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(Mediterranean Art Histories 1) Alina Payne - Dalmatia and The Mediterranean - Portable Archaeology and The Poetics of Influence-Brill Academic Publishers (2014) PDF
(Mediterranean Art Histories 1) Alina Payne - Dalmatia and The Mediterranean - Portable Archaeology and The Poetics of Influence-Brill Academic Publishers (2014) PDF
Series Editors:
VOLUME 1
Edited by
Alina Payne
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: External view of the vault of the Temple of Jupiter in Split, Croatia. (Photo by Goran
Nikšić).
Dalmatia and the Mediterranean : portable archaeology and the poetics of influence / edited by Alina
Payne.
pages cm. -- (Mediterranean art histories--studies in visual cultures and artistic transfers from late
antiquity to the modern period, ISSN 2213-3399 ; volume 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-26386-4 (hardback : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-26391-8 (e-book) 1. Dalmatia
(Croatia)--Antiquities. 2. Mediterranean Region--Antiquities. 3. Dalmatia (Croatia)--Relations--
Mediterranean Region. 4. Mediterranean Region--Relations--Croatia--Dalmatia. 5. Coasts--Social
aspects--History--To 1500. 6. Material culture--History--To 1500. 7. Arts, Croatian--Croatia--Dalmatia--
History--To 1500. 8. Arts--Mediterranean Region--History--To 1500. 9. Architecture--Croatia--Dalmatia--
History--To 1500. 10. Architecture--Mediterranean Region--History--To 1500. I. Payne, Alina Alexandra.
DR1623.D352 2013
937.3--dc23
2013038652
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Acknowledgments vii
List of Contributors viii
List of Illustrations xii
Introduction 1
Alina Payne
part 1
Mobility and History
1 The View from the Land: Austrian Art Historians and the Interpretation
of Croatian Art 21
Suzanne Marchand
2 Evliya Çelebi in Dalmatia: An Ottoman Traveler’s Encounters with the
Arts of the Franks 59
Cemal Kafadar
3 The Imprimatur of Decadence: Robert Adam and the Imperial Palatine
Tradition 79
Erika Naginski
part 2
The Mediterranean Imagination
part 3
Things That Move: Textiles
part 4
Portability and Networks
Index 457
Acknowledgments
This book arises out of two seminars I led (in Split, Croatia, in October 2008
and at the KHI/Max Planck Institute in Florence in January 2009) on the sub-
ject of the portability of architecture and art in the Mediterranean in the late
medieval and early modern periods. All the participants in the seminars sub-
mitted developed essays based on their seminar contributions, which are all
included in this volume, and for this I thank them as I do also for the many
interesting and challenging conversations we have had. I am also and particu-
larly grateful to the Max Planck and Alexander von Humboldt Foundations
which financed this project through the Max Planck and Alexander von
Humboldt Prize I received in 2006. This became the project “The Object as
Event,” of which this volume is one part. I am grateful to Alesandro Nova and
Gerhard Wolf directors of the KHI in Florence and to Elizabeth Kieven and
Sybille Siebert-Schifferer directors of the Hertziana/Max Planck Institute in
Rome for their generous support and for their regular hospitality during the
lengthy process that this project involved. Nearer home I am indebted to
Harvard University for financing the last stages of the publication process, and
more generally for allowing me the time to undertake this work. Finally, col-
leagues, friends and students participated in this work and helped me out in
innumerable ways which I cannot record here but which they know: Joško
Belamarić, Claudia Conforti, Daniela del Pesco, Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, David
Kim, Maria Loh, Gülru Necipoğlu, David Pullins, Cara Rachele, Debbie Sears,
Nicola Suthor, the staff at the I Tatti and Houghton libraries of Harvard
University and the staff at the Hertziana and KHI libraries, my publishers, Brill,
and in particular Teddi Dols and Kathy van Vliet, and last but not least the stu-
dents in my seminars who engaged this and related topics over the past few
years with much verve and enthusiasm.
