Year: 2020

Palladio and the Baths of Constantine

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The next item in our little series on the now-vanished Baths of Constantine in Rome is by none other than Palladio.  Andrea Palladio was a 16th century Italian architecture who became very famous for his 4-volume handbook on how to do Roman architecture.  This contained illustrations of many standing monuments, giving a plan, elevation and notes.  He also left unpublished drawings of the Roman baths, and one of these is of the Baths of Constantine, perhaps made around 1570.

The publication history of this is complex, and I will defer it to a separate blog post.  So these I give from an 1810 reprint of a 1785 volume: Andrea Palladio & Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi [Editor], Le terme dei Romani: disegnate da Andrea Palladio e ripubblicate con l’aggiunta di alcune osservazioni da Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi giusta l’esemplare del Lord Conte di Burlingthon impresso in Londra l’anno 1732, Vicenza, 1810.  This is available online at the Digital Library at Heidelberg here.  The plates (“tavola”) are at the end.  The text in the book is NOT by Palladio, but by the unfortunate Bertotti (who added himself the surname of Scammozi, taken from one of the Palladio’s pupils).

Plate 14 is the plan of the baths (from here).

Plate 15 is the elevation, a reconstruction (from here):

The notes and the measurements are original.  The unit of measurement is probably something called the Vicentian foot, which is about two metres, I believe.  Note that the section at the bottom of the elevation is the other way round to the plan – the big hall is at the right in the plan, the pool and arches to the left.

Scammozi did add a key, much of it his own guesswork or referring to an earlier volume by the Scottish adventurer, Charles Cameron, who published in London in 1772 his The baths of the Romans explained and illustrated. With the restorations of Palladio corrected and improved.  This can be downloaded from Archive.org here.  On p.64 (p.79 of the PDF) may be found Cameron’s comments on the Baths of Constantine, followed by his key to the plan.  The plan is on p.245-6 of the PDF, the elevation (printed backwards) is p.249-50 of the PDF.  Here is his key:

A. The Theatre.
B. A large circular building, which contained the baths for the wrestlers.
C. The Apodyterium.
D. Exedrae for the Philosophers.
EEE. The Tepidarium, Caldarium, and Laconicum : invariably placed in all the Thermae to the south west, according to the direction of Vitruvius.
F. The Frigidarium. It appears from Fabricius, that the buildings in this quarter were very lofty, as well as the furnaces, to which there was an ascent of one hundred steps.  “Aedificia quaedam Quadrata, auaedam rotunda altissimis fornicibus extant, quoroum unum per centum fere gradus ascendimus”.
G. The Xystus, with the margins I I round it.
HH. Atrium, and piscina [swimming pool].
KK. Porticos, for those to deposit their clothes who bathed in the piscina.
LL. Vacant area for admitting light to the different apartments.
MM. Conisterium and Elethoseum.
NN. Rooms where the spectators could see those who exercised in the Xystus without being incommoded. These rooms likewise served for libraries.
OO. &c. Rooms for the use of the wrestlers.
PP. Rooms for those who had the care of the baths.
QQ. Cold Baths for those who did not choose to exercise in the Xystus.
RR. Rooms for the candidates to withdraw in, who exercised in the open air.

Bertoti repeats the key of Cameron, but prefixes it with some comments on the plan of the baths which, unlike Cameron, he has examined.  He comments that he can’t understand the use of the arches around a semi-circular area at one end, with the label HH in it.[1]  He frankly confesses that he could make no sense of the measurements on the elevation.[2]

This is all very detailed, and naturally has been used by subsequent model makers.  The elevations must be largely reconstruction, even though they have measurements on them.

But how reliable is all of this?  How much is the imagination of Palladio, or borrowed from other baths?  I do not know.

I notice that the floor plan differs quite a bit from that of Bufalini, posted here.  Bufalini shows no semi-circular piscina, nor any blank space in which it could be.

These sorts of questions I will have to leave to the specialists.  For specialists there are!  There are articles devoted to elucidating all sorts of questions around each drawing by Palladio, it seems.[3]  But this is a rabbit hole that is outside the scope of this post.

In my next post, I will discuss exactly what we are looking at here.  These drawings have a history of their own!

