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John Osborne is a medievalist and cultural historian, with a special focus on the city of Rome in the early Middle Ages. Following the completion of his studies at the University of London’s Courtauld Institute of Art (Ph.D. 1979), he has held faculty and administrative positions in Canada at the University of Victoria, Queen’s University, and Carleton University in Ottawa, where now in retirement he retains appointments as both Distinguished Research Professor and Dean Emeritus. He has a long-standing interest in the church of Santa Maria Antiqua. In 1984 he worked under the auspices of the Soprintendenza to document the fragmentary murals on the walls of the atrium, and in 2000 organized an international conference in Rome to celebrate the centenary of the excavation.

Back: Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome: view into the Theodotus Chapel (photo: Roberto Sigismondi)

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Santa Maria Antiqua

Giulia Bordi is Associate Professor of Medieval Art History at the Roma Tre University. Her research interests lie in the field of medieval wall painting and the interaction between architecture, liturgical furnishings and wall painting in the churches of Rome and Byzantium (4th–13th centuries CE). She began to work at Santa Maria Antiqua in 2000. Exploring its intriguing and complex stratigraphy of painted plaster layers, she is systematically mapping them and proposing a new chronology of the church’s decorative campaigns from the 6th to the 11th centuries. With Maria Andaloro and Giuseppe Morganti she curated the exhibition: Santa Maria Antiqua tra Roma e Bisanzio (17 March - 11 September 2016).

the sistine chapel of the early middle ages

Following a successful medical career in Cambridge, in 2003 Eileen Rubery joined the Courtauld Institute in London, where she gained a ‘Master of Arts: Distinction’ and decided to focus on first millennial Roman Art, especially the church of Santa Maria Antiqua in the Roman Forum. Greek inscriptions on the apsidal wall in the sanctuary display texts associated with the Lateran Council of 649, convened by Pope Martin I. Her work focuses on the meanings of these frescoes, as well as on several images of the medical saints, Cyrus and John, whose presence suggests that the church had become a site of healing. Eileen has lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, Birkbeck, the Courtauld Institute and the Victoria and Albert Museum. She has also led several tours of Early Christian Rome.

Eileen Rubery Giulia Bordi John Osborne

EDITED BY EILEEN RUBERY, GIULIA BORDI, AND JOHN OSBORNE

Santa Maria Antiqua The Sistine Chapel of the Early Middle Ages

HARVEY MILLER PUBLISHERS

The Roman church of Santa Maria Antiqua, situated in the Forum at the foot of the Palatine Hill, was inserted into an existing imperial complex, probably in the course of the 6th century. Over the following 600 years it was decorated with a unique series of frescoes bearing evidence of imperial, papal and monastic patronage. Although the interior was apparently abandoned in the 9th century, limited use of outer areas, most notably the atrium, continued through to the 11th century; but it was not long before the complex was completely buried under the rising floor of the Forum. Excavations in 1900 exposed a largely intact structure containing hundreds of 6th–11th century frescoes, in some places over four layers deep. Gordon Rushforth, the first Director of the British School at Rome, hailed the discovery as the ‘Sistine Chapel of the Eighth Century’. This volume contains the proceedings of an International Conference held at the British School at Rome on 4–6 December, 2013, as well as a number of subsequent studies. The conference also marked the 75th anniversary of the death of Gordon Rushforth, the author of one of the earliest significant accounts of the building and its murals. In addition to papers dealing with the overall understanding of the site and the history of its exploration, many chapters document the results of the major project of preservation and research led by the Parco archeologico del Colosseo and carried out over the last 12 years on the fabric of the church, its frescoes, and structural issues such as drainage. Much of the restoration was funded by the World Monuments Fund. Lavish illustrations of these frescoes make this book an indispensable resource, not only for those working on early medieval Rome but also for those interested in contemporaneous material elsewhere in Europe and Byzantium.