List of Contributors
Doris Abouseif
is Nasser D. Khalili Chair of Islamic Art and Archaeology at SOAS, University of
London. Her publications cover a wide range of subjects: Islamic architecture,
urbanism and the decorative arts, with focus on Egypt and Syria, Islamic cul-
tural history and aesthetics. Among her books are Egypt’s Adjustment to
Ottoman Rule, Leiden 1994; Beauty in Arabic Culture, Princeton 1999; Cairo of
the Mamluks, London 2007 and Practicing Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate:
Gifts and Material Culture in the Medieval Islamic World, London 2014.
Joško Belamarić
is head of the Institute of Art History (Cvito Fisković Center) in Split and is
Professor at the Department of Art History, University of Split. He was the
director of the Regional Institute for Monument Protection in Split 1991–2009.
He has published a number of books, studies and articles on the history of art,
architecture and urbanism of early modern Dalmatia.
Marzia Faietti
is Director of the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi in Florence and
Visiting Professor at the Specialist Schools of Art History of the University of
Bologna (Theory and Methods in the Criticism of Art) and of the University
Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan (History of Drawing, Engraving and
Graphics). She is President of the Italian Committee, and Member of the
International Bureau of CIHA. Her research and publications focus on draw-
ing, prints and painting from the 15th to 17th centuries and on exegetical stud-
ies of related ancients sources. She has edited a number of volumes on the
theoretical aspects of graphics (with Gerhard Wolf).
Jasenka Gudelj
is Assistant Professor at the University of Zagreb. She specializes in history of
architecture of the Adriatic region. She is the editor of Costruire il dispositivo
storico: tra fonti e strumenti (Milano, 2006; with P. Nicolin); Renesansa i rene-
sanse uumjetnosti Hrvatske (Renaissance and Renascences in Croatia; Zagreb,
2008; with P. Marković) and Umjetnost i naručitelji (Art and Its Patrons; Zagreb,
2010) and curated two exhibitions on early modern architectural treatises
(Dubrovnik, 2009 and Zagreb, 2012). Her forthcoming book, The European
Renaissance of Antique Pula, explores the reception of the antiquities of Pula in
the Renaissance.
L ist of Contributors ix
Cemal Kafadar
is Professor of History and Vehbi Koc Professor of Turkish Studies at Harvard
University. He has published Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the
Ottoman State (Berkeley, 1995; co-winner of the Fuat Koprulu Award in Turkish
Studies) and the dream diary of a Sufi lady from Skobje ca.1640 (in Turkish).
Current projects are: coffeehouses, nighttime and public culture in Istanbul
(e.g., “How Dark is the History of the Night, How Black the Story of Coffee, and
How Bitter the Tale of Love: The Changing Measure of Leisure and Pleasure in
Early Modern Istanbul,” forthcoming); and Ottoman views of Europe in the
early modern era.
Ioli Kalavrezou
is the Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Early Christian and Byzantine Art History
at Harvard University. She has held professorships at UCLA and the University
of Munich. Her publications focus on the arts of Byzantium with a special
interest in ivory and steatite carvings, imperial art and self-presentation, man-
uscript illumination, and the use of symbols and relics in the hands of the
empire. Several of her studies concern the cult of the Virgin Mary and the
everyday world of the Byzantines, especially women. Her book Byzantine
Women and their World accompanied an exhibition at Harvard with the
same title.
Suzanne Marchand
is Professor of European Intellectual History at Louisiana State University,
Baton Rouge. She is the author of Down from Olympus: Archaeology and
Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1870 (Princeton, 1996) and German Orientalism
in the Age of Empire: Race, Religion, and Scholarship (Cambridge, 2009; George
Mosse Prize of the American Historical Association). She is also the coauthor
x List of Contributors
of two textbooks: Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (W.W. Norton, 4th ed., 2013)
and Many Europes (McGraw Hill, 2013).
Erika Naginski
is Professor of Architectural History and Co-Director of the PHD Program in
Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning at the Graduate
School of Design, Harvard University. Her publications, which focus on
European art and architecture (1600–1800), include books and co-edited vol-
umes such as Polemical Objects (2004), Sculpture and Enlightenment (2009)
and, forthcoming, The Return of Nature. She has received fellowships from the
Harvard Society of Fellows, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the
Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, and the John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation.