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  1. [1]Trovo una Piazza, semicircolare cinta da Archi dei quali non so comprendere l’uso: questi Archi sono alti una larghezza e poco meno di due terzi, ed il pieno trammezzo eccedo la metà del loro lume.↩
  2. [2]Non potei determinare le proporzioni delle altre parti, perchè alcune sono segnate con numeri ; in altre è necessario adoprare la scala de’piedi, la quale rare volte corrisponde ai numeri medesimi; difetto da me riscontrato in tutti i Disegni di queste Terme.↩
  3. [3]See for instance Laetitia La Follette, “A contribution of Andrea Palladio to the study of Roman thermae”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 52 (1993), 189-198.  JSTOR.↩

The Baths of Constantine in the panorama of Antonio van Wyngaerde ca. 1560

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In 1894 the famous Italian archaeologist R. Lanciani found a long-forgotten 2-metre long drawing of a panorama of Rome, in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, in the Sutherland collection of some 20,000 artworks of all sorts.  He published it in facsimile the following year, in the Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale de Roma, vol. 23 (1895), as a foldout between pages 80-81, followed by his own article on the subject on pp.81-109.  A high-resolution scan of the image can be found at the wonderful Heidelberg Digital Library, here, where the whole volume is online.  (Lanciani’s text begins on the next page here.)

The panorama is 360 degrees.  It includes a view of the ruins of the Baths of Constantine, and beyond this the prominent fragment of the “Temple of the Sun”, looking towards the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Vatican to the south-west.  It is of course far too large to appear here, but here is a greatly reduced excerpt.

It is a frustrating image in a way.  At the bottom we see the “Avanzi …. delle terme Constantine” on both sides – ruins of the baths of Constantine – but it’s hard to know what is what.  A rotunda is clearly seen in the middle, looking half buried.  To the right are various walls and exedra.

I can’t determine what is supposed to be seen on the left, where the same “Avanzi…” message appears, but plainly the author thought that he was showing something.

Still it is good to have it.

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A 1621 reconstruction of the Baths of Constantine in Rome by Lauro Giacomo

Posted on by Roger Pearse

By 1621 there must have been little left of the Baths of Constantine, but there was a market for a drawing, as the existence of this item by Lauro Giacomo shows.  Here’s a small image from Europeana:

A proper-sized image can be found at the Savannah College of Art and Design, here.  This allows us to read the text, which is, however, of no real interest.  But the title is more useful – “Thermae Constantini Imperatoris (Ad Templum S. Silvestri in Monte Quirinali)”.  The baths are described as near the church of S. Silvestro on the Quirinal Hill.

By coincidence I managed to find that church on Google Maps, and so I updated yesterday’s post about the Bufalini Map.  It’s good to see that this correction appears to be in line with this 1621 image.

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Bufalini’s plan of the Baths of Constantine

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In 1541 Leonardo Bufalini drew a map of the whole city of Rome, the Pianta di Roma, with emphasis on the surviving ancient monuments.  This was printed in 1551.  Bufalini was early enough that his map shows much that has since been lost.

Among them is a map of the Baths of Constantine, standing on the ridge of the Quirinal hill, between two valleys on either side, with the Via Quirinalis leading off to the north-east, just as it does today, and the piazza where the Quirinal palace was to be built clearly visible next door.

A 1911 reproduction, with study, can be found at Heidelberg here.  The map is printed on individual pages, which makes it hard to use.  An enterprising gentleman has created a website here with all the pages put together, although for some reason he wants to stop people copying bits of it.

I’ve taken a small bit, and rotated it so that it aligns what must be north-south, using the roads that run off, in parallel, to the north-east, just as the modern map does today.  My apologies for the crudity – I am not great at image manipulation.  But here it is.

I would imagine that a good part of the gridwork shown on the plan of the “Thermae Constantiniae” is in fact foundations for gardens, because the slope underneath had to be built up.  The two circular structures on either side of the “gardens” were free-standing at this time, and appear as rotundas in other illustrations.

And here is the modern layout, via Google Maps, with what I imagine must be the location of the baths:

The key connection point is the (somewhat smaller) Quirinal plaza and the via Quirinale going off to the top right.

The modern Via della Dataria that leads down to the Trevi fountain is clearly shown on Bufalini’s map, to the left of the lettering “Vinear. Card. Ferrrariae”.  The Via Quirinale is shown.  A parallel “via Viminalis” is probably the Via Nazionale – a modern sounding name! – not labelled in the above screen-grab.

