The study of spolia – the constructive or deconstructive reuse of materials from earlier buildings – was problematic in research for a long time, because neither art historians nor archaeologists felt fully responsible for the area. In addition, the study of art concentrated primarily on remnants reused aesthetically or ideally in their new site of presentation.
The goal of the dissertation to be written is to break up this limited way of viewing the subject and grasp the matter of spolia in its important historical and architecture-historical meaning, in the example of the construction of the New St. Peter’s in Rome. Unlike the spolia research that has been conducted up till now, both the ancient spaces and monuments from which spolia were taken in Rome and the affected spaces and ideas of space in the Renaissance and their changes will be examined.
A basic idea of the project is thus the expansion of research approaches in spolia studies with the aid of object-oriented archaeology.
The city of Rome takes central importance in this project. The great construction projects in the Renaissance required vast amounts of material, substantial portions of which were taken from ancient building substance. In addition, the relatively extensive documentation of the construction of the New St. Peter’s offers an outstanding starting point for studying the use of spolia.
Thus, for example, documents from the construction shed of St. Peter’s, the Archivio della Reverendissima Fabbrica di San Pietro, provide the record of a removal of spolia from a large number of ancient monuments in Rome. The monuments and spaces named therein can be archaeologically examined more thoroughly in regard to their ancient structure; also, the state of these sites during the Renaissance can be analyzed, thereby supplementing the topographical image of Rome in Antiquity and in the Renaissance.
The central question – how have these spaces changed because of the removal of spolia and were the spolia removed by plan or on coincidental occasions? – must be investigated in direct connection with other fields of problems. These include legal issues (Who had access to the spolia? Who owned the remnants of ancient monuments? How were excavating licenses issued?), technical and archaeological aspects (How were these massive materials transported? Were only selected pieces used? Do the spolia provide indications of the appearance and construction of the ancient monuments?), and cultural-historical matters (What respect did Antiquity enjoy when it came to exploiting the monuments?).
Initially, knowledge of the sources on the spaces in question will be expanded and deepened. The list of sites and monuments derived from the written records of the Fabbrica di San Pietro will be supplemented with pictorial evidence on the monuments from Renaissance-era drawings. To this end, the databank of the Census will be used. In a favorable case, this will already permit the determination of changes in the construction substance and the confirmation of the written sources.
After the topographical stock is registered, the focus will shift to external circumstances affecting the buildings. Additional contemporaneous sources (legal texts, Papal Bulls, communal tax lists, city maps, etc.) will be used to determine who owned the remnants of the monuments and how the Vatican behaved, for example in regard to preserving monuments. Central aspects of this include Renaissance excavation activity and the trade in spolia that resulted from it.
In the end, the obtained results will be brought together to understand the significance of the use of spolia in Renaissance Rome in an overall view and to discover the change in spaces and sites caused by the transposition of the material, whether by intent or due to economic constraints. Finally, the new use of the spolia in New St. Peter’s will be examined; in individual cases, for example the columns, this will surely be possible.
Seen together with other works on spolia and the other sub-areas of Research Area E I of the Topoi project, the dissertation project with the examination of the material reuse and redesign of the ancient legacies in specific spaces will contribute to triggering a “spatial turn” in research on spolia.
Dr. Capozzoli is currently a post-doc fellow of the Maison René Ginouvès (CNRS-Université Paris I-Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense-Ministère de la Culture), as part of the Research in Paris 2011 – 2012 program organized by Mairie de Paris, where he is pursuing a project on terracotta roof tiles from the archaic and classical periods in Apulia and Lucania (“Elaboration et diffusion des terres cuites architecturales grecques en pays indigene (Basilicate et Apulie) – VIe-Ve siècles Av. J.-C.“).
In 2009 he was awarded a six-month junior fellowship at the Freie Universität Berlin in the Excellence Cluster Topoi for the following project: “Grenze der Stadt: Zwischen religiösen Verboten und sakraler Bedeutung. Der Fall der athenischen Stadtmauer von der archaischen bis zur spätklassischen Zeit.”
His research interests center primarily on topography and architecture in the military and private sector. He is also actively involved in field research in Italy (both excavation and surveying).
The Paris project was occasioned by the unique find made by the Università degli Studi della Basilicata in the Summer of 2008 at Torre di Satriano (in the modern-day province of Potenza), a find which brought to light a complex of an extraordinary character. The artisans who built this complex left behind such a multitude of inscriptions–on all of the cornices and some of the frieze panels–that no doubt remains as to their “identity”: the alphabet is indisputably Laconian-Tarantine, thus enabling us to identify Tarentum as the hometown of the artisans who oversaw production of the terracotta roof tiles in loco.
Discoveries such as this allay many doubts surrounding the position of these terracotta tiles within the handcraft tradition and allow us to open a “new chapter” in the ongoing, controversial debate on the relations between the apoikiai of the Ionian coast and the indigenous mesogaia.
The main objective of the project is to attribute or “give back” to Laconia-Tarentum–a general term encompassing Sparta and its apoikia–a whole series of terracotta products whose origins are still being debated, or that have been attributed to earlier Achaean colonists (such as the terracotta frieze of Braida di Vaglio).
Camilla Campedelli studierte Altertumswissenschaft an der Universität von Verona und Freiburg in Breisgau. Seit 2008 ist sie Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XVII/1: Miliaria provinciarum Hispanarum) und trägt mit ihren Forschungen zu römischen Meilensteinen der Provinz Hispania Citerior zum Editionsprojekt der Gruppe B-I-1 “Definition of Spaces by Means of Surveying and Limitation” bei.
Bernhard Fritsch is research assistant associated with the Einstein Fellowship of Liba Taub and works on digital acquisition, documenting and archiving of material objects as part of the Berlin Sundials Project.
His project includes the use of various tecniques as Structured-light 3D and Laser-Scanning as well as Structure-from-Motion and the open availibility of this data.
Tomas Lehmann is an archaeologist at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He has authored many publications about various facets of Late Antique/Christian Archaeology and Epigraphy, with focus on the Italian region. Tomas Lehmann is involved in the archaeological investigation of the church buildings of Cimitile/Nola and Aquileia (Italy). He is also director of the University-collection of Christian Art. Before coming to the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin he taught at the Universities of Münster and Heidelberg. His Topoi-project consists in research on the interrelation between the development of ecclesiastical space in the town of Aquileia and in the surrounding landscape.