Front: Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome: Maria Regina from the ‘palimpsest wall’ to the right of the apse (photo: Roberto Sigismondi)

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Santa Maria Antiqua The Sistine Chapel of the Early Middle Ages

edited by eileen rubery, giulia bordi, and john osborne

HARVEY MILLER PUBLISHERS

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION by Eileen Rubery, Giulia Bordi, John Osborne ..................................................... 5 TIMELINE ............................................................................................................................................ 11 TOPOGRAPHIC REFERENCES ....................................................................................................... 13 LIST OF COLOUR PLATES .............................................................................................................. 17 COLOUR PLATES .............................................................................................................................. 21 HISTORIOGRAPHY Oscar Mei ................................................................................................................................... 65 1702: The discovery of Santa Maria Antiqua T.P. Wiseman .............................................................................................................................. 95 Gordon McNeil Rushforth and Santa Maria Antiqua Andrea Paribeni ...................................................................................................................... 107 ‘With Boni in the Forum’. The relationship between Gordon McNeil Rushforth and Giacomo Boni according to archival documentation Ernesto Monaco ..................................................................................................................... 117 Measuring Santa Maria Antiqua: from Petrignani to the present Giovanni Gasbarri ................................................................................................................. 137 ‘Ce monument est avant tout un témoin’: Wladimir de Grüneisen and the multicultural context of Santa Maria Antiqua 1

TA B L E O F CO NT E NT S

John Osborne .......................................................................................................................... 147 Per Jonas Nordhagen, Santa Maria Antiqua, and the study of early medieval painting in Rome TOPOGRAPHY Henry Hurst ............................................................................................................................. 161 The early church of Santa Maria Antiqua David Knipp............................................................................................................................... 179 Richard Delbrück and the reconstruction of a ’ceremonial route’ in Domitian’s palace vestibule Robert Coates-Stephens ....................................................................................................... 195 The ‘Oratory of the Forty Martyrs’ CONSERVATION Giuseppe Morganti ................................................................................................................ 215 “Per meglio provvedere alla conservazione dei dipinti …”. 1984–2014: Santa Maria Antiqua 30 Years Later Werner Schmid........................................................................................................................ 233 Diary of a long conservation campaign The palimpsests of Santa Maria Antiqua Maria Andaloro ............................................................................................................ 277 The Project Giulia Bordi ..................................................................................................................... 281 The three Christological cycles in the sanctuary of Santa Maria Antiqua Paola Pogliani, Claudia Pelosi, Giorgia Agresti ................................................. 299 Palimpsests and pictorial phases in the light of studies of the techniques of execution and the materials employed

TA B L E O F CO NT E NT S

ICONOGRAPHY Per Olav Folgerø ................................................................................................................... 319 Expression of Dogma: Text and imagery in the triumphal arch decoration Manuela Gianandrea............................................................................................................ 335 The fresco with the Three Mothers and the paintings of the right aisle in the Church of Santa Maria Antiqua Maria Grafova ....................................................................................................................... 357 The decorations in the left aisle of Santa Maria Antiqua within the context of the political history of the Iconoclastic era Marios Costambeys ............................................................................................................... 373 Pope Hadrian I and Santa Maria Antiqua: Liturgy and patronage in the late eighth century RE-READING THE DECORATIVE PROGRAMME Giulia Bordi ............................................................................................................................ 387 The apse wall of Santa Maria Antiqua (IV–IX centuries) Eileen Rubery ........................................................................................................................... 425 Monks, Miracles and Healing. Doctrinal Belief and Miraculous Interventions: Saints Abbacyrus and John at Santa Maria Antiqua and related Roman Churches between the sixth and the twelfth centuries Richard Price .......................................................................................................................... 449 The frescoes in Santa Maria Antiqua, the Lateran Synod of 649, and pope Vitalian Beat Brenk ................................................................................................................................ 461 A new chronology of the worship of images in Santa Maria Antiqua AFTERWORD Maria Andaloro .................................................................................................................... 485 The icon of Santa Maria Nova after Santa Maria Antiqua