Surely there must be a monograph on the Baths of Constantine?

Update: I have since located the church of S. Silvestro al Quirinale, which the Bufalini map shows as facing the entrance to the baths, and to the left somewhat.  Here it is: so we need to slightly redraw the rectangle.  Looking again at the Bufalini map, I see that the “Via del Corneliis” drifts left, relative to the Via del Quirinale, just as the modern road does at the piazza, and the Baths are lined up with that, not the Via del Quirinale.  So let’s shift the plan a bit, and allow for the church.

Note how the road going east from the church of San Silvestro al Quirinale – today called the Via Mazzarino – also appears on the Bufalini map.

Update (16/12/20): I have come across an article discussing the Bufalini map.  It seems that he was prone to embellishment.  His version of the Baths of Caracalla, which are extant, is apparently intentionally inaccurate.  For details see Jessica Maier, “Leonardo Bufalini and the first printed map of Rome”, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 56/57 (2011/2012), pp. 243-270 (JSTOR).

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The Baths of Constantine in Rome

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I came across this interesting drawing from Du Perac, Vestigi dell’Antichita di Roma, 1621, plate 32 (online at Heidelberg here).

Duperac, Baths of Constantine

The text beneath reads:

Vestigij delle Terme di Constantino nel monte quirinale dalla parte che guarda verso Libecchio (= sud-ovest) qualli per esser molto ruinati non vi si vede adornamenti ma solo grandissime muraglie et stantie masimamente nel giardino del Ill.mo Car.le de Vercello et da poi che io designai questa parte vi si sono fabricate case et granarij di modo che al di doggi non si puol piu vedere per esser occupata di dette fabriche.

Nothing remains of it today.  I gather that the baths stood on the slope of the Quirinal Hill, a little below the modern presidential palace.  Because of the slope, Constantine’s architects had to support it with a platform, built on top of 3-4th century houses which they demolished.  These houses in turn stood on top of still earlier houses.

I believe that other early drawings exist.  It might be fun to locate them.

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Stelten’s Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin arrives

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I received a copy of Leo F. Stelten’s Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin (via Amazon.com).  I’ve not really had a chance to look at it yet.

But this evening it had its first test.  John the Deacon’s Life of St Nicholas describes the city of Patara, the saint’s home town, as once “rutilabat”.  The Oxford Latin Dictionary gives “rutilo, -are” as “to glow with a bright or golden red colour”, especially thinking of German hair!  Nor did Neimeyer or Blaise give anything different.

Stelten passed.  In church Latin, apparently, it means “shine” or “glow”.  This makes perfect sense of John’s, um, glowing description of the city.

Clearly I need to spend more time with this book.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The third unfinished project on my desktop is a translation from the Latin of the Life of St Nicholas by John the Deacon, who lived in Naples in the middle of the 9th century.   John was bilingual, and created his work by translating the Greek Life by Methodius – the one that defeated all my translators.

It is a hard thing to pick something after a year or more, even if you are reasonably well-organised, unless you leave a file of notes written to your future self as to where you were and what you were doing.  (Memo to self: do this next time!!)  So I spent the end of yesterday and a couple of hours today trying to work out what I had, and reorganising the working directory.

The Latin text was printed by Mombritius in his Sanctuarium in 1477 or 1478 – it’s undated.  I did OCR this and create a corrected file, but then I concluded that it was a bit too rough to work with; spellings, punctuation, etc.  The text was printed again from some Vatican manuscripts by Falconius in 1751, who helpfully placed chapters 13-15 as an appendix and instead inserted a bunch of chapters from completely different Life of St Nicholas.  Luckily the BHL volume specifies this, and I had prepared an electronic text with a note to myself about just this.

I had also divided the text into 15 files, and I had started the translation of chapter 1.  I vaguely remember finding it very hard work indeed, which was why I stopped.

I’ve now sorted out the directory, and done a little more on chapter 1.  After a year of Latin, it is less difficult.  It really does help to establish exactly what the construction is, and to footnote a query if not sure, for later examination!  Mind you, in a couple of sentences I have already come across two words which are not in my QuickLatin.  The word order is horrendous sometimes, although the case of the words makes clear their function.  Was John trying to show off in his prologue, like some dull Victorian German editor, I wonder?  Let us hope that it settles down in the next chapter!