Gülru Necipoğlu
is Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art and Director of the Aga Khan Program for
Islamic Architecture at Harvard University. She specializes in medieval and
early modern Islamic art/architecture in the Mediterranean and Eastern
Islamic lands. She edits Muqarnas (Brill) and Muqarnas Supplements. Her
books include Architecture, Ceremonial Power: The Topkapi Palace (1991); The
Topkapi Scroll, Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (1995); and The
Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (2005). Her articles
address artistic dialogues between Byzantium, Renaissance Italy, and the
Ottoman Empire; pre-modern Islamic architectural practice; and the histori-
ography of Islamic art/architecture.
Goran Nikšić
is a Senior Lecturer in Architectural Conservation at the Fine Arts Academy in
Split, an ICOMOS expert for sites on the World Heritage List and a Correspond
ing Member of the Archaeological Institute of America. As conservation archi-
tect with the Ministry of Culture and (presently) Head of the Service for the
Old City Core with the Municipality of Split he has produced architectural sur-
veys and managed restoration projects of important historic buildings through-
out Dalmatia. He has published articles on Roman, medieval and Renaissance
Dalmatian architecture, as well as on restoration issues and on the history of
architectural conservation in Dalmatia.
Alina Payne
is Alexander P. Misheff Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard
University. She is the author of The Architectural Treatise in the Italian
List of Contributors xi
Avinoam Shalem
is Riggio Professor of Islamic Art at Columbia University and a Professor Fellow
of the Kunsthistorisches - Max Planck Institute in Florence. His publications
include Islam Christianized (1998), The Oliphant (2004), After One Hundred
Years: The 1910 Exhibition “Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst” Reconsid
ered (2010), Facing the Wall: The Palestinian-Israeli Barriers (2011), and
Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe (2013). He is currently direct-
ing the research projects “Gazing Otherwise: Modalities of Seeing in Islam”
(with Olga Bush) and “Art Space Mobility” (with Gerhard Wolf and Hannah
Baader).
List of Illustrations
Alina Payne
1 Detail view, the Great Altar at Pergamon, second quarter of 2nd century
b.c. Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Preussischer
Kulturbesitz/Art resource, N.Y. 2
2 Anonymous, Map of the Mediterranean, 15th century. 5
3 View of the Adriatic Littoral from Castel del Monte, Puglia (photo by the
author). 6
4 Anonymous, Fragments of the Temple of Augusts and Roma in Pola.
Alinari, No. 21192. 7
5 Louis-Francois Cassas and Joseph Lavallée, “Vue générale de Spalatro.” In
Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Istrie et de la Dalmatie Paris: P. Didot,
1802). 8
6 Wilhelm Johann Baur, “Imaginary View of Naples”, Italian Coastal Views:
Illustrations for Baur’s Iconographia. Augsburg, 1670, f. 110r. Houghton
Library, Harvard University. 9
7 Aberto Fortis, “Filoni irregolari del piè del Monte Marian al mare”,
Viaggio in Dalmazia dell’abate Alberto Fortis. Venice: Alvise
Milocco, 1774. 12
Suzanne Marchand
Cemal Kafadar
Erika Naginski
Marzia Faietti
Alina Payne
Ioli Kalavrezou
Avinoam Shalem
Joško Belamarić
Gülru Necipoğlu
Goran Nikšić
Doris Behrens-Abouseif
Jasenka Gudelj
1 Alina Payne, “Portable Ruins: The Pergamon Altar, Heinrich Wölfflin and German Art History
at the fin de siècle,” RES: Journal of Aesthetics and Anthropology 54/55 (Spring/Autumn 2008):
168–189. On the Pergamon altar’s museums, see Can Bilsel, Antiquity on Display. Regimes of
the Authentic in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012; on German
archaeology and the intellectual context for the Pergamon discovery, see Suzanne Marchand,
Down from Olympus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
2 See my Max Planck/Alexander von Humboldt project “The Object as Event,” 2006–2012,
of which this volume is one sub-project.
