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  • Prof: Good morning everybody.

  • Today I am going to--well actually let me step back for a

  • second.

  • I have been mentioning to you, in the last several weeks I've

  • been mentioning to you, more than once,

  • the fact that we are-- we have been beginning to see

  • what I've described as the baroque element in Roman

  • architecture, the baroque element in Roman

  • architecture.

  • And I want to concentrate on that particular aspect of Roman

  • architecture today, which is why I've called the

  • lecture "Baroque Extravaganzas."

  • I want to make--at the beginning, at the outset,

  • I want to make a few points.

  • I want to highlight what I see as the three major features of

  • baroque architecture in the Roman period.

  • The first of these is that those buildings that are

  • baroque, or at least the architects and

  • patrons who designed buildings that we think of today as

  • Baroque, or we might define as Baroque

  • buildings, they used the traditional

  • vocabulary of architecture; they used the traditional

  • vocabulary of architecture.

  • And by that I mean the traditional vocabulary of Greek

  • and Etruscan architecture, for the most part.

  • I'm speaking now of columns, I'm speaking of pediments,

  • and I'm also speaking of lintels and entablatures and the

  • like.

  • They use all of that traditional vocabulary,

  • but they use it in a very different way.

  • That's number one.

  • Number two is that ancient Roman baroque buildings tend to

  • be decorated in a very ornate fashion -- almost too ornate.

  • In fact, we'll see that these buildings are covered with

  • decoration, so much so that they seem to

  • dematerialize some of the architectural elements,

  • including those ones that make up that traditional vocabulary

  • of architecture.

  • The third, and in some respects the most important,

  • is the fact that they use these traditional elements of

  • architecture to-- they use them in a way to

  • enliven the surface, to create motion,

  • to create a sense of undulation.

  • And that in and out, the in-and-out projection and

  • recession that I've mentioned on a few occasions,

  • we see that interjected into these works of architecture of

  • the so-called Baroque style.

  • So keep those three characteristics in mind,

  • as we look at a host of buildings today.

  • I also want to mention that we'll focus primarily today on

  • the eastern part of the Empire, where we see a particularly

  • large number of these baroque buildings,

  • in large part because there was a strong tradition in that part

  • of the world for using that traditional vocabulary of

  • architecture, because of the very strong

  • impact of Greece and of Greek architecture,

  • and of access to high quality marble,

  • from that part of the world, which of course is needed for

  • columns and the like.

  • So we'll focus on the eastern part of the Empire.

  • I also want to make the point that when one thinks about

  • Baroque architecture, in general, one thinks not of

  • Roman antiquity, but rather of the seventeenth

  • century in Italy.

  • One thinks, in particular, of two master architects,

  • two great architectural giants, who were on the world stage at

  • that particular time.

  • And that is Bernini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini,

  • and also Francesco Borromini, Francesco Borromini;

  • Bernini and Borromini, who were themselves rivals,

  • architectural rivals; put up buildings in fact that

  • are often in dialogue with one another.

  • I think in particular of the Piazza Navona,

  • where we have Bernini's Four Rivers Fountain,

  • and Borromini's Church of Sant'Agnese there in Agone,

  • and the way in which they were set up to speak to one another.

  • I don't know if any of you--I'm sure many of you know the Four

  • Rivers Fountain, where one of the rivers has his

  • hand up, like this, to protect himself.

  • And the implication is he needs to protect himself;

  • he's facing Bernini's building, he's facing--excuse me,

  • he's facing Borromini's church, and he needs to protect

  • himself; that is, Bernini's river needs

  • to protect himself from Borromini's church,

  • the implication being that if he doesn't--

  • he needs to hold up his hand because Borromini's church is

  • going to collapse, because it's so poorly executed.

  • So this very interesting dialogue between the two men.

  • And again we think of that primarily when we think of

  • Baroque.

  • And just a couple of examples.

  • I show here--and I'll show you a number of them in the course

  • of the lecture today, especially Borromini's

  • work--but I wanted to focus right at the moment on St.

  • Peter's, San Pietro.

  • You see it here, St.

  • Peter's as designed--the dome is designed, as we've discussed

  • before, by Michelangelo.

  • The façade design by Carlo Maderno,

  • also a seventeenth-century architect.

  • But most interesting are the embracing oval arms of Bernini's

  • colonnade.

  • And you can see that so well in the view on the upper left,

  • the embracing arms of that colonnade,

  • and all the motion and the in-and-out movement that we find

  • both on the façade and in the embracing arms is

  • characteristic of seventeenth-century Baroque

  • architecture.

  • But I want to maintain today, as I've maintained in the

  • course of the semester, that the Romans,

  • there wasn't anything that the Romans didn't do first,

  • and that it is Roman baroque architecture,

  • as we're going to define it today, that had a huge impact on

  • architects like Borromini and Bernini.

  • And I remind you of a couple of instances of that.

  • Think back; the whole idea of using

  • hemicycles, curves in architecture is begun

  • by the Romans, of course, in such buildings as

  • the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Palestrina,

  • where you see one of the hemicycles up there.

  • And you'll remember that from our discussion of the paper

  • topics, that in Gerasa there was an

  • oval piazza or oval forum, well before the oval colonnade

  • of Bernini.

  • So again, what I'm going to try to demonstrate today is how

  • important this baroque architecture in Roman antiquity

  • is, not only in its own right,

  • but also as a model and a spur to the architects of the

  • seventeenth century in Italy.

  • We have touched upon the beginnings of Roman baroque

  • architecture-- incipient, we might call it

  • incipient Roman baroque architecture--

  • in a few instances.

  • And I just want to remind you of those today.

  • Think back to Second Style Roman wall painting.

  • I remind you of the Room of the Masks in the House of Augustus,

  • where you see this theatrical façade,

  • done in paint, that represents columns with

  • projecting elements or lintels on either side,

  • and then a kind of a pediment up above.

  • We saw our first explorations of this kind of thing in

  • painting, already in 60 to 50 B.C., and then in this case in

  • the '30s to 20 B.C.

  • And we maintained at that point that there was probably a direct

  • relationship between theatrical architecture and these kinds of

  • paintings.

  • But we don't have much in the way of preserved,

  • built architecture at that time that partakes of some of these

  • characteristics.

  • But we think it's possible that there may have been,

  • as I mentioned then, some wooden,

  • some scaenae frons, with these kinds of effects

  • done in wood, that no longer survive today.

  • You'll remember also that we looked at the Forum Transitorium

  • in Rome: the forum first of Domitian and then completed by

  • Nerva.

  • And I show you a detail of that again.

  • And this is when we really begin to see,

  • in built architecture, this move toward what we're

  • defining today as the baroque in Roman architecture.

  • And you can see that what we have here are the traditional,

  • the traditional vocabulary of architecture:

  • columns, in this case Corinthian

  • columns, with projecting entablatures on top,

  • creating a system of receding and progressing bays across the

  • surface, which created a kind of

  • undulating movement across the sides of the forum.

  • And then you'll remember also, if you look at the frieze,

  • that the frieze continues along the sides of the columns as

  • well, and then in a relief of

  • Minerva, up on top.

  • It's not quite--I wouldn't call it overly ornate quite yet,

  • but it is ornate.

  • And you'll remember that during the Flavian period,

  • for example, there was a lot of interest in

  • ornate decoration.

  • So we're beginning to see some exploration of this kind of

  • thing.

