vedder reciprocated the 1860s. Oil on board, 51/2x8 3/4 in. cates the monument s sudden University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa popularity among American artists praise, inscribing his painting of City, Gift of Oscar Coast and their audiences—surprising in the scene (fig. 16) with the leg-

26 Fall 1987

end: "A good subject—Hotchkiss other Campagna sketches he used to go out there frequently... painted during the 1860s, his view [and] made some good things at employs the eccentric format of the Torre dei Schiavi."2"7 That a the Macchiaioli artists with whom number of painters repeated the he was in close association. The scene of "solemnity and lonely painting, which Vedder left unfin- memories11 implies a special mean- ished, is more spontaneous, more ing for the subject, as well as a sketchlike, than most of the Ameri- 15 John Rollin Tilton, Torre di Schiavi, n.d. ready market for the Torre views. can productions. The elongated Oil on canvas, 11 x 23 in. Present where- Hotchkiss's two canvases, canvas eliminates most of the roll- abouts unknown painted in 1864 and 1865 (fig. 17), ing landscape and distant hills and are among the most ambitious and focuses closely upon the verdant accomplished of the group. In each ground and the broken mauso- he opted for a horizontal format, leum, whose brickwork is warmed well suited to the expansive sweep by the suns slanting rays. The circu- of the Campagna landscape and lar building occupies exclusive at- used by nearly all the artists. (The tention in the upper half of the broad vista compelled Haseltine, composition and is set off below unique among his colleagues, to by a corner of newly excavated paint the view from, rather than of, columbarium and broken pottery. the mausoleum, looking westward These two focal points—the frac- toward Rome and St. Peter s distant tured building echoed in the pot dome [fig. 18].) Hotchkiss s fre- shards—are visually and psycho- quent visits and familiarity with the logically locked in perfect balance. site yielded the most faithful re- Absent the herdsman in reverie, cordings of archaeological detail. without the distant Campagna pros- He carefully drew the interior pects bathed in warm Italian light, niches, the curious notched bands even lacking the archaeological de- on the buildings exterior, the frag- tail that gave resonance to other in- ments of ornately carved archi- terpretations, Vedder's small Torre traves and capitals, and the boy- view nevertheless provides one of and-dolphin motif of the mosaic the most telling and poignant evo- pavement, which was also de- cations of past Roman glory. scribed by Nibby. (His eye for his- So popular was the Torre dei torical detail brought Hotchkiss Schiavi that figure painters as well financial as well as aesthetic re- as landscapists turned to the monu- wards, for as Vedder recorded, ment. In 1867-68 Conrad Wise " 'twas here he found a niche in Chapman painted a suite of The this Columbarium which had not Four Seasons, a traditional allegori- been discovered a beautiful glass cal subject that the American vase and sold it for a good sum of treated in the colorful costume of money which came in well in Italian peasants much favored by 28 those days." ) A human skull and foreign artists in Italy. These bones near the columbaria at the models, bedecked in their regional lower left serve as the works me- finery, were the subject of many fig- mento mori; in the second canvas ure studies, their ubiquity suggest- this mood is completed by a herds- ing that for foreigners the peasant man, lost in reverie on this scene had come to symbolize the historic of ruined Roman glory. land. In Chapman's depiction of Vedder's view of the ruins (see the harvest season, a gleaner in tra- fig. 16) differed markedly from all ditional peasant dress of the cen- 16 Elihu Vedder, Ruins, Torre di Schiavi, ca. 1868. Oil on panel, 15 1/2 x 5 1/4 in. others. In lieu of the usual horizon- tral region stands before the Torre Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, tal format, Vedder's small oil is em- dei Schiavi (fig. 19). The symbolic N. K, Gift of Robert Palmiter phatically tall and narrow. Like authority of the peasant figure is

