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SPOLIA. DAMNATIO and RENOVATIO MEMORIAE Dale "SPOLIA. DAMNATIO" AND "RENOVATIO MEMORIAE" Author(s): Dale Kinney Source: Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 42 (1997), pp. 117-148 Published by: University of Michigan Press for the American Academy in Rome Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4238749 Accessed: 26/07/2010 09:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aarome. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Academy in Rome and University of Michigan Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. http://www.jstor.org SPOLIA.DAMNATIO AND RENOVATIOMEMORIAE Dale Kinney L ike most aspects of Roman artistic practice, the introductionof spolia occurred in si- lence. In retrospectit appearedto be an innovationof the Constantinianperiod, and for centuriesit was seen as a purelynegative development. Vasari, depending on earliersixteenth- century commentators,including Raphael,singled out the Arch of Constantineas an egre- gious demonstrationof the demise of artistic capability,evidenced not only by the pathetic efforts of its fourth-centuryfriezes but by its reuse of second-centuryreliefs,faute de mieux.1 It was not until the twentieth century,in the wake of Riegl, that Hans Peter L'Orangewas able to interpretthe Arch as a coherentexpression of earlyfourth-century ideas and thereby recuperateit as an authenticwork of art.2Vasari observed reuse in Constantinianarchitec- ture as well. Interestingly,his evaluationof spolia in the elevationsof fourth-centurychurch basilicaswas much less negative;he was more inclined to see the reuse of exotic non-Italian marbleand granite column shafts as a sign of residualgood taste.3But again, it was only in the twentieth century that an art-historicalinterpreter could define these colonnades as a purposefulaesthetic development.4 In the last two decadesspolia have become a growthfield of art history.This trend is part of a generalbroadening of the disciplinebeyond its traditionalpreoccupations with masters and masterpieces,to encompassa much wider varietyof productionand reception. Thus the newly intensivestudy of spolia has been accompaniedby equallyburgeoning interest in such mattersas the Romanmarble trade and the Romanreception of Greek statuary.Some of this scholarshiphas been brought to bear on spolia, but much of it has not. This article situates the origins of spolia in the context of some of this recent work and suggests that to do so forces a reconsideration,if not a final rejection,of unexaminedassumptions about the way the earliestspoliate monumentswere perceived.5 This paper originated in the preparation for a National 2 LOrange and van Gerkan. Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar on spolia that I had the pleasure to co-direct with Birgitta Vasari (as n. 1) 15. Lindros Wohl in 1993. I am grateful to the American Academy for hosting that seminar and to Anthony Cut- 4 F. W. Deichmann, "Siule und Ordnung in der ler for inviting me to give a first presentation of this ar- friihchristlichen Architektur," Romische Mitteilungen 55 gument at the conference "Beginning the Middle Ages: (1940) 114-30. Continuity and Change," sponsored by the Pennsylva- nia State University in 1994. 5 The recent monograph by L. De Lachenal, Spolia. Uso e reimpiegodell'antico dal III al XIVsecolo(Milan 1995), 1 G. Vasari, Le Vite de' pitu eccellenti pittori, scultori e usefully surveys an enormous range of specific instances architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. R. of spolia, but it does not analyze the concept or delve Bettarini and P. Barocchi, Testo, 2 (Florence 1967), into the pre-Constantinian background. The same may "Proemio delle Vite," 14. be said of the-also very useful-article by H. Saradi, 118 DALE KINNEY Fig. 1. Portraitrecut from an anta capital,Art Museum, Fig. 2. Portraitrecut from an anta capital, rearview, Princeton University,the Carl Otto von Kienbusch,Jr. Art Museum, Princeton University,the Carl Otto von Memorial Collection, 53-25 (photo Museum). Kienbusch,Jr. Memorial Collection, 53-25 (photo Museum). Definitions form a significant aspect of the problem, for it is increasingly clear that the modern designation spolia applies to only one form of a long and varied history of reuse. Any culture that produces artifacts from