  • And then it comes full-blown, in the early third century

  • A.D., the Septizodium, the façade that was

  • designed for Septimius Severus to add to the Palatine Palace,

  • that had been built by Domitian; this incredible façade

  • that is more show than anything else.

  • We think it may also have served as a fountain,

  • as I mentioned, very much looking like a

  • theater set, with three very large niches,

  • columns on the curve, and then a series of columns,

  • placed in three tiers, with wings on either side,

  • and we have a sense that this too was quite decorative.

  • So all of those elements: the use of the traditional

  • language of architecture, columns, lintels and so on;

  • an interest in a very decorative surface;

  • and then above all this interjection of motion into the

  • structure-- projecting bay,

  • receding bay, projecting bay,

  • receding bay--all using the traditional language of

  • architecture, the traditional vocabulary of

  • architecture, namely columns and the like.

  • Then I also showed you the tomb, the second-century Tomb of

  • the Caetennii, under the Vatican in Rome.

  • And we looked at this axonometric view in Ward-Perkins

  • showing the brick-faced concrete façade,

  • with the exposed brick that was popular at that time.

  • But we focused in on the interior of the structure,

  • where I mentioned that through architectonic means the

  • architects had embellished this surface and created interesting

  • motion in that surface.

  • And you see here this same idea of split--

  • as we see in the paintings of the Second Style,

  • a triangular pediment has been split apart to reveal another

  • triangular pediment inside, with a niche,

  • as you can see, and the rest of the wall

  • embellished with columns.

  • So once again this sense of in-and-out movement,

  • across the sides of that wall--walls.

  • And here you see a view of it as it looks today.

  • The columns and so on are no longer there,

  • but you can reconstruct them in your mind's eye,

  • underneath these capitals, and get a very good sense of

  • this articulation; what we might call a kind of

  • baroque articulation of the walls.

  • I mentioned already that most of our best examples of Roman,

  • ancient Roman baroque architecture can be found in the

  • eastern part of the Empire.

  • And I'd like to concentrate on those today;

  • although we'll look--we won't look at those exclusively.

  • I do have a couple of examples from the West as well.

  • I'm going to actually start in the West, at a place called

  • Santa Maria Capua Vetere.

  • And I show it to you on the map here.

  • It is close to all the sites in Campania that we've been talking

  • about this semester.

  • You see Pompeii and Herculaneum and Oplontis and Baia,

  • for example, and Benevento.

  • And over here Naples.

  • And you can see the proximity of Santa Maria Capua Vetere,

  • to all of those that we've already covered.

  • And in Santa Maria Capua Vetere has been found an extremely

  • well-preserved Roman tomb, and you see it here in the

  • center of the screen -- a Roman tomb that dates to the

  • late first century A.D. It is very clear that it is made of

  • concrete construction, and that it is faced with

  • opus incertum work, which you can see here very

  • clearly.

  • But you can also see that some brick has been used,

  • around the niches, and as a molding,

  • both for these cylinders and for the tholos above.

  • This has confused scholars.

  • They don't know when to date this;

  • also because of these so-called baroque characteristics where

  • you see this undulating façade,

  • with the use of--well they're not really columns,

  • they're more like cylinders, and in that sense similar to

  • the cylinders that we saw in the Tomb of the Baker,

  • these cylinders.

  • But the undulating façade,

  • the use of architectural elements, the interest in

  • decoration, and the cylinders,

  • have confused scholars, as I said, and they have been

  • betwixt and between when to date this thing.

  • And some have said that it dates at the time of such

  • buildings as the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at

  • Palestrina, because of the opus

  • incertum.

  • Others have said because of the use of brick here--which we

  • actually think in this case was stuccoed over--that it might be

  • later second century A.D.

  • But this is actually more like the tile brick that we saw in

  • Pompeii, rather than the kind of brick that we see in Ostia.

  • So I favor the first-century date, late first-century A.D.

  • date.

  • But we have to think of it as very prescient of what is to

  • come, experimenting,

  • as did some of those other buildings that I just showed

  • you-- the Forum Transitorium,

  • for example-- with the sort of thing that is

  • going to become particularly popular in the second and third

  • centuries A.D.

  • Now I juxtapose this tomb--and by the way,

  • this tomb, the nickname of this tomb,

  • as you can see from your Monument List,

  • is "La Conocchia."

  • La Conocchia means "the distaff,"

  • and a distaff is used in spinning and weaving,

  • a spinning thread primarily.

  • And it looks like an ancient distaff.

  • So that's how it got its nickname, La Conocchia.

  • Whether that means that that was intended by the designers,

  • and that this was a tomb of perhaps a woman who was--

  • or a man working in a factory who spun thread.

  • I think that's very far-fetched, I think it's highly

  • unlikely, but I just throw it out there.

  • But that is what its nickname is.

  • But you can see by the juxtaposition of it with the

  • Tomb of the Baker on the right, and with the Monument of the

  • Julii in Saintmy, in the south of France--which

  • we haven't looked at, but which we will look at in a

  • lecture next week on Roman architecture in the south of

  • France, primarily--you will see that it

  • makes reference to both of these.

  • Both of these are earlier.

  • This is, as you know, Augustan; the one on the left is from the

  • late--the time of Julius Caesar.

  • And you can see that it takes elements--

  • I'm not saying it looked at these in particular,

  • but just that these kinds of elements were already in the air

  • when this building was built, in the late first century A.D.

  • The great cylinders of the Tomb of Eurysaces.

  • But it is more similar actually to this one, because the Julii

  • Monument, and also La Conocchia, are examples of what we call

  • the tower-tomb type.

  • The tower-tomb type is taller than it is wide.

  • It has a series of stories, in this case a plain story,

  • then a central story, with the cylinders,

  • and then the tholos at the top.

  • And we see the same sort of thing in the Julii Monument:

  • stepped base, socle here with sculptural

  • decoration, a quadrifrons,

  • and then a tholos at the very apex.

  • But it's interesting to see the differences between the two,

  • because what we see in this monument again is much more what

  • we would call baroque, in the sense that we have the

  • undulating façade, we have the use of what looked

  • like, in a general way,

  • the traditional vocabulary of architecture,

  • with these cylinders, with the niches,

  • with the pediments.

  • But look at the way the tholos is treated.

  • When you look at the tholos in the Julii

  • Monument, you see that it really does

  • look like a shrine, and it has statues inside,

  • like a shrine would.

  • This one has blind windows, as you can see.

  • You can't see into it; there's nothing inside.

  • So they're treating the tholos more as a

  • decorative motif than they are treating it as something that

  • has the purpose of holding some either religious items or

  • statues or honorific statues, as it does in this particular

  • case.

  • Another view of La Conocchia, a detail which I think shows

  • you what I mean about motion being introduced into monuments

  • like this.

  • In this case we are dealing with concrete,

  • and that is somewhat different, the use of concrete to create

  • undulation, than the use of the traditional

  • vocabulary of architecture.

  • But here we see a combination: the concrete wall,

  • faced with the opus incertum,

  • the great cylinders on the edge, and then the

  • aedicula here, with the pediment and the niche

  • below.

  • And you can also see very well the cylinders that are located

  • between the blind windows, as well as this combination of

  • opus incertum work, and also the tile brick that is

  • used to represent the moldings and the like.

  • I want to compare the central zone of La Conocchia with a

  • seventeenth-century Baroque building in Rome.

  • This is Francesco Borromini's Sant'Ivo in Rome,

  • taken from an angle that accentuates the curvature of the

  • façade, and the contrast between the

  • concavity of that curvature and the convexity of the outside of

  • the dome, that you see up above -- the

  • same sort of thing here.