28 Fall 1987 17 Thomas Hotchkiss, Torre di Schiavi, 1865. augmented by its pairing with the ately accompany Mater Italia, if it Oil on cant os, 22 3 8 x 34 3/4 in. Na- Torre, which had become an could embody the fabled grandeur tional Museum of American Art, Smithso- equally potent symbol of Italy for of legendary Rome, might it not nian Institution, Museum Purchase Chapman and his compatriots. have played other roles and In the same year, Thomas Hicks prompted other reveries as well? composed his Italian Mother and Despite Bruno Schrader's warn- Child (fig. 20). The association of ing that the Torre dei Schiavi desig- allusive figures with Roman ruins nation had nothing to do with slav- had by then become a common- ery, most commentators persisted place in many artists' works. Daniel in the notion that the monument Huntington's Italy (fig. 21), for in- was somehow—in a way never stance, posed the symbol of nation- clearly specified—linked with such hood between a Tuscan bell tower, Roman practices and to slave insur- which evoked the Catholic piety of rections during the late Empire. modern Italians, and ancient ruins The discovery of several colum- which harkened back to the glory baria adjacent to the Torre, purport- that was Rome. Beyond the parapet edly containing inscriptions of in Hicks's painting, the remains of "liberti," further fueled that roman- the Torre dei Schiavi are clearly tic association.29 evident—suggesting that the Such associations would, of woman is no ordinary Italian course, have been highly topical in mother but, indeed, Mother Italy. the mid nineteenth century when More than their scenic character American artists' pilgrimages to is required to explain the phe- Rome and the Campagna were at nomenal popularity of these par- their peak. This tourism coincided ticular ruins at mid century. If the with the cresting of abolitionist sen- Torre dei Schiavi could appropri- timent in the United States and Brit-

29 Smithsonian Studies in American Art 18 William Stanley Haseltine, Torre degli Schiavi, Campagna Romana, 1856. Oil on canvas, 13 3/4 x 19 1/2 in. North Caro- lina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Gift of Helen Haseltine in memory ofW. R. Valentiner

ain and with America's seemingly 1848, and those involved in the <19 Conrad Wise Chapman, The Four Seasons inevitable slide toward civil war. It movement for Italian unification. (Harvest), 1867-68. Oil on canvas, 18 x seems scarcely accidental that the In that matrix of political and social 24 1/4 in. Present whereabouts unknown "Tower of Slaves" enjoyed such fa- issues, the huge popularity of an vor among American painters and image such as Hiram Powers s 20 Thomas Hicks, Italian Mother and Child, that depictions of the once obscure Greek Slave becomes understand- 1868. Oil on canvas, 363/4 x 29 1/2 in. ruin became most frequent in the able, adding another dimension to North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, troubled decade of the 1860s. its aesthetic appeal. In 1848 in Flor- Gift of John W. Bailey Although Americans in Italy ence, where the expatriate Powers were safely removed from the ca- had carved his slave, he conceived lamities of the Civil War at home, the allegorical figure of America they were scarcely unaware or unaf- (fig. 22), a heroic symbol of Liberty fected by the tragic events, and and a prototype for Bartholdfs fa- many of the artists believed mous statue in New York Harbor. strongly in the Union cause. Their Journalists on occasion resorted liberal sympathies had extended to to ancient precedent to describe 21 (opposite) Daniel Huntington, Italy, 1843. Oil on canvas, 38 5/8 x 29 1/8 in. Na- European struggles as well— the bloody struggle between the tional Museum of American Art, Smithson- including the Greeks' war of inde- Union forces and the Confederacy. ian Institution. Museum Purchase pendence, the revolutionaries of In 1861, for instance, the American

Fall 1987 Smithsonian Studies in American Art war was depicted by Punch car- much to metaphor as to monu- toonists in Roman terms, as ment. American painters and pa- "Caesar Imperator f or, The Ameri- trons, untroubled by the lack of cor- can Gladiators (fig. 23), reflecting roborating facts, readily tied the the conjunction of two of the peri- Torre dei Schiavi to legendary slave od's major preoccupations, previ- battles of an earlier empire. For ously distinct—Italomania and na- them the monument on the tional preservation. Campagna became an architectural Given this predilection for alle- surrogate for Liberty, symbolic of gory and historicism in Europe and their optimistic faith in the Ameri- America, the sudden popularity of can cause. the "Tower of Slaves" owes as

