XII. Ruins of the Temple of Vespasian

XII. Ruins of the Temple of Vespasian,

28-1/2”h., 1870s, tinted alabaster

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Famed Swiss Art historian, Heinrich Wolfflin (1864-1945) is credited by some with developing the side by side projections characterizing generations of academic lectures. “Wolfflin’s method of comparing and contrasting pictures has come to be seen as a natural and commonsensical way to conduct Art history”, wrote one fan recently. Without commenting on common sense or the idea that art history, like a passenger train, requires a conductor, let’s indulge a Wolfflinian comparison between the 1870’s alabaster model and this 1860’s giallo antico marble model of the Temple of Castor and Pollux seen earlier in this catalog (VIII).

While both are of similar size and nearly identical purpose, the exquisitely fine work exhibited with that slightly earlier reduction contrasts with the blocky outline of the present object. Both are large, effective mementos. Still one is surpassing, the other workaday.

Another German-speaking man with ties to the Art business, largely contemporary with Wolfflin, architect Mies van der Rohe, may have remarked that “God is in the details”. If so, we know which of these two temples they inhabited.

(opposite) detail at capital and entablature