So all I need now is time and motivation.  I shall start grinding away.

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St George, 5th century “Passio” – English translation now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The earliest account of the martyrdom of St George is palpably fictional, and probably Arian in origin.  It was composed in Greek, probably by an Arian.  It was a rather embarrassing work, and later versions remove much of the rubbish.  For this reason Matzke, who reviewed the tradition, referred confusingly to the original as the “apocryphal version” and the revised version as the “canonical version”.

Only a few leaves of the Greek of the original version exist in palimpsest.  A Latin translation of the whole does exist, however, dating from the 5th century.  An English translation of this has now been prepared.  Here it is:

The files are also available from Archive.org here.

As usual, the file is public domain.  Make whatever use of it you like, whether personal, educational or commercial.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have now got all the way through the 5th century Latin “Passecrates” Life of St George, as edited by Arndt, and I have prepared an English translation of every sentence.

What a mess the text is in!  The editor, Arndt, plainly had trouble reading the manuscript at all.  At points it makes no sense.  You get readings like “deus Christianorum”, where the sense plainly calls for “genus Christianorum”.

Fortunately a collection of five Latin Lives of St George, printed by Huber, contains a version which is very close indeed to the Arndt Life.  It does help, in working out the meaning of the text.  Indeed in the above example Huber’s text does read “genus”.

Next, I need to resolve a couple of issues, and check whether the translation makes sense and has continuity: to move away from the focus on individual sentences to paragraphs and the text as a whole.  At one point St George tells the wicked emperor that he has put St George to death three times – as you do.  It would be good to check whether the text has actually done this!

The “miracles” seem over to the top to squeamish moderns like me.  But they must have seemed over the top to those in the Dark Ages too, because all of them tone it down!

I have started to wonder whether the text is actually intended satirically, to mock the credulity of Catholics in the 5th century.  The author definitely mocks this same group, by giving a villain the name of “Athanasius”.  Maybe I shall say something like this in a note.

Onward!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It is good to have the Life of St Cuthman out of the way at last.  But it is not the only project of mine that has been stalled for many months.

More than a year ago, a kind correspondent offered to translate a very early Latin Life of St George.  He did send in drafts of all the chapters, but each requires quite a bit of revision.  Four were still outstanding when I last looked.  So I will pick this up next and try to get it completed.  The translation can only be approximate, because of the terrible state of the text.

Another project that was hardly begun, but for which a link sits on my desktop, was to translate the Latin Life of St Nicholas by John the Deacon.  This was the origin of most of the western lives of St Nicholas.  But the original Greek text was an awful thing, and the Latin of John is not easy either.

The Cuthman project taught me much.  The most important revelation was that the Vulgate bible was key to all these medieval compositions.  In a sense, all of the Latin saints’ lives are vulgate fanfic.  The language of the bible is used to create this literature of Christian fiction.

Some interesting ideas follow from this.

Firstly, if these texts are all basically based on the Vulgate, then anybody intimate with that version of the bible ought to be able to read them freely.  So it is really important to get acquainted with the Vulgate.  But …. it is much more difficult to obtain handy printed texts than it ought to be, if anyone still reads the Vulgate.  I have found, curiously, that the mobile web version of BibleGateway (link) allows you to easily display on your Android handset the Vulgate with parallel Douai translation.  This is actually easier to use than any printed text known to me!

Secondly, if we treat the legends of the Saints, not as history, but as Christian fiction, then I find that they become much more useful, and acceptable.

For Christian fiction is a really important thing, as I discovered eight years ago during a time of much personal re-evaluation.  Quite by accident I started to read novels purchased from the local Christian bookshop.  They were random; whatever that shop happened to have.  For instance I read Left Behind, and others.  I found, in so doing, that they affected my imagination in a day to day way.  I felt myself feeling closer to God, more aware of spiritual things in daily life, more aware of eternity, and less influenced by the clamour of worldly nothingnesses.

Could the legends of the saints have served the same purpose?  To enhance the devotion of the readers?  I think probably so.  They probably were always known to be fictional; bible-fanfic, essentially.  Thus such books could be composed about any figure of the bible or the fathers etc.

Maybe so; maybe I am wrong.  But it is an interesting thought all the same.

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