Notes 1 John Gait, The Life, Studies, and Works Henry G. Bohn, I860), p. 13. of Benjamin West (London: Cadell and 10 "Fearsome loneliness" in ibid., p. 64; Davies, 1820), p. 84. Story, Roha di Roma (London: Chap- 2 Quoted in Otto Wittmann, "The Italian man & Hall, 1875), p. 311. Experience (American Artists in Italy 11 Taylor, Views Afoot (New York: Putnam, 1830-1875 )," American Quarterly, 1859), p. 405; Dickens, Pictures from Spring 1952, p. 5. Italy, and American Notes (London: 3 Quoted in Otto Wittmann, "The Attrac- Chapman & Hall, 1862), p. 143; quota- tion of Italy for American Painters," An- tion by American tourist in Henry P. tiques 85, no. 5 (May 1964): 553. Leland, Americans in Rome (New York: Charles T. Evans, 1863), p. 198. 22 Hiram Powers, America, 1848-50. Plaster, 4 Worthington Whittredge, "Autobiogra- 89 3/16 x 35 3/16 x 16 7/8 in. National phy," Brooklyn Museum Journal, 1942, 12 Brooks, The Dream of Arcadia-. Ameri- Museum of American Art, Smithsonian In- p. 350. can Writers and Artists in Italy, 1760- stitution, Museum purchase in memory of 1915 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1958), 5 Quoted in Wittmann, "The Italian Expe- Ralph Cross Johnson p. 90. rience," p. 12. 6 Peale, Notes on Italy (Philadelphia: 13 George Stillman Hillard, Six Months in 1831), p. 105; Vedder quoted in Marga- Italy ( Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1856), ret R. Scherer, Mangels of Ancient Rome p. 315. (New York: Phaidon, 1955), fig. 154; "ro- 14 Quoted in Robert Burn, Rome and the mance of ruins" quotation from Etienne- Campagna: An Historical and Topo- Jean Delecluze, Two Lovers in Rome, graphical Description (Cambridge and Being Extracts from the Journal and London: 1871), p. 418. Letters of Etienne-Jean Delecluze, ed. Louis Desternes and trans. Gerard 15 N ibby, Analisi Storico—Topografico— Hopkins (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Antiquaria della Carta deDintorno di 1958), p. 92. Roma, vol. 3 (Rome, 1857), p. 711; Hare, Walks in Rome (London: Kegan 7 Quoted in Wendy M. Watson, Images of Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1923), Italy: Photography in the Nineteenth p. 427. Century (South Hadlev, Mass.: Mount Holvoke College Museum of An, 1980), 16 The identification of San Andrea was p. 48. first proposed by Nibby, p. 712. See also Bruno Schrader, Die Romische 8 Abbe Dupaty, Travels through Italy... Campagna (Leipzig: E. A. Seeman, in the Year 1785 (London, 1788), 1910), p. 62. "CAESAR IMPERATOR!" p. 153. THE AMERICAN GLADIATORS. 17 Baedeker, Italy: Handbook for Travel- 9 Taine, Italy: Florence and Venice, trans. lers. Part 2: Central Italy and Rome J. Durand (New York: Ley, Oldt & Holt, (London: Williams & Norgate, 1867), 23 "Caesar Imperator!" or, The American Glad- 1869), pp. 1-2; 1820 quote in Charlotte p. 312. iators, 1861. Engraving in Punch, or the A. Eaton, Rome in the Nineteenth Cen- London Charivari, 18 May 1861, p. 203 tury, vol. 1 (1820; reprint London: 18 Schrader, p. 62.

32 Fall 1987 19 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Le antichita 26 "Mr. Tilton's Pictures," Atlantic Monthly romane (Rome: Stamperia di Angelo 47, no. 280 (February 1881): 291. Rotilja, 1756), e.g., vol. 2, plates 29, 27 Quotation on realism from American 59, 60. Academy of Arts and Letters, Exhibition 20 Wey, Rome (New York: D. Appleton & of the Works of Elihu Vedder (New Co., 1875), p. 269. York, 1937), p. 20; Vedder quoted in Gwendolyn Owens and John Peters- 21 Crane, An Artist's Reminiscences (New Campbell, Golden Day, Silver Night: Per- York: Macmillan, 1907), p. 137. ceptions of Nature in American Art, 22 Wey, p. 269. 1850-1910 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of An, 1983), p. 102. 23 Hillard, p. 316. 28 Ibid. 24 Ibid., p. 315. 29 For Schrader's warning, see n. 16; late 25 The Cropsey painting and a number of editions of Murray's Handbook refer to other works referred to here are in- such a discovery in the spring of 1874; cluded in the National Museum of others were possibly found earlier. Nei- American Art's Index to American Art ther the accuracy nor the significance Exhibition Catalogues from the Begin- of the inscriptions can be determined. ning through the 1876 Centennial See A Handbook of Rome and the Year, compiled by the Smithsonian In- Campagna (London: John Murray, stitution's National Museum of Ameri- 1899), p. 398. can Art (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986).

20 Smithsonian Studies in American Art