  • So once again architects of the seventeenth century very much

  • inspired by these kinds of motifs that survived from Roman

  • antiquity.

  • On the left-hand side of the screen--you'll all remember

  • this; this is the elliptical fountain

  • from the Palace of Domitian on the Palatine Hill that was

  • located-- that he could see,

  • through his window, out of the triclinium,

  • when he dined.

  • And you'll remember here also in this case made out of

  • concrete construction, designed by Rabirius.

  • You see the elliptical wall and the convexity of that elliptical

  • wall; the central element also

  • convex, but with these interesting concavities,

  • scallops, that Rabirius has created,

  • through concrete faced with brick around the structure.

  • So in that case--all I'm trying to do here is show you that you

  • can create similar effects, either in concrete or through

  • columnar architecture.

  • But what separates revolutionary concrete

  • architecture, as we've discussed it today,

  • and baroque architecture, as I'm going to define it this

  • morning, is that in baroque architecture

  • they're relying on the traditional--

  • not on concrete--but on the traditional vocabulary of

  • architecture-- namely, of course,

  • columns, pediments and the like--

  • to create their effects.

  • A place where it all comes together you'll recall is at

  • Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli.

  • We're looking here at the Piazza d'Oro,

  • a plan of the Piazza d' Oro: the octagonal vestibule,

  • the great open rectangular space that you can see here,

  • and then the aula or the audience hall on the far right.

  • And you'll remember the aula had these wonderful

  • undulating walls.

  • But what separated the aula from other

  • undulating walls that we had seen earlier is that it was not

  • done with concrete, but was done with columns.

  • You'll remember the columns were placed in such a way that

  • they followed the curved shape, and then they supported a

  • concrete dome.

  • So this wonderful combination of the use of traditional

  • language of architecture, along an undulating form,

  • and then with concrete at the top.

  • So we can see already in the Hadrianic period further

  • exploration of this kind of thing.

  • I also want to show you a very interesting painting,

  • painted room, and this is in the House of the

  • Labyrinth at Pompeii.

  • It's early in date; it dates to 50 B.C.

  • But it's an extraordinary room.

  • It's the atrium of the house.

  • And we talked about several different kinds of atria.

  • We talked about the atrium that had no columns at all,

  • and we talked about the tetrastyle atrium which had four

  • columns around the central basin.

  • What you see here are a host of columns surrounding that central

  • basin.

  • And when you have a number of columns like this,

  • more than four, we call it a Corinthian atrium

  • -- a Corinthian atrium with lots of columns.

  • And what you can see the artist and patron have done here is to

  • orchestrate the relationship of those real columns with the

  • fictive architecture that is painted on the wall,

  • and to play them up in such a way that as you're standing in

  • the room you are looking through the real columns to see this

  • view that lies behind of a tholos which you can view

  • through the broken triangular pediments.

  • I show it to you for a couple of reasons: one,

  • just to remind you that we saw this kind of thing in painting

  • very early on: this is again 50 B.C.,

  • in the Republic still.

  • As we see, the architects taking the traditional

  • vocabulary of architecture and playing with it,

  • breaking it up, opening it and revealing

  • something that lies behind, in this case the tholos.

  • But look also at the way in which the tholos looks

  • like it's in the distance.

  • You get the sense that you are looking through an opening in

  • the wall, a window in which you can see that tholos.

  • It seems to lie behind the broken triangular pediment.

  • The pediment has been broken open to allow you to see a vista

  • that lies behind, and you get the sense,

  • as you look at this painting, that the tholos is

  • surrounded by a peristyle, and that there's also some

  • greenery and so on out there.

  • And then to accentuate this idea of the view through the

  • wall, they have then added the

  • columns here, so that you're looking through

  • real columns, to fictive columns,

  • to broken triangular pediment, to the tholos that lies

  • behind.

  • You'll see the relevance of this when we look at some

  • additional monuments.

  • I want to move--I want to now go now east to look at some of

  • the most spectacular examples that survive of what we are

  • calling baroque architecture in Roman antiquity today.

  • And I want to begin in a site that is in modern Jordan.

  • I'm showing you a map of the Eastern Roman Empire,

  • and we see the site in question, Petra,

  • or some say Petra: you can call it either one,

  • Petra or Petra.

  • You see Petra over here, which is in Jordan today.

  • And you can see its relationship to the Red Sea,

  • to Egypt, to Alexandria, to Judaea,

  • modern Israel, and to some of these other

  • sites -- one, in fact,

  • a couple of others that we'll look at,

  • Baalbek, today, and the site of Gerasa,

  • which is where that oval pizza or forum comes from.

  • Here's another map of Petra, just to show you where it is

  • located today, within Jordan,

  • its relationship to Amman, and to the ancient site of

  • Gerasa -- as you can see up at the

  • bottom, fairly close to the Israeli border,

  • as you can see, as well as to Aqaba down below.

  • Just to get you in the mood for Petra, we are walking here.

  • There are incredible cliffs here, as well as desert,

  • incredible cliffs, and we're walking here through

  • what is known as the Siq in Petra.

  • And I want to mention that this is one of those interesting

  • provinces where in order to understand the architecture that

  • was built during the Roman period,

  • you have to have a sense of the local customs,

  • of what happened here before, the buildings that were built

  • prior to the Roman period.

  • And we know that the so-called Nabataeans--

  • n-a-b-a-t, nabat, n-a-b-a-t, Nabataeans,

  • a-e-a-n-s, Nabataeans--lived here, inhabited this part of the

  • world, before the Romans got there.

  • And we know that the Nabataeans built architecture,

  • and that they built architecture primarily out of

  • the stone of the cliffs, and also out of mud.

  • And one can imagine the kinds of things that you see here,

  • the rock-cut tombs, already begun during the

  • Nabataean period.

  • And it's interesting, if you look very closely at

  • some of the detailed decoration here,

  • you can see something that any of you who wrote your paper on

  • the Temple of Bel at Palmyra remember,

  • the sort of stepped, the stepped motif decoration.

  • We see the same sort of thing here.

  • But just important for you to know that the Nabataeans were

  • building with stone and with mud before the Roman period,

  • and so when the Romans came in and began to build their own

  • architecture, obviously the impact of what

  • had been built there earlier had made an impression on them.

  • They too decided to build their tombs out of the living rock of

  • Petra, and they are among the most

  • spectacular and unusual tombs that survive from the Roman

  • period.

  • And I want to show two of them to you today:

  • the so-called Deir, D-e-i-r, and the so-called

  • Khazne, K-h-a-z-n-e.

  • We will look at both of them, with the Deir first.

  • And if you look at the Deir, and the way in which it has

  • been created by carving it out of the living rock,

  • you should not only be impressed, but you should say to

  • yourself, "Wow, this is Roman

  • facadism at its greatest," at its most obvious as well.

  • This is really Roman facadism, because all there is is the

  • façade, there's nothing else.

  • The tomb itself is located inside the rock.

  • The tomb chambers are inside the rock.

  • They didn't do anything to them except hollow them out --

  • nothing much else there.

  • They've concentrated all of their efforts on the

  • façade, which seems to grow out of the

  • rock, almost as if by nature.

  • And if you look at this tomb, the Deir,

  • you should also be struck immediately by the way in which

  • what the Romans have created here is a version in built

  • architecture of what we saw already in 60 to 50 B.C.

  • in Second Style Roman wall painting.