introduction

he month of January in the year 1900 was an exciting moment for those interested in the arts in Rome. On 14 January, a new opera by Giacomo Puccini, Tosca, had its premiere at the Teatro dell’Opera. While the arias ‘Vissi d’arte’ and ‘E lucevan le stelle’ thrilled Roman audiences, excavations undertaken a very short distance away, in the nearby Roman Forum, conducted by another Giacomo, Giacomo Boni, brought to light the remains of an amazing structure set against the slope of the Palatine Hill, a building decorated with a remarkable set of murals dating between the sixth and tenth centuries, when it functioned as a Christian church. Santa Maria Antiqua remains today the primary site for our knowledge of the pictorial arts in the early Middle Ages. As Werner Schmid records in his contribution to this volume, the murals comprise some 332 square metres of wall surface, an extraordinary picture gallery, unparalleled anywhere else in Europe at this time. In fact, so impressive were these painted walls that the first director of the British School at Rome, Gordon Rushforth, in a letter published in The Times of London on 9 January 1901, dubbed the site the ‘Sistine Chapel of the eighth century’. Rushforth would himself publish the first substantial description and analysis of the murals in a lengthy paper included in the first volume of the British School’s new journal, and for more than a century his study has retained its value as a detailed and insightful overview of the architecture and its decorations, based on his meticulous first-hand observations.1 His interest was shared by a great many others, with the result that the following decades witnessed considerable debate, not to mention a plethora of books and articles devoted to the site. The fervour of that intellectual climate will be explored in contributions by Peter Wiseman, Andrea Paribeni, and Giovanni Gasbarri. The building that would later house the church was constructed in the late decades of the first century, as can be deduced from the brick stamps datable to the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian (81–96 CE). Its original function is one of the many puzzles that still remain unresolved after a century; but it must have almost certainly borne some connection to the Forum entrance to the imperial palace situated on the Palatine Hill directly above, since the two spaces are connected by a wide ramp, which zig-zags its way up the slope immediately beside the structure. David Knipp’s contribution in this volume supports the view that it was intended as a formal ‘vestibule’ area for the imperial residence. There are numerous competing theories about how and when the space evolved into a Christian church, and how it functioned thereafter. These issues constitute the focus of the contributions by Henry Hurst, Beat Brenk, and Eileen Rubery. What we can say with some certainty is that at some point—and certainly by the middle of the sixth century—the building had evolved to serve religious purposes, and it began to be decorated with explicitly Christian images. It would then retain a religious function for almost five centuries. 5

INT R O D U CT IO N

In the middle of the ninth century, the ‘title’ was transferred to a new church constructed a short distance away, Santa Maria Nova, today also known as Santa Francesca Romana. Rushforth believed that this may have been connected to an earthquake that damaged Rome in 847, but Hurst reminds us here that there is not a shred of evidence to support such a view. Although the nave and sanctuary received no new decorations after that time, the former atrium clearly did remain in use and at some point received a new dedication to Saint Anthony, until the building was abandoned for good, probably in the eleventh century. Eventually the entire edifice became buried, and at a later date a new church, dedicated to Santa Maria Liberatrice, was constructed at a higher level. In 1702 there was a brief and quite accidental uncovering of the apsidal arch and parts of the sanctuary, attracting numerous interested observers. Oscar Mei has recently discovered an important study of the building and its murals dating from that period, undertaken by Domenico Passionei and preserved in his archive at Fossombrone, so our volume opens with this substantial addition to the history of the site. But otherwise the structure remained buried until Boni brought it back to the light of day in 1900. The precise implication of the church’s name, Santa Maria Antiqua (‘Old St Mary’s’) is again unknown—one of many unanswered questions that still puzzle those studying the building, although Giulia Bordi proposes a highly plausible solution. One suggestion is that the name derives from the icon of the Madonna and Child, now preserved at Santa Maria Nova; so when Santa Maria Antiqua was re-opened to the public in 2016, it was arranged for this enormous image to return briefly to what may have been its original home. That transfer is the subject of Maria Andaloro’s closing essay in this volume. Of course, these little mysteries are precisely what makes this remarkable site the subject of so much interest and study. Robert CoatesStephens’s intriguing proposal in these pages tackles instead another issue, namely the original dedication of the small chapel at the entrance to the complex, known in the literature as the ‘Oratory of the Forty Martyrs’. A church of Santa Maria Antiqua in the Roman Forum is mentioned in a few early medieval sources, including the Liber pontificalis, which provided contemporaneous biographies of the early pontiffs, and prior to 1900 there was considerable debate among scholars regarding the building’s precise location. But Boni’s excavations in that year brought those discussions to a rapid conclusion. The Liber pontificalis entry for Pope John VII (705–7) includes the first mention of the church: ‘He adorned with painting the basilica of the Holy Mother of God which is called ‘Antiqua’, and there he built a new ambo, and above the same church an Episcopium which he wanted to build for his own use.’2 In one of those remarkably serendipitous moments in the history of archaeology, Boni and his team discovered part of that ambo (pulpit), bearing an inscription in both Latin and Greek that named Pope John and recorded his devotion to the cult of the ‘Mother of God’.3 Furthermore, one of the walls of the chapel to the left of the sanctuary bore a painted inscription naming the patron of the decorations as Theodotus, the ‘primicerius defensorum and dispensator of the Holy Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary who is called Antiqua’, bringing all debate regarding the location to a satisfactory conclusion.4 John VII’s campaign to redecorate the architectural surfaces of Santa Maria Antiqua was but one of a number that took place during the early Middle Ages; indeed, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the site is the way in which successive campaigns of painting have been layered one over the other. The layers on the side walls of the sanctuary are studied by the 6

