Fragmenta

The article focuses on the lawyer’s perception of public space (loca publica) in imperial Rome. Starting with the premise that public space was res publicae (public thing or matter) and as long as the use did not present a hindrance to others it was permitted in principle, but under no condition could the user become the owner of the public property, the author gives an outline of Roman legal thought on this subject. Four identical inscriptions from Pompeii illustrate a number of legal themes: the Roman legal definition of loca publica, the city as the owner, the nature of assets under Roman law, the position and role of administrative bodies and legal decisionmaking and verdicts.

This essay explores the ritual dimension of public space in ancient Rome. It acknowledges that the organisation of space in general is a mental perception that can only be understood if contextualized in its specific historic setting. In the case of ancient Rome, ritual constitutes an obligatory starting point for such a contextual analysis; from ancient times onwards the city of Rome was collectively conceptualized as a ritual space, with the augurs playing a central role in its interpretation. From this perspective, the aim of the author is to explain why public space in imperial Rome is rarely open, being most often encapsulated within monumental porticoes and other kind of enclosures. The central argument reasons that these spaces were rigorously functional in nature (political-administrative, economic or commercial), and, therefore, needed to be sacralised and religiously delineated.

Whilst religious ceremonies in ancient Rome have been amply studied, little attention has hitherto been paid to their spatial context. In this essay the relationship between the two is explored by focusing on the processions carried out in the context of the ludi saeculares and in particular on those recorded from the years 17 BC and 204 AD. Through an in-depth analysis of the relevant ancient sources, the author traces the trajectories of these processions. The author concludes that they coincide, to a significant degree, with those of triumphal processions and with the routes followed by imperial funerals. The origins of the various processions are traced, and an explanation for this coincidence is explored in the context of the rise of the early Republic.

In this article the relation between public and private space is approached from the perspective of urban planning. It starts off reaffirming that the ancient city of Rome was a place in which the public use of space is predominant. It then focuses on the process of transformation from public to private in the Late Empire. Contrary to the communis opinio that there was already a significant trend of privatisation in the fourth century AD, the author maintains that it is only in the course of the fifth and sixth centuries AD that such a trend sets in, induced by a demographic decrease and the collapse of the city’s delicate support system. However, even for those centuries the author deduces from the archaeological evidence that degradation and privatisation of public and monumental buildings were still limited and circumscribed. He argues that a definite process of privatization only took off from the eight century BC, a process which during the Carolingian era led to a reduction to the minimum of the public areas and space that were accessible to all inhabitants, while the network of property in the hands of ecclesiastical and aristocratic elites spread.

The practice of the imperial adventus and the concept of pilgrimage are already fully expressed in a recently discovered homily of St. Augustine that refers to a visit of Flavius Honorius in Rome in 403-404. To understand the implications of the text, the essay recreates the actual urban situation of Rome in those years. At the same time the homily contributes to this knowledge and by placing the text in its literary tradition the author is able to delineate the urban changes in the centuries before and after the event and better define the original equilibrium between the triumphal and religious aspects of this ceremonial entry. The author explores the balance of these two components over the centuries and shows how in the sixth century the triumphant element, despite its former dominance, weaken and the aspect of Pilgrimage increasingly came to dominate.

The paper presents an analysis of Cornelius de Fine’s Ephemerides Historicae, an almost unknown source about Rome in the first half of the sixteenth century, also called Diarium Historicum. Written as an historical diary, De Fine describes the events in Rome and Italy in the period going from 1511 to 1548 and his experience of humanist Rome. During his stay in Rome he entered the service of Cardinal Francesco Conti, and after the Cardinal’s death in 1521, he worked for bishop Mario Maffei di Volterra and Jacopo Sadoleto. Thus, De Fine is not only important as an original source about Roman history in the early sixteenth century, but also as an example of successful integration into Roman society. Though we cannot define him as a humanist and his chronicle stands mostly in the medieval tradition, we can discover many humanist influences in his career and works. How can De Fine and his Ephemerides Historicae be situated in the context of humanist historiography? Which reminiscences of humanism can we find in them? These are some of the questions the author tries to answer.

The creation of some of the most famous roman piazzas in early eighteenth century seem to be less impressive then those of the century before. This impression, however, is misleading. The now destroyed Porta della Ripetta, the Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti and the piazza of the Fontana di Trevi all show the same characteristics that were inspired by garden architecture in the seventeenth century. Stairs leading up and down are like the flowing cascades and involve the pedestrian in an almost musical experience. There is no longer a place to make a precise observation, but a constant variation of viewpoints and continuous changes of direction that offer an “experience” of a new rhythmically organized space. The architectonic skill is in the ability to turn the completely banal function of dealing with differences of height into fragmentary visual experiences that only join to form a united picture in and through the movement of climbing or descending the steps.

Every culture has to deal with decay and death. Buildings and sites lose their original function and significance to be used in a different way by later generations. This becomes explicit in the case of, for instance, the Pantheon and the Colosseum. The way these Roman monuments are interpreted leans heavily on the ideas of the interpreter. Everyone reconstructs Rome according his own selective memory and creates a very personal image that may not necessarily take heed of any historical evidence. Even construction in the late nineteenth-century Rome follows its own distorted path as does Mussolini who transformed the Urbs according to his own ideological and political twist. All these volatile appropriations of the past should remind us that it is our task to preserve Rome as a cultural memory that reflects our whole civilization in an enlightened modern way.

Ever since Giorgio Vasari’s Vite was published, Pintoricchio has been considered a minor painter from the Early Renaissance, in spite of the prominence that he enjoyed during his lifetime. This paper argues that Vasari’s assessment sprang from anachronistic criteria: Pintoricchio’s style and his use of gold; from Vassari’s own personal frustrations in having to work with a large crew of assistants to be able to execute large projects, as did Pintoricchio; and from his partisan view that art either came from or was done in Florence. These criteria ensured that Pintoricchio, as a painter from Umbria who was very successful in Rome before c. 1500, did not fit into Vasari’s scheme, according to which the arts in Rome started to bloom only after Julius II became pope in 1503 and artists such as Bramante, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael — for the most part coming from Florence — reached the level of perfection. Vasari dealt a further blow to Pintoricchio by describing him as a morally despicable person and linking him to patrons without any real understanding of the arts, notably the “depraved” Pope Alexander VI Borgia. However, Pintoricchio’s works were highly appreciated during his own life and contain many elements that anticipate developments made in Rome after 1503. This puts Vasari’s judgment into question and raises doubts about the validity of when the terms “Early” and “High Renaissance” can be placed.