  • It is exactly the same kind of thing: this idea of breaking a

  • triangular pediment open to reveal a tholos that lies

  • inside, in this case on a second story.

  • We see all of the elements that I've already mentioned,

  • or most of the other elements that I've already mentioned.

  • We see here, in this façade,

  • the use of the traditional vocabulary of architecture:

  • the columns, the entablature above,

  • and pediments and so on down here,

  • triangular pediments down here.

  • We see all of those, but used in a way that the

  • Greeks would never have done.

  • And we see less in this one.

  • I'll show you better examples of this interest in over

  • ornamentation.

  • There is ornamentation here, but it's actually fairly

  • simple.

  • So this one doesn't partake of that, as much as others that I

  • can show you.

  • But it does definitely, by using the traditional

  • vocabulary of architecture; the surface is enlivened by

  • creating elements that project.

  • Look at these columns on either side,

  • with their projecting entablatures,

  • standing alone--or more pilasters than columns in this

  • case-- standing alone,

  • projecting--a receding bay, a projecting bay,

  • a receding bay, a projecting bay--

  • instilling motion across this surface,

  • by means of the traditional vocabulary of architecture,

  • again in this case on two levels.

  • Here's another view of the façade of the Deir,

  • on the left-hand side of the screen,

  • and you can see the material used is obviously the rock

  • itself.

  • This has been literally carved out of the living rock,

  • so that it's obviously the same stone and the same color as the

  • rock that still serves as its backdrop.

  • And then over here, the House of the Labyrinth

  • again, just to show you again the

  • close resemblance of this sort of thing in the mid-second

  • century A.D., in what is now Jordan,

  • to Second Style Roman wall painting.

  • And I show you again the tholos within the broken

  • triangular pediment.

  • But the main difference between the two--

  • and here is where we do get into this whole concept of

  • decoration and even over decoration--

  • the main difference between the two is when you're standing

  • again in the House of the Labyrinth,

  • looking through the actual columns,

  • toward the painting, and you see that the triangular

  • pediment has been broken to reveal the tholos,

  • as I mentioned before, you still have a sense of space

  • and you still have a sense of reality.

  • Even though the pediment has been broken,

  • you seem to be--you are looking at a tholos,

  • and you're meant to think that that tholos lies inside a

  • peristyle court, or a garden,

  • that is outside the house, that you're seeing through a

  • window.

  • So you read the tholos, or at least I read the

  • tholos, as further back than the broken

  • triangular pediment.

  • That is entirely different here.

  • Yes, there's a tholos; yes, there's a broken

  • triangular pediment.

  • But the tholos has been turned into a decorative motif,

  • among many.

  • It is a tholos, yes, but it doesn't look like a

  • working tholos, so to speak.

  • You can see that it has a niche in the center of it,

  • just like the other bays have niches that probably held a

  • statue.

  • But you don't have a sense that there is any space in there.

  • It is a decoration on the surface, on the façade,

  • of this structure, just like all the other

  • decorations.

  • And that is a major difference between the way in which the

  • tholos is used in the Deir and the tholos is

  • used in typical Second Style Roman wall painting.

  • You may also have noticed some of the decoration;

  • and I'm going to show you some details now, so that we can look

  • at those together.

  • Here you get a very good sense of the color of the stone,

  • of the rocks, of Petra.

  • But you also see here a capital that is unlike any capital that

  • we have seen before.

  • And this is where we see the influence of the Nabataeans.

  • The Nabataeans were building buildings that had capitals that

  • looked this, sort of interesting undulating

  • capitals, but very plain:

  • plain with a concave side and then a kind of knob in the

  • center, as you can see here.

  • These are Nabataean capitals, and in this mid-second century

  • A.D.

  • tomb you can see that they are looking, they're clearly looking

  • at models from Rome.

  • They are clearly looking at the kinds of paintings that I have

  • already reminded you of, but at the same time--or let's

  • say drawings made from those paintings that are circulated,

  • or the architects may have access to.

  • But they are combined with local elements,

  • in this case the Nabataean capitals.

  • And then if you look at this detail over here,

  • you will see that they've used a kind of triglyph and metope

  • system, with the panels and then the

  • triple striated bands that we saw was characteristic of Greek

  • Doric architecture; that's used here.

  • But look at what's in the metope.

  • We don't see anything like this in Greek or Roman architecture;

  • the metopes, in fact, in Greek architecture

  • are usually filled with figural scenes, figural panels.

  • But here we see these large disks, and a disk in each one of

  • these square panels.

  • These are Nabataean disks.

  • They are used in earlier Nabataean architecture.

  • So once again this very interesting and very fruitful

  • coming together of Nabataean elements and of Roman elements

  • in this extraordinary tomb of the mid-second century.

  • And then I show you, on the left-hand side of the

  • screen, the finial that caps the tholos.

  • And a fellow sitting over here, at the base of the finial,

  • is very helpful to us because he gives us a sense of human

  • scale.

  • This is this man; he's small compared to the

  • finial.

  • So you can imagine how small he is in relationship to the tomb

  • as a whole.

  • So once again bigger is better reigns supreme in Jordan,

  • as it did in Rome, where we can see that the

  • Romans are building very large in the second century.

  • If we look at this finial here, this decoration at the apex,

  • we see that they have used one of these Nabataean capitals

  • again here, and that that supports a kind

  • of fat vase on the top, with a top on it.

  • And that, you see that sort of thing in Roman art;

  • you see it sometimes in Second Style Roman wall paintings.

  • It's probably a Greco-Roman motif that has been combined

  • with the Nabataean capital here.

  • And you can also see, from looking at this,

  • as well as the tomb as a whole, that the architect is really

  • treating these buildings almost more as sculpture than as

  • architecture, molding them in a way that a

  • sculptor might.

  • And that's not so different from what we saw Rabirius,

  • for example, doing in his octagonal room and

  • in the fountain at the Palace on the Palatine Hill.

  • Here again Borromini, Francesco Borromini's Sant'Ivo,

  • the uppermost part of that, just to show you again the

  • kind--these are by no means exact;

  • there's no exact relationship between these two at all,

  • and this one has different features than that.

  • But just to show you that it's this kind of thing that

  • unquestionably inspires architects like Borromini in the

  • seventeenth century in Italy to create the kind of lanterns and

  • so on that they do for the churches that they design.

  • Here's another interesting comparison.

  • This is a wonderful view of the Deir in Petra,

  • which shows you I guess best of all the way in which it is

  • carved out of and still embedded into the rock of Petra itself;

  • magnificent.

  • And I compare it here too to another Borromini church.

  • This is the famous Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane,

  • better known as San Carlino, the Little San Carlo,

  • San Carlino, as you see here.

  • And you see what Borromini has done.

  • He has the undulating façade--

  • he's using the traditional vocabulary of architecture,

  • just like these architects are, these nameless architects are:

  • the columns and the entablatures and the pediments,

  • and so on and so forth.

  • He's using all of those here.

  • He even has a tholos in the second--in the upper story,

  • right there.

  • And he is also very taken with the whole idea of an actual

  • undulating wall, as you can see also in this

  • view.

  • But he is doing the same sort of thing that we see architects

  • doing here, and I don't think there's any

  • question that the sort of building that we see on the

  • right, the Deir, had impact on

  • architects in the seventeenth century.

  • We know that some of them traveled to this part of the

  • world.

  • We know that drawings were made, that books were made,

  • that these were brought back, these were seen by people in

  • Rome in the seventeenth century--

  • and of course they had local things to see as well in Italy--

  • and that they were influenced by what they saw.