Fig. 1 Detail view, the Great Altar at Pergamon, second quarter of 2nd century bc.
a ntikensammlung, staatliche museen zu berlin. preussischer kulturbesitz/art
source, ny.
Such an approach not only casts a different light on architecture and the
context that surrounds it, but also on the conventional binary categories of
high/low and center/periphery. Once we consider the mobility and portability
of all artifacts, as well as their interaction, it becomes clear that such reductive
readings do not stand up to closer scrutiny. An economy of things and images
that circulated enabled sites that were “off center” to have a significant voice,
just as major architectural monuments located on “peripheries” circulated by
way of small objects of luxury use. Although on a superficial level mobility and
portability may seem to be synonymous, they designate subtle but important
differences in the process of transformation and slippage that occurs across
artistic mediums.3 Mobility refers to the capacity to move, whereas portability
refers to the capacity to be held and carried. Both suggest transportation,
although one focuses on movement and the other on certain characteristics of
the objects being moved. The difference is not insignificant. For example, ships
and carriages are mobile (and so, in a later era, are trains) but are not portable;
small objects are: textiles, furniture, gems, fragments, drawings, caskets, and
ivory boxes, to name only a few—that is, a whole world of things that can be
held, packed, displayed, bartered, stolen, or lost. Occasionally, architecture
also falls into this category, as the Pergamon example clearly reveals. The cru-
cial aspect, of course, is scale. Some things are just too big to be portable, and
this naturally affects the way in which they “travel”: by proxy (through other
related artifacts) and not in actual body,4 which is where the issue of portabil-
ity and its relationship to architecture becomes particularly interesting. What
happens when architecture moves through a portable proxy?
Circulation, or more specifically, its physical context, raises another signifi-
cant issue, which serves as the third coordinate around which the writings
assembled here cluster. If one part of the mobility equation is the nature of the
objects (large or small) that move from their place of origin, the other is the
geography of this motion—a geography circumscribed by the paths of people
and objects but also by the particular sites from whence these objects originate
or to which they are moved. These paths create crisscrossing networks that
3 Stephen Greenblatt et al., Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2009. Medieval and Islamic artifacts have received more attention from this perspec-
tive than the arts of Europe. See, for example, Eva Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability: Islamic
and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century,” Art History 24, no. 1
(February 2001): 17–50, and Avinoam Shalem, “Objects as Carriers of Real or Contrived
Memories in a Cross-Cultural Context,” Mitteilungen zur Spätantiken Archäologie und
Byzantinischen Kunstgeschichte 4 (2005): 101–109.
4 On the relationship between objects and architecture across scales, see Alina Payne,
“Materiality, Crafting and Scale in Renaissance Architecture,” Oxford Art Journal (December
2009): 365–386.
4 payne
5 On the theory of networks, see especially the work of Bruno Latour, and in particular (with
reference to objects) Latour, “The Berlin Key or How to Do Words with Things,” in
Matter, Materiality, and Modern Culture, ed. P.M. Graves-Brown. London: Routledge, 2000,
pp. 10–21. For more recent research, see the book-length study by Finbarr B. Flood, Objects
of Translation. Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2009.
Introduction 5
economy of mobile art, artists, and other agents in the region, which figure
very little if at all in the oeuvre of Braudel and his followers.7 Another differ-
ence is a deliberate focus here on the littoral (see Fig. 3) rather than on the
interplay between shore and hinterland, arising out of an intent to explore
conditions of mobility, portability, and territory in their most radical form.
The shore—that strip of coast along which extensive travel developed—is a
geo-political area with its own particular identity, and it instilled a particular
way of seeing and experiencing proximity and distance, similarity and differ-
ence, zooming in and zooming out; and the Dalmatian shore, which had a his-
tory much different from its hinterland, is a dramatic instance of this peculiar
identity. A thin stretch of land like a golden band winding its way across coun-
tries, the littoral is at odds with borders and ethnicities, mixing them all up and
creating another republic, a “Republic of the Sea,” where communication was
easier, faster, more fluid and, perhaps, visually more continuous and linguisti-
cally more unified than we acknowledge today. It was also more porous. Goods
Fig. 3 View of the Adriatic Littoral from Castel del Monte, Puglia (photo by the author).
