BONUM / MELIOR / OPTIMUM
Bonum/Melior/Optimum
The word souvenir is a relatively recent invention, first noted only in 1775. Its etymology originates with the Latin subvenire; sub – up from below and venire – to come; thus souvenir, here a verb, to come up from below.
Below what? Perhaps we’ll see.
Piraneseum’s architectural models –almost always 19th century miniatures of the most memorable, popular and oft-visited European, especially Italian monuments – are, at once, souvenirs and mementos, a word with a longer history, reaching back to the 14th century. By the late 1500s, memento, a noun, had come to mean ‘a hint or suggestion to awaken memory, a reminder, an object serving as a warning.’
A warning of what? Perhaps we’ll see.
Thus, the pair of words souvenir memento describes both an object’s source and its purpose.
This catalog features antique Roman architectural replicas whose sources –‘coming up from below’ – are identical, but whose purposes and effects – hints, reminders, admonitions – far diverge from the norm; and are highly-realized in extraordinary ways.
These pages’ prize offering is an impressively-sized, meticulously rendered, gilt bronze model of the Lateran Obelisk, produced (confected is a better word) in the first part of the 19th century, set atop a specimen of red Egyptian Aswan granite, quarried millennia ago. The monument’s base, inscribed with lines of Latin text, reflects not its appearance c. 1800, but 357 CE, when Emperor Constantinius II directed its shipment to Rome from
Alexandria, and its erection in the Circus Maximus.
Is this a greater souvenir of the ancient monolith than those sold today in Rome, fashioned from plastic resin, pushed indifferently into latex molds, finished in a hurry and sold on every other street corner? Not especially. Both ‘come up from below’ the tangle of our often undifferentiated experiences and put us in mind of the ancient monument. The antique model, though, unlike its resin brethren, hints, suggests, awakens, reminds and warns us in an astonishing variety of ways.
Consider this object’s craft. Exquisitely fashioned from luxe materials, this little Lateran Obelisk connects us with the phenomenon of Roman decorative arts, which reached its absolute apogee in this period, seen across the city’s flourishing
workshops – the Valadiers and Righetti; the Bellis and Zoffoli, and of course, Hopfgarten and Jollage, makers of this splendid model.
Consider the Aswan Granite base, almost certainly quarried c. 1400 BCE as part of the lower part of the obelisk erected at Karnak. In several pieces after a thousand years left languishing beneath the mud of the Circus Maximus, the monolith was again stood up in Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano, though without its bottom 13 feet, discarded for structural purposes. For artistic purposes, Hopfgarten and Jollage (and others) made use of this ancient debris.
Consider the Latin inscriptions to the four sides of the model’s base, reproducing the original Roman appearance (not that of the early 19th century), celebrating the Emperor’s transport, raising and dedication of the monument.
Consider the clientele for these fancy mementos – often the Papacy, which distributed them as gifts to foreign heads of state, as well as to high ranking clergy; and grandest of Grand Tourists.
A single souvenir memento, coming up through the mash of memory; hinting, awakening, warning; pointing our attentions to Roman history (risen and fallen), Papal politics, ancient Egypt, a zenith of decorative arts; and yet more palpably and personally, a memorable place and time in the presence of the tallest Egyptian obelisk, improbably set to the middle of a Roman piazza.
Optime, David Weingarten
EIGHT 19TH CENTURY ALABASTER AND MARBLE ROMAN ARCHITECTURAL MEMENTOS
Alabaster and marble, c. 1890 6 3/8” inches high, tallest $8500
If, in the later 19th century in Rome, you’d wandered into any one of dozens of tourist shops, always situated nearby the most famous landmarks, you would have seen souvenir architectural models like these – replicas of ruined Forum temples, triumphal arches and the Colosseum; the Pantheon and Temple of Hercules Victor, called Vesta, and, though less likely, Scipio’s sarcophagus. All, save this last, are carved from Italian alabaster, quarried in Volterra, near Florence, and tinted to resemble far more costly giallo antico marble.
The pictured model of Scipio’s Tomb, on the other hand, is from this yellow marble, set atop a black stone base. Finely carved and carrying an inscription of the Latin appearing on the sarcophagus itself, this miniature is earlier than the others, dating to c. 1870.
TEMPLE OF HERCULES VICTOR
Patinated bronze, c. 1870 7” high
$6,500
This unusually large, souvenir memento of the well known round Roman temple, aka the Temple of Vesta, is closely observed. Counterintuitively, this not large monument situated far from the usual tourist attractions, was, in the 19th century, the most often replicated roman landmark.
ARCH OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS
Patinated bronze, c. 1870 6” high $15,000
This replica of the Forum’s Arch of Septimius Severus is more often seen in later 19th century carved alabaster than cast in bronze. Souvenir mementos of the Arch Constantine are more abundant than replicas of this less wellknown monument. Our model richly and accurately detailed.
The model is raised on an antique marble base, similar to verde quarried in Greece and brought Rome in the time of Augustus.
Arch often carved bronze. Arch of abundant wellmodel is detailed. antique verde antico, brought to Augustus.
PANTHEON
Patinated bronze, c. 1870
6” high
$19,500
While there are abundant souvenir architectural mementos of Rome’s Pantheon carved in alabaster, those cast in bronze are vanishingly scarce. These are much more ambitious undertakings, requiring skills beyond those involved in carving soft stone. The offered model, in dark-patinated bronze, is without the “ass’s ears,” - the loathed belltowers by architects Maderno and Borromini - removed in 1883, Another, nearly identical model, includes the ears.
The roof of Rome’s Pantheon, 2,000 years later, remains the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. With this model, the dome lifts off revealing a space designed for a pair of inkpots. The model’s base is in Portoro marble, quarried near Liguria.