  • The other rock-cut tomb, the other very

  • impressive--there are many of them in Petra;

  • I'm only showing you two out of a fairly nice variety.

  • But I want to show you the other most famous one,

  • the Khazne in Petra.

  • It also dates to the mid-second century A.D.

  • Once again carved out of the living rock.

  • Once again pure facadism; this is nothing more than a

  • façade.

  • You can see how in this case--once again two-storied--

  • a very similar scheme to what we saw at the Deir--

  • two-storied, with a temple front down below

  • and a tholos above, that is revealed by the

  • splitting of the triangular pediment,

  • as you can see well.

  • Once again the tholos definitely treated as a

  • decorative motif.

  • Yes, in this case it has a statue on a base,

  • but a statue on a base that is not a real statue on a base,

  • but a statue on a base that is carved onto the stone.

  • So once again we get a sense that this is a decorative motif

  • rather than an actual statue standing in the tholos,

  • and the same for the items on the bases on either side.

  • You can see the triangular pediment very well.

  • You can see the way it has been split aside to reveal the

  • tholos.

  • You can see down below a real temple front,

  • in this case.

  • This one is much closer to its Roman prototypes,

  • in the sense that even the decorative motifs are Roman.

  • Unlike in the Deir, where we saw the Nabataean

  • capitals and the disks, here we see actual versions of

  • the Corinthian order used; the Corinthian order used here.

  • This looks very much like a real temple front,

  • with an actual pediment; sculptural decoration,

  • a frieze as well.

  • We're beginning to see, in this one,

  • not only the use of the traditional vocabulary of

  • architecture, and not only the enlivening of

  • the surface using that traditional vocabulary of

  • architecture through these-- in such a way that it creates

  • motion-- projection, recession,

  • projection, recession-- but we also are seeing here,

  • in a way that we did not in the Deir,

  • this interest in excess ornamentation:

  • ornamenting every surface that you possibly can,

  • with sculptural friezes, with pedimental sculpture,

  • with statuary carved into the stone in all of the niches.

  • But then again, a much closer relationship to

  • earlier Roman precedence by the temple front,

  • by the use of the Corinthian order.

  • But this one too, a very similar finial at the

  • top of the tholos, but using a kind of Corinthian

  • capital, with one of those vases on top;

  • vases, by the way, that we often see in Second

  • Style Roman wall painting.

  • Once again, one could come up with a lot of comparisons for

  • the Khazne with monuments, with seventeenth-century

  • Baroque buildings in Rome.

  • This may not be the best, but it's one of my favorites

  • and I decided to show it in this context.

  • But it's the Church of Santa Maria--it's right near the

  • Piazza Navona--Santa Maria della Pace, designed by Pietro da

  • Cortona.

  • Same sort of idea; you know, the temple front down

  • below.

  • Yes, this is a different kind of temple front,

  • because it's a round temple and not one with a pediment.

  • But the same general idea of having a temple front below,

  • and then a second story above, all of this enlivened with

  • traditional vocabulary of architecture--

  • columns, columns, pilasters, a window in the

  • niche, right up there a very

  • interesting segmental pediment inside a triangular pediment.

  • Just to show you that this kind of experimentation that we see

  • in seventeenth-century Baroque architecture,

  • mostly in church building but also in palaces,

  • is so clearly inspired, let's say, by the baroque

  • architecture of Roman antiquity.

  • A couple more details here.

  • Here's a wonderful view from down below showing you the

  • tholos of the Khazne at Petra,

  • and comparing it to, once again, some of the

  • confections of baroque architects in Rome,

  • of the seventeenth century, namely Sant'Ivo again,

  • with its curved façade and wonderful eight-sided dome,

  • and some of the interior decoration also of Sant'Ivo

  • above.

  • Staying on the--staying in the Eastern Empire,

  • I want to go now to ancient Asia Minor,

  • to two sites on the coast, on the western coast of what is

  • now Turkey, Ephesus and Miletus,

  • Ephesus and Miletus.

  • And I want to begin in Ephesus, to show you one building there

  • of considerable interest I think, in terms of its

  • relationships to Rome.

  • It is the Temple of Hadrian, so called, that dates to around

  • 120 to 130 A.D.

  • in Ephesus.

  • We know Hadrian visited Ephesus.

  • We know that those who lived there wanted to honor him by

  • building a temple to him.

  • It is actually more a shrine than a temple.

  • This is not a bigger is better; this is actually a fairly small

  • structure, as I said, more a shrine than it is a

  • temple.

  • It's a kind of street side temple.

  • You're walking along the street and then there,

  • all of a sudden, it is.

  • But what's interesting about it is the fact that it makes use of

  • the arcuated lintel, as you can see here,

  • straight and curved, just as we saw it used at the

  • Canopus at Hadrian's Villa.

  • So a motif that we see in Italy, being used also in Asia

  • Minor for another Hadrianic building --

  • so it's becoming associated, in the minds of designers,

  • with Hadrian himself.

  • So traditional vocabulary of architecture,

  • but used in a different way, by using the straight and

  • arcuated lintel together.

  • This is a very good example of this interest in

  • over-ornamentation.

  • Every single square inch is used by the architects to

  • decorate: as you can see, the architrave and also the

  • lintel in the back and the pilasters in the back,

  • all of them decorated to the point where the decoration

  • almost dematerializes the architectural members.

  • Another detail where I think you can see that particularly

  • well, here on the right,

  • this dematerialization of the architectural members through

  • sculpture.

  • And you'll remember this same approach in the Severan Basilica

  • in Leptis Magna.

  • This is a detail of the piers that we believe were added

  • during the time of Caracalla -- so around 216 A.D.

  • Obviously much later in date, but we see already here this

  • interest in this sort of thing, that's going to culminate at

  • places like Leptis.

  • And also just to make the point that this same use of the

  • straight and arcuated lintel, that we see in Hadrianic

  • architecture, turns up also in

  • seventeenth-century Baroque Rome.

  • I show you the interior of San Carlino here,

  • where you can see again the straight and arcuated lintels

  • combined.

  • So clearly seventeenth-century Baroque architects looking back

  • at Roman examples.

  • I want to show you briefly a gate at Miletus,

  • also, as you saw, in ancient Asia Minor.

  • It's the gate to the South Agora or marketplace of Miletus,

  • and it dates to around A.D.

  • 160.

  • It is no longer in Miletus.

  • It was moved some years ago, as antiquities sometimes are,

  • from its country of origin to Germany.

  • It now can be seen in the museum in Berlin.

  • They also have a great model in Berlin that shows you the

  • relationship of the gate to the rest of the Roman city;

  • and you can see the gate way up there.

  • An incredible showpiece for the city, this gate that allowed one

  • to enter into the South Agora.

  • I show it to you as reconstructed in the museum in

  • Berlin.

  • It is quite an impressive piece.

  • You can see here, it is that, it is a gate,

  • and it shows that you could apply these baroque facades to

  • just about any kind of architecture.

  • You see that the gate has a triple opening down below,

  • three blind windows on top.

  • It is made entirely out of stone.

  • It uses the traditional vocabulary of architecture:

  • columns and capitals.

  • You can see the capitals in this case are--seem to be

  • composite capitals.

  • And it is very much the theater, the theater scaenae

  • frons idea, with a series of projecting

  • elements on top of two columns, with wings on either side,

  • also projecting.

  • Down below, the lintels are straight,

  • but up above they have combined full triangular pediments in the

  • wings, with a broken triangular

  • pediment in the center.