CO L O U R P L AT E S

1 7 0 2 : T HE DI S CO V E RY O F S A NTA M A R IA A NT IQ UA

Detail of the east wall of the left aisle of Santa Maria Antiqua, with the irregular opening leading to the marble staircase (photo: Wilpert, RMM, iv, pl. 177b)

Reconstruction of the staircase linking the church of Santa Maria Antiqua to the Domitianic Ramp (redrawn after Delbrück, ’Der Südostbau’, p. 24, fig. 5)

GOR DON MC N EI L R U S H F O RT H A ND S A NTA M A R IA A NT IQ UA

Excavations in Santa Maria Antiqua, spring 1900 (British School at Rome Photographic Archive, Thomas Ashby Collection, ta-II.007i, used with kind permission)

It would be good to know the identities of the gentlemen who were inspecting the site in the Ashby photographs (Figure 1). The precise date is not attested, but if it was during the Oxford University Easter vacation—roughly mid-March to mid-April—then it is likely that one of them was Gordon McNeil Rushforth, the thirty-seven-year-old Classical Tutor at Oriel College, to whom on 8 March the British School at Rome Executive Committee had offered the post of Director.17 Rushforth accepted at once, and would surely have taken the first opportunity to come to Rome and see the new discoveries. Two years later, inaugurating the new School’s research papers, he presented the first, and fundamental, edition of the texts and iconography of Santa Maria Antiqua.18

The Exeter archive Full details on Rushforth, so far as they are known, may be found in my 1981 article ‘The First Director of the British School’.19 I had become interested in Rushforth by discovering so many of his books in the University of Exeter Library, and in the course of hunting out the evidence for his life I made contact with the Rev. Eric Baker, then in his seventies and rather frail. Forty 97

W IS E M A N

Welbore St Clair Baddeley lecturing on the Palatine, 1900 (T.P. Wiseman Archive)

Come out to Rome one winter and let us do a book together on symbolism, it is much needed.’ From Thomas Ashby and Eugénie Strong alike, the note of respect and affection is very clear. Rushforth was not only a superb scholar; he was also a man people liked. The last word can go to Sir James George Frazer, writing to Rushforth in 1915: ‘I share your hope that we may meet again some day and speak of the old days when we were in Rome together.’30

102

Giacomo Boni at the tomb of the Sepolcreto (photo: Archivio Fotografico, Parco Archeologico del Colosseo, Serie C 699)

M O NA CO

Antonio Petrignani: general plan showing the results of the archaeological excavations in the basilica and atrium (Archivi del Parco archeologico del Colosseo, segnatura 1 blu/3b rosso)

MEA S UR ING S A NTA M A R IA A NT IQ UA

M O NA CO

Leonardo Paterna Baldizzi: sanctuary and choir enclosure. Drawing of the flooring in 1:50 scale, dated 1 February 1901, with detail (1:5 scale) of restoration inserts in the mosaic flooring (Archivi del Parco archeologico del Colosseo, segnatura 738)

PA LI MP S E S T S A ND P ICTO R IA L P H A S E S

Santa Maria Antiqua, Saint Anne and the Angelo bello: the colour painting sequence (Paola Pogliani, 2013)

Back: Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome: view into the Theodotus Chapel (photo: Roberto Sigismondi)

Santa_Maria_Antiqua_Jacket_20210607_01.indd 1-7

Santa Maria Antiqua

the sistine chapel of the early middle ages

Eileen Rubery Giulia Bordi John Osborne

EDITED BY EILEEN RUBERY, GIULIA BORDI, AND JOHN OSBORNE

Santa Maria Antiqua The Sistine Chapel of the Early Middle Ages

HARVEY MILLER PUBLISHERS

Front: Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome: Maria Regina from the ‘palimpsest wall’ to the right of the apse (photo: Roberto Sigismondi)

6/7/21 4:56 PM