7 Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean
History. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000; David Abulafia, ed., The Mediterranean in History. Los
Angeles: J. Paul Getty Muzseum, 2003; W.V. Harris, ed., Rethinking the Mediterranean. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005; Gabriel Piterberg, Teofilo F. Ruiz, and Geoffroy Symcox,
eds., Braudel Revisited: The Mediterranean World 1600–1800. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2010.
Introduction 7
Fig. 4 Anonymous, Fragments of the Temple of Augusts and Roma in Pola. Alinari,
No. 21192.
8 payne
Fig. 5 Louis-Francois Cassas and Joseph Lavallée, “Vue de l’entrée de la rade et du port de
Pola.” In Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Istrie et de la Dalmatie. Paris:
P. Didot, 1802. houghton library, harvard university, typ. 815.02.2616.
Fig. 6 Wilhelm Johann Baur, “Imaginary View of Naples,” Italian Coastal Views:
Illustrations for Baur’s Iconographia. Augsburg, 1670, f. 110r. houghton library,
harvard university.
A focus on Dalmatia also offers the opportunity to review the issues of what
and where was the center of the Mediterranean region, and what it meant for
the culture of the region. In so doing, the authors in this volume attempt
to provide a more objective view at the whole, without the blinkers of an a-
posteriori construct based on the strong political/economic discourses which
claimed privileged places for Italy, France, and the Habsburg and Ottoman
empires. The geographic center of the Mediterranean passes through Dalmatia
and touches north-Africa, and this invisible vertical line that bisects the sea is
therefore further east than is usually assumed. Seeing the Mediterranean in
these terms raises a host of different questions: How does our understanding
of the intersection of the three powers shift if we acknowledge the powerful
effects of geography on the triad of trade, rulership and culture? What picture
of the region emerges if we look away from Italy and Rome toward Dalmatia
and Istria—territories that were certainly less economically central yet strate-
gically and geographically very much so? Moreover, they were also “lieux de
memoire,” part of a shared Mediterranean imaginary.11 So how did these sites
make themselves felt in ways that belie their limited territorial spread? To be
sure, one answer is that they attracted travelers, m
erchants, armies, pirates and
11 On the cultural power of lieux de mèmoire (sites of collective memory), see Pierre Nora,
ed., Les lieux de memoire. Paris: Gallimard, 1984–1992. On the shared Mediterranean
mythological and literary imaginary, see Frédéric Tinguely, L’écriture du Levant à la
Renaissance. Geneva: Droz, 2000.
10 payne
ambassadors in equal measure who acted as go-betweens. But they also made
themselves felt by traveling with them from whence they came, traveling
through them, by becoming as mobile as they were.
The other reason it seemed useful to explore the Dalmatian littoral was
the opportunity to shift scales: to move from the larger panorama of the
Mediterranean to one of its constituent seas, the Adriatic, and place it
under the lens of intellectual inquiry. The traffic that operated within the
Mediterranean to the east and south (to the Middle East and northern Africa)
in the early modern period has been far less studied than the traffic north
and west—to Italy, France, and Spain, or to Germany and Flanders.12 Yet the
medieval exchanges left traces and established routes and patterns that did
not die away with the Normans or the Byzantines. In this sense, too, the
Dalmatian littoral was far from dormant but continued to be an active destina-
tion, standing sentinel on one of the most traveled sea routes of the
Mediterranean and continuing to bring traffic to the former Byzantium and its
archipelago, to north Africa or the Ottoman Empire, and back. Sea routes were
far more used—and far more appealing for commerce and travel—than land
routes. The transport of stone from the region of Venice to Rome, for example,
occurred by ship along the coast of the Italian peninsula, skirting its eastern,
southern, and western coasts in turn rather than take the more direct land
route across the Apennines, which would seem to be shorter.13 As Giovanni
Uggeri has noted, the route from Venice (or Aquileia) to Alexandria took
12 Recent studies on Dalmatia, predominantly by Croatian scholars, has begun to fill out the
history of its important artistic dialogues with the rest of Europe, and in particular with
Italy. See, for example, the superb essays by Igor Fisković, “Les arts figuratifs de la
Renaissance en Croatie,” in La Renaissance en Croatie, exh. cat., eds. Alain Erlande-
Brandenburg and Miljenko Jurković. Zagreb and Paris: Seuil, 2004, pp. 159–194, and Joško
Belamarić, “La chapelle du bien-heureux Jean de Trogir,” in ibid., pp. 135–157. Another
pioneering volume of essays is Quattrocento Adriatico: Fifteenth-Century Art of the Adriatic
Rim, ed. Charles Dempsey. Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1996. Broader in scope geographically
and historically is Slobodan Ćurčić, Architecture in the Balkans from Diocletian to Süleyman
the Magnificent. London: Yale University Press, 2010, a vast compendium of sites and their
histories that continues a long tradition of visual documentation going back to Georg
Kowalczyk, ed., Denkmaeler der Kunst Dalmatien, intro. Cornelius Gurlitt. Berlin: Verlag
für Kunstwissenschaft, 1910.