  • And the broken triangular pediment in the center is

  • particularly interesting, because you can see the two

  • sides, left and right, up above.

  • But you can also see that they've included the center of

  • the pediment, but in a plane that is further

  • back.

  • So you get this kind of zigzag motif,

  • where you begin--the pediment begins in the front zone and

  • then zigzags to the back zone, which injects even further,

  • even a greater motion, into the overall scheme.

  • Once again we see the projection, the recession,

  • projection, recession, all using the traditional

  • vocabulary of architecture.

  • It's interesting to compare this to a much earlier gate in

  • Greece.

  • I show you the Propylaia, the gateway to the Athenian

  • Acropolis, fifth century B.C., where you can see it's all

  • function.

  • They've used the Doric order here, and the columns support

  • the roof above; triglyphs and metopes.

  • The whole idea--it's very beautiful--but the whole idea is

  • to use these columns functionally.

  • Very different in this gate in Miletus,

  • in the second century A.D., where you can see that the

  • columns are no longer used for structural purposes,

  • but mainly to decorate and to enliven and to add motion to the

  • structure in a way that is entirely out of keeping with

  • these important Greek precedents.

  • Here you see a detail: some tourists looking at this

  • and other things, in the museum in Berlin,

  • which gives you again a sense of the colossal scale of this

  • structure.

  • Here you can see also very well the composite capitals,

  • as well as once again this interest in an almost overly

  • decorative surface that is so characteristic of baroque

  • architecture.

  • A number of you embarked on the Library of Celsus as your paper

  • topic; so I'm sure you know everything

  • there is to know about that.

  • But I want to show it to you quickly, in the context of this

  • lecture, because it's an important monument for all of

  • you to be aware of.

  • Lest you think that it has always looked the way it looks

  • now, I show you a view that was

  • taken, well by now twenty-five years ago or so,

  • before the building was re-erected,

  • which it has been since then.

  • The building--this is what the Library of Celsus looked like

  • twenty-five or so years ago.

  • But fortunately, even though everything had

  • fallen down, it was all there, as you can see.

  • There were fragments strewn everywhere: hundreds and

  • hundreds of fragments strewn around the site,

  • and enough fragments so that basically the building was

  • there.

  • And what they eventually decided to do was use those

  • fragments to re-erect it, which took a number of years.

  • And the results have been truly spectacular.

  • I show you a view of Ephesus as it looks today,

  • looking back toward the re-erected Library of Celsus,

  • and then a better view here, where you can see what all of

  • those pieces, the giant jigsaw puzzle that

  • all of those pieces ultimately made.

  • You can see here this incredible façade of the

  • Library of Celsus in Ephesus.

  • And you can see the scheme is the same as I've just showed you

  • in the South Agora Market Gate at Miletus, in this case two

  • tiers.

  • The bottom tier is very similar to what we saw there,

  • just two columns supporting a straight entablature above.

  • And then in the second story, the addition of more decorative

  • elements, with segmental,

  • two segmental pediments flanking a rectangular one in

  • the center, with separate individual

  • columns at either end, like we saw in the Deir,

  • with supporting projecting entablature.

  • Once again using the traditional vocabulary of

  • architecture to create motion across the surface:

  • projection, recession, projection, recession.

  • But here, one very interesting feature is that if you look at

  • the second story and the placement of those second story

  • elements on top of those below, you can see that the ones at

  • the top are not directly above the ones at the bottom,

  • as we saw in the market gate, but they straddle the space

  • below, which is very interesting.

  • So instead of having the two columns,

  • with a pediment above, right above this,

  • you can see the columns with the pediment above are right

  • above the space, so they're straddling the

  • spaces.

  • Which, if you look at it for awhile, you'll see adds an

  • additional sense of motion to the surface of this structure.

  • I think you can also see from this general view the interest

  • in ornamentation.

  • You can see that perhaps much better here, in these details.

  • Here's a detail of one of the niches.

  • Some of the statues are still preserved, with the names of the

  • figures in Greek down below.

  • You can see the way in which they have essentially

  • dematerialized the piers by decorating them so extensively.

  • And this wonderful view up, where you can see the

  • variegated marble that is used here.

  • You can see the coffered ceiling.

  • You can see the deep undercutting of the capitals,

  • and the entablature, and how overly ornamental it

  • actually is.

  • And you can also see that in the uppermost part actually what

  • they've created here, in this particular building,

  • is something that looks very much,

  • I think, like the architectural cages at the upper tier of the

  • Fourth Style.

  • And I remind you of a detail of one of those,

  • from that fragment from Herculaneum that shows the same

  • sort of coffered ceiling and elements,

  • as well as the split triangular pediment,

  • that we see also in built architecture in the second

  • century A.D.

  • in Ephesus.

  • The inside of the structure looked like this.

  • This is from Ward-Perkins, showing you one main niche;

  • a couple of other tiers with columns, much simpler inside,

  • as you can see.

  • The niches had shelves, and this is where the scrolls

  • were kept, in the library.

  • And here a niche, beneath which was a place for

  • the last resting place of Celsus.

  • I mentioned this to you when we talked about the paper topics,

  • that Celsus wanted--he built this library as a benefaction to

  • his city, to benefit the citizenry

  • obviously of the city, as well as to have a building

  • to put his name on.

  • But he liked it so much, and it meant so much to him,

  • that he decided to make it his own tomb.

  • He was buried in his library, beneath that central niche;

  • you see it in plan here, the location of that central

  • niche-- so as he could be in the midst

  • of this extraordinary building that he built,

  • in perpetuity.

  • Another showpiece done in this same ancient Roman baroque style

  • is the one that you see here, in a restored view,

  • from the Ward-Perkins textbook.

  • It dates to the early second century A.D.

  • It's a nymphaeum, or a fountain,

  • located at Miletus in Turkey.

  • We see it here.

  • And it was also an extraordinary structure.

  • It was much more ostentatious than it needed to be;

  • it could get the job done with a lot less.

  • Its purpose was to serve as a fountain.

  • You've got the basin down below.

  • You could do this with a single story certainly.

  • But they built up three stories in this particular place.

  • They've been as ostentatious as they possibly can.

  • They've spent as much money as they possibly can.

  • Because I think it was a form of one-upsmanship from one city

  • to the next; you know, I have a better

  • fountain than you've got, or I've got a more ornate

  • fountain than you've got, was the whole idea;

  • our city is doing particular well, because you can see what

  • prosperity has wrought by this amazing fountain that we've been

  • able to build for the benefaction of the people of the

  • city of Miletus.

  • And you can see that the scheme is the same.

  • It looks back certainly to the theatrical architecture,

  • to the Second Style painting and Fourth Style painting that

  • we've talked about here.

  • The same general idea, with the first story a series

  • of double columns with straight entablatures above;

  • in the second story the addition of pediments,

  • in this case triangular pediments combined with these

  • interesting scroll motifs over some of the pairs of columns.

  • And then in the uppermost story, triangular pediments once

  • again, niches behind them and between

  • them, with statuary,

  • as you can also see, and then pilasters,

  • decorative pilasters on the wall.

  • This one also has wings, but you can see that the wings

  • are even more elaborate than the wings we've seen in any of the

  • other structures, and they, in fact,

  • have pediments that face in toward the central part of the

  • structure and toward the fountain proper.

  • Ward-Perkins has added a few figures here that give you a

  • sense once again of the enormity of the scale of this amazing

  • fountain in the city of Miletus.