scarce or laboriously obtained materials is likely to reuse rather than discard them, but even so, the extent of Roman recycling is surprising. Remark- ably personal marble objects were reworked for second uses (or users), including grave stelai, ossuaries, honorific inscriptions, and altars.6 Sleights of carving transformed highly specific artifacts into quite different ones, for example, a female portrait with a big coil of braids into a bearded priest or an anta capital into a frowning man (figs. 1, 2).7 Art history has not recog- nized such reuse as spolia, partly because the concept is so firmly attached to late antiquity. But even within the Constantinian period, the modern identification of spolia is selective. The second-century reliefs with recut portrait heads on the Arch of Constantine (figs. 4, 20) "The Use of Ancient Spolia in Byzantine Monuments: ed. H. Speier, vol. 2, Die Stddtischen Sammlungen. The Archaeological and Literary Evidence," Interna- Kapitolinische Museen und Museo Barracco [Tiibingen tional Journal of the Classical Tradition 3 (1997) 395- 1966] 69-70, no. 1219). Altar: Rome, Capitoline Muse- 423. I thank Marie-Therese Stegeman-Zenner for refer- ums, 1958, an early fourth-century inscription over an ring me to the latter publication. erased first-century inscription (Helbig, 226-28, no. 1421). 6 Grave stelai: Blanck, 103-4. Ossuary: Seattle Art Mu- seum, 44.15, a second-century inscription (D M L 7 Recarved anta capital: Princeton University Art Mu- SALLVSTIO PRO/CESSO P.P.B.M.) over an erased first- seum, 53-25 (C. M. Antonaccio, "Style, Reuse, and Con- century inscription. Honorific inscription: Rome, text in a Roman Portrait at Princeton," Archdologischer Capitoline Museums, the name of Constantine over the Anzeiger [1992] 441-52, dating the portrait ca. A.D. 50- erased name of Diocletian (W. Helbig, Fuhrer durch die 75). Bearded priest: art market, 1960s (Blanck, 53-54, offentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertuimerin Rom, no. A30). SPOLIA.DAMNATIO AND RENOVATIOMEMORIAE 119 Fig. 3. Head of Constantine,Rome, Musei Capitolini, Fig. 4. Arch of Constantine,Adventus of Trajanl Palazzodei Conservatori(photo Deutsches Constantine,detail (photo Deutsches ArchaologischesInstitut, neg. no. 59.1720). ArchaologischesInstitut, neg. no. 86.368). are considered paradigmsof spolia, as they have been since the sixteenth century,but the term is never applied to the colossal head of Constantinein the courtyardof the Palazzo dei Conservatori(figs. 3, 13), which has long been suspected of recarvingand has recentlybeen declareda recut head of Hadrian.8We could easilyproduce a rationalefor such distinctions, but that would beg the questionof their historicalvalidity. We cannot take it for grantedthat our own tacit differentiationbetween spolia and other cases of reuse correspondsto any cat- egories that were or would have been recognizedin ancientRome. Historically,the designationspolia belongs to the sixteenthcentury, when-lacking a pre- existing term for them-the artist-antiquarianswho were discoveringreused antiquitiesbor- rowed the word from the semanticfield of war.9That the Romansand Italiansof the Middle Ages did not leave any other word to apply to these objects suggests that "reused marble artifacts"was an indirect concept in those cultures,rather like the products of recycling (as opposed to the process or its matter,recyclables) in English. Without a proper name they would not figure as a principal subject of discourse. In the Renaissance,by contrast, they 8 C. Evers, "Remarques sur l'iconographie de Constantin. Konstantins des Grossen," Von Angesicht zu Angesicht. A propos du remploi de portraits des 'Bons Empereurs,"' Portrdtstudien. Michael Stettler zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Melanges de l'Tcole Franfaise de Rome. Antiquite, 103.2 F Deuchler, M. Flury-Lemberg, and K. Otavsky (Bern (1991) 794-99. According to another analysis, the origi- 1983) 55-57. nal portrait was of Maxentius: H. Jucker, "Von der Angemessenheit des Stils und einigen Bildnissen 9 Alchermes, 167-68. 120 DALE KINNEY were constitutedas a denoted subset of the newly elevatedcategory of antiquities,and it is as such that they have been carriedon into art history.The term spolia, in other words, is not only anachronisticwith
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