13 Like stone, wood also traveled this route: the massive wood structural members that were
needed to span the vast spaces of the Palazzo Farnese were shipped by sea from the Veneto
and circumnavigated the penninsula. This information is contained in a letter from
Jacopo Valvasone di Maniago of April 7, 1565 addressed to Carlo Borromeo (then abbot of
Moggio in Carnia); Descrizione della Cargna del co. Jacopo Valvasone di Maniaco. Udine:
Tipografia Jacob e Colmegna, 1866. I am grateful to Claudia Conforti for this reference.
Introduction 11
10 days by sea (with favorable winds) or on average 25 days (with normal
weather), compared to 2 months by land.14 The normal route was along the
Illyrian coast, skirting the Greek islands (Corfu, Crete), and then across to
north Africa. Indeed, it becomes clear from reading travel accounts such as
Lavallée’s, Fortis’s, or Jacob Spon’s that the distances between stops were short,
and that 1 day separated Venice from Pola, 2 days from Zara—a far less demand-
ing route than crossing the Apennines on the way south15 (Fig. 7). Just beyond
lay Spalato (next door to ancient Salona), another usual stopover, then Narona,
Ragusa, and finally Durazzo and Butrinto (in today’s Albania). This was cer-
tainly the itinerary that Spon and Wheeler took in 1675 along the Adriatic
coast. Given such travel patterns, it seemed important to consider whether
Fig. 7 Aberto Fortis, “Filoni irregolari del piè del Monte Marian al mare,” Viaggio
in Dalmazia dell’abate Alberto Fortis. Venice: Alvise Milocco, 1774.
there was such as thing as an identity of the Adriatic that went beyond the
European confines and included Alexandria, Venice, and Spalato or Bari and
that had different inflections from that connecting Naples, Palermo, and
Seville, or Marseille and Genoa.16
Thus, the Dalmatian archaeological sites emerged as excellent examples of
the interaction of the three issues that shape the content of the essays in this
book: the dissemination of artifacts, architecture in particular; their dialogue
within a geographical continuum in this fluid world of the Mediterranean; and
the existence of an Adriatic identity (comparable to that of the Aegean) that
went beyond Venice, resulting from a dialogue across this watery realm
between Syria and Egypt, Sicily and Ottoman Turkey, Dalmatia and Puglia.
Indeed, although Dalmatia was the departure point, the topics expand out-
ward from this center and embrace larger issues and questions that involve the
Mediterranean world and its networks as a whole. What became particularly
interesting was the question of how such sites operate across great distances,
through what agency, and how this agency changes them in turn. How was a
lythic, extensive, scattered, and immobile entity such as an architectural
ensemble and its site “transported” through portable, small, graspable objects
made of paper, oil paints, metal, wood, ceramic, cloth, or stone (spolia)?
or simply through the words or images recorded by people who saw them?