  • I mentioned that although I was going to concentrate today on

  • baroque architecture in the eastern part of the Empire,

  • I would show at least one example from the West,

  • and I show that to you here.

  • It takes us back to North Africa, to a place called

  • Sabratha, which is located in between Timgad and Leptis Magna,

  • that we looked at last time.

  • Here's the site of Sabratha, and you can see that it too is

  • located on the sea.

  • An extraordinary theater was built there,

  • and it's another example of the way in which these baroque

  • façades could be used for a whole host of buildings;

  • it could be used for theaters and for temples and for

  • fountains and for libraries and so on and so forth.

  • But theater architecture it was particularly appropriate for,

  • because we've seen, from the very beginning of

  • Rome, that these kinds of ornate

  • columnar schemes were used quite frequently in theatrical

  • architecture.

  • We are looking at the exterior of the Theater at Sabratha,

  • which you can see from your Monument List dates to around

  • A.D.

  • 200.

  • It has been re-erected.

  • Much of it had fallen down, but once again there was quite

  • a bit of--the stone was there, and so they re-erected the

  • façade.

  • You can see that it, like pretty much everything

  • we've looked at today, was made out of local stone.

  • And you can also see two tiers.

  • And you can see that although it's made out of local stone,

  • it is very similar to the sort of thing we saw much earlier in

  • Rome itself.

  • Think of the Theater of Marcellus.

  • Think of the Colosseum: the scheme of arches with

  • pilasters or columns in between them, engaged into the wall,

  • as you can see so well here.

  • If you look at the view on the left,

  • you will see however that the stage building of the Theater at

  • Sabratha is particularly well preserved,

  • and I want to show you two views, two spectacular views,

  • this one in particular, which shows you what this

  • structure looked like in antiquity and what it looks like

  • now.

  • And it is another one of these extraordinary baroque facades,

  • again so typical for theatrical architecture.

  • We see the three great niches, as we often do--

  • think of the plan of the Augustan Theater at Leptis

  • Magna, for example--three great

  • niches, these columnar elements on either side,

  • in three stories, no straddling here,

  • they are just on top one another, as you can see well,

  • but a series of four instead of the usual two.

  • But then within the niches they've also created these

  • elements, in this case with two columns that project;

  • they're inside the niche, they're contained inside the

  • niche, but they project in front of the niche,

  • adding even more enlivenment to the structure.

  • Look down below also.

  • We rarely have the bottom of the stage preserved,

  • but we have it preserved here, and preserved extremely well.

  • The bottom of the stage has been scalloped.

  • It has projecting elements, with columns.

  • And the whole thing is decorated with sculpture -- so

  • many figures that those figures seem to almost dematerialize the

  • stone.

  • A crowd of figures, not just a few figures that you

  • can read very well, but a whole host,

  • crowds of figures, that show again this interest

  • in over-decoration in these baroque buildings.

  • Here's another view, not quite as clear,

  • but I think a very good one, that also gives you a very good

  • sense, not only of the stage

  • decoration, but of the scale of the structure,

  • because we've got a few tourists standing here,

  • which show you that once again bigger is better is clearly the

  • rallying call of the day.

  • Here's a detail of some of that decoration: gods and goddesses

  • and the like.

  • We see the Three Graces here, for example.

  • But you can see the way they are crowded in,

  • to give one a sense of a kind of excess ornamentation,

  • which was obviously very popular during this period.

  • The last set of buildings that I want to show you are in many

  • respects the most interesting of all,

  • and this is a group of buildings that are part of a

  • complex in what is now Lebanon, the city of Baalbek.

  • The so- called Sanctuary of Jupiter Heliopolitanus at

  • Baalbek, which was constructed over a 200-year period,

  • from the mid-first century A.D.

  • to the mid-third century A.D.

  • The location of Baalbek is right over here,

  • as I said, in modern Lebanon.

  • And the remains are incredible, the remains are incredible.

  • Every so often there's, you know, often fighting.

  • This is the Bekaa Valley, so there's often fighting that

  • breaks out in this particular part of the world,

  • and one worries about these monuments,

  • but so far they seem to have withstood some of the

  • difficulties that that area has experienced in recent years.

  • And you see some of them here in the--it's nicely silhouetted

  • against the landscape.

  • But this gives you a better idea of what the complex looked

  • like in antiquity, and I show it to you here.

  • Again, it was built over a series of years.

  • But let's just talk about it as a whole, and then I'll break

  • down the chronology for you.

  • It had a grand entranceway, with a single staircase;

  • façade orientation, with an arcuated lintel here,

  • contained within a pediment.

  • Then, interestingly enough, you went from that entranceway

  • into a hexagonal court, open to the sky.

  • From the hexagonal court, into this great open

  • rectangular space, surrounded by columns.

  • A very large altar right here, to Jupiter,

  • because the main temple in this complex was the Temple to

  • Jupiter, and you see it also in the

  • restored view at the back.

  • So the Altar to Jupiter, the Temple to Jupiter.

  • If you look at the Temple to Jupiter,

  • you will see it's very similar to the temples that we've been

  • looking at over the course of the semester:

  • very tall podium, single staircase,

  • façade orientation, deep porch, freestanding

  • columns in that porch, and the like.

  • And you can also see that there is another temple right outside

  • the walls of this one.

  • This is the so-called Temple of Bacchus,

  • which is one of the three that was part of this complex,

  • that also seems to have had its own little courtyard.

  • And then down here, out of the picture,

  • a round Temple to Venus that we're also going to look at.

  • This is a restored view of the same,

  • showing you the entranceway, the hexagonal court,

  • the large Temple to Jupiter, the smaller Temple to Bacchus,

  • and the forecourt that it too would have had,

  • as well as this much less elaborate entranceway into the

  • Temple of Bacchus.

  • This is perhaps the most spectacular view I've shown you

  • all semester of anything; this is really an awesome

  • photograph, I think, taken from the air.

  • Needless to say, I can't lay credit to this,

  • since it was taken from the air.

  • But you see it here, and it is an amazing,

  • amazing photograph, that really gives you a better

  • sense than anything else might of the current remains,

  • where you can see the entrance gate.

  • You can see that the staircase is a shadow of what it once was;

  • it was once much wider.

  • You can see the hexagonal court from above.

  • You can see the open rectangular space.

  • You can see the bare remains of the altar.

  • And you can see the Temple of Jupiter, which has its podium,

  • not much of its staircase, and only six columns still

  • surviving.

  • But the Temple of Bacchus outside the walls,

  • much better preserved, and gives us a very good sense

  • of these temples as a whole.

  • A plan over here, showing the same:

  • the entrance court, the hexagonal entranceway,

  • the open rectangular space, at A the Temple of Jupiter,

  • B, the Temple of Bacchus.

  • And here an engraving showing the entranceway,

  • with this arcuated lintel, just as we saw popular in the

  • Hadrianic period, and the pediment.

  • Now the chronology is that the Temple of Jupiter was built

  • first, in the mid-first century A.D.

  • That's way back, that's like the time of

  • Claudius and Nero: mid-first century A.D.

  • Then in the second century there were other additions,

  • and it was in the third century that the propylon and the

  • hexagonal court-- the second century actually was

  • the open rectangular space was added in the second century,

  • and then in the third century they added the hexagonal court

  • and the entranceway.

  • So moving from the back toward the front.

  • These are the six columns that are preserved of the Temple of

  • Jupiter, at Baalbek.

  • They are incredibly--the whole structure is incredibly large.

  • This is the biggest building we've seen thus far.

  • We know there were ten columns in the front,

  • nineteen on the sides.

  • They're again made out of honey colored local limestone;

  • I think, as you can see so well in both of these views.

  • In this case the podium was 44 feet tall, 44 feet tall.

  • The podium at the Temple of the Divi, at the Forum at Leptis

  • Magna, was 19 feet tall, and we thought that was big.

  • This is 44 feet tall, and the columns were 65 feet

  • tall.

  • And remember those columns that Sulla stole from Greece,

  • 55 feet tall, for the Temple of Jupiter OMC,

  • these are ten--are much taller than that.

  • So it gives you some sense of the incredible scale of this

  • structure.

  • Here's a plan of the Temple of Bacchus, the second temple that

  • I want to show you, that dates to the mid-second

  • century A.D.

  • We see it here.

  • You can get a very good sense of its structure,

  • and you can see the way in which it combines typical Roman

  • with Greek features: single staircase,

  • façade orientation, deep porch, freestanding

  • columns in the porch, single cella.

  • But it has a peripteral colonnade, as one finds in Greek

  • architecture.

  • But it doesn't have a peripteral staircase,

  • as I'll show in a moment; it has rather a high podium.

  • Here you see it.

  • It is very well preserved.

  • You can see the columns encircling the whole building.

  • But you can see there is no staircase circling the whole

  • building, but a very high podium.

  • A few people here for scale.

  • This is a big building, and this building is much

  • smaller than the Temple of Jupiter.

  • These buildings are so big that someone,

  • I guess tongue in cheek, wrote an article at one point

  • suggesting that this could not have been built by human beings,

  • Romans or otherwise, and was definitely built by

  • Martians who came down in a spaceship and built it and then

  • left, but left us with something

  • quite extraordinary, if that was indeed the case.

  • Once again overly decorative, overly decorative.

  • If you look at--we could look at a whole host of details,

  • but if you look at them you will see extraordinary things.

  • We're looking up in one of the vaults, and you can see how it's

  • been nearly pretty much eaten away by this excessive

  • decoration.

  • The same here with this wonderful Medusa head in the

  • center.

  • No inch is left undecorated by these architects.

  • This is one of the best-preserved interiors of a

  • Roman temple that we have, the Temple of Bacchus.

  • We are looking through the doorway.

  • If you look at the jambs of the doorway,

  • you will see how decorated they are,

  • and again the way in which they have been dematerialized through

  • that ornamentation.

  • Looking into the interior--and I can show you a better view

  • here-- you get a very good sense of

  • what this structure looked like in antiquity:

  • the truly colossal Corinthian columns,

  • in this particular case, the niches on two stories,

  • with arcuated pediments and with triangular pediments up

  • above-- the extraordinary scale of this

  • highly decorative interior.

  • And I can show you a restored view of what we think this

  • looked like in antiquity.

  • At first glance it doesn't look so different from the sort of

  • Basilica Ulpia idea in Rome, with the flat ceiling,

  • the coffered ceiling, the giant columns and so on.

  • But, of course, it has no aisles,

  • since it's--I mean, it does, I'm sorry,

  • it does have aisles here.

  • But you can see the arcuations; you can see the pediments,

  • with the sculpture inside.

  • You can see the Corinthian capitals.

  • And you can see no clerestory here.

  • But you can see a very interesting feature at the end.

  • The focus of everyone who came into this temple was the

  • so-called adyton, a-d-y-t-o-n,

  • adyton, which is a kind of shrine in

  • which the cult statue of Bacchus would have been presented.

  • You can see it well here.

  • And you can see the use of the broken triangular pediment,

  • but one that is very similar to that market gate in that the

  • central element, with its triangle,

  • still preserved, but preserved in a plane that

  • is further back -- so that kind of zigzag motion

  • that we see here.

  • The great archivolt underneath, the paired columns on either

  • side, the shrine in the center.

  • A very elaborate motif, done in the style that we have

  • described as baroque for this incredible structure.

  • I want to end today by showing you my favorite of all the

  • buildings that I've shown you today,

  • because it's so eccentric, and that is the Temple of Venus

  • at Baalbek.

  • It's the small temple that lies outside the complex,

  • to the left of the complex, in the front.

  • And it's the latest of the three temples--it probably dates

  • to early--to mid-third century A.D.--and also by far the

  • smallest; it's very small in relationship

  • to the others.

  • It is also a round temple, unlike them,

  • which are the traditional rectangular temples,

  • a round temple.

  • But a round temple with a difference.

  • If we look at the plan, we will see it has a single

  • staircase, a façade orientation, deep porch,

  • freestanding columns in that porch.

  • It also is peripteral; it has columns that go all the

  • way around.

  • It is a round structure with a round cella.

  • But you can see in plan that the architect has scalloped the

  • outside of the structure, in a very interesting way,

  • and you can see that also in these restored views over here

  • -- that scalloping,

  • both on the base and also in the area of the entablature

  • above the columns.

  • You can also see that the architect has placed niches on

  • the outside of the structure, with statues in them,

  • which is another example of this desire to decorate every

  • surface that one possibly could.

  • There's a great deal of controversy as to what the porch

  • actually looked like: whether the porch had what we

  • see here, which is an arcuated lintel

  • inside a triangular pediment.

  • That's possible.

  • It may not have had that, we're not absolutely sure.

  • But at the very least we have this combination of what seems

  • like a relatively traditional porch, with an innovative body.

  • It is, in a sense, a small version,

  • and a very eccentric version, of the Pantheon in Rome,

  • with that traditional porch and revolutionary body.

  • But this is not made out of concrete, it is made entirely

  • out of local stone.

  • And again it has these wonderful features,

  • like the scalloped base.

  • And I show you a detail.

  • It's very well preserved today, as are the other buildings,

  • or at least the Temple of Bacchus at Baalbek.

  • We see it here.

  • You can see its stone construction.

  • Unfortunately it's black and white, but you can get a sense;

  • it's the same honey colored stone as the others.

  • You can see the way it looks here.

  • You can see the scalloped base; the scalloped,

  • the wonderful scalloped entablature, and,

  • the overly decorative nature of that entablature.

  • Above, in this case Corinthian capitals, as you can see.

  • Some traditional motifs, like these hanging garlands.

  • The niches here with the statuary, making the whole into

  • a kind of decorative motif; even the outside of the cella

  • becomes decorative.

  • But look very carefully and you will see that the bases of the

  • columns are five-sided, to make them work better with

  • the scalloped wall.

  • This is the second time we've seen bases like this.

  • We saw them in the Tomb of Annia Regilla in Rome,

  • a base that had multiple--more sides than was usual.

  • We see that here, and it's a testimony again to

  • the eccentricity of this particular designer,

  • but also to the sort of anything-goes approach that we

  • see in so much of this Roman baroque architecture.

  • And I just, in closing, the last two images that I'd

  • like to show you are a detail of the Temple of Venus at Baalbek,

  • with a temple--with a detail of a Borromini structure.

  • This one is the Borromini structure.

  • This one is the Temple of Venus.

  • But I think when you look at views like this,

  • you can see the close--you can see what I mean by defining

  • these as baroque buildings, already in Roman antiquity --

  • but you can see the extraordinary impact that these

  • amazing Roman creations had on the minds and on the

  • oeuvres of great architects,

  • like Bernini and Borromini, in the seventeenth century in

  • Italy.

  • Thank you very much.

Prof: Good morning everybody.

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