And, a corollary issue, what sort of an imaginary dimension results from this
process, shared among the recipients of such a heterogeneous body of “things,”
of such a layered transmission? How does the process reflect back upon the
site of origin? Finally, how does this transmission/translation affect the artistic
behavior of subsequent generations?
Part 1 of this book looks at the historical reception of Dalmatian sites, by late
19th-century Austrian art historians, 18th-century British architects and 17th-
century Ottoman travelers. Thus Suzanne Marchand takes a historiographical
approach to the topic and reveals how the very treatment of Dalmatia by the
fathers of art history was already ambiguous and conflicted: for some of them,
it belonged to the European common Roman past (Rudolf von Eitelberger);
16 Federico Zeri posited a “stile adriatico” and André Chastel stressed the cultural unity of
cities south of Venice on both sides of the Adriatic in the 15th century, although neither
of them considered the larger Mediterranean geography to include the Ottoman and
north African territories; see André Chastel, Art et humanisme à Florence au temps de
Laurent le Magnifique: études sur la Renaissance et l’humanisme platonicien. Paris: Presse
universitaires de France, 1959, and Federico Zeri, “Rinascimento e Pseudo-Rinascimento,”
in Storia dell’arte italiana, part 2, vol. 1. Turin, 1983, p. 568. Dempsey records the Adriatic
insights of both authors; see Dempsey, Introduction, Quattrocento Adriatico, p. 7.
Introduction 13
for others, to the “Orient” (Strzygowski). Just like the visitors of that era
who viewed the littoral from the boat, scanning and separating it from the
landmass—as indeed it was divided by conquests, one belonging to the
Venetian Stato del Mar, the other (mostly) to the Ottomans—so the historians
tore at the identity of the territory and its cultural location. And in so doing,
they not only reinforced an old pattern but confirmed it as well: Dalmatia and
its monuments belonged to several realities at one and the same time and the
objects it produced and received entered into this uncomfortable split identity
and reified it.
Cemal Kafadar moves from the art historian to the traveler, and from the
Western to the Eastern perspective on the Dalmatian territory. Evliya Çelebi, A
compulsive 17th-century traveler, wandered across the Mediterranean and
allowed his eye to rest at some length on the Dalmatian coast. Indeed, as
Kafadar argues, for him this territory was the key to Ottoman control of the
Mediterranean, the center of the world. Driven by his curiosity about unfamil-
iar shores, Evliya Çelebi identified “connective tissue” between places. Such
tissue was not only woven out of portable objects but also generated by
the behavior of the residents of those places, such as flight and defection,
and by the networks that evolved through demographic shifts—in short,
historical connections shaped by mobility as a way of life, or by territorial
instability. In his telling, the European and Ottoman assessment of sites and
landscapes are strikingly different: for the more urban-minded Europeans,
the classification of territory was based on sedentary population; for
the Ottomans, settlements were more inclusive and embraced transient
groups.
In looking at Robert Adam and his Ruins of Spalatro, Erika Naginski also
interrogates how the Croatian and Mediterranean sites reached well beyond
their geographic locations, and how they “traveled” to Britain. The threads
identified by Marchand and Kafadar are here picked up with reference to 18th-
century historians and travelers who likewise tease out and perpetuate a dou-
ble identity for Dalmatia: the palace of Spalato (Split) is viewed by some as
Oriental in its excessive richness and therefore also as decadent (by Edward
Gibbon); but it can also work as an example of eclecticism and therefore as a
positive example of variety within the classical canon for a British architect
such as Robert Adam.
The shared Mediterranean imagination and its origins are another central
theme and the red thread of Part 2. Marzia Faietti turns to imagined land-
scapes and asks, How does the image of a real city like Jerusalem, whose his-
tory resonates across the Mediterranean, reach Andrea Mantegna, an artist
who never traveled there? What happens when mobility/portability and
14 payne
transportation was not lived first-hand? How does a city enter representation
and become “portable”? As she reconstructs the sources of an important paint-
ing by Mantegna, Faietti reveals the convoluted and complicated process that
includes the confluence of real travel (Ciriaco of Ancona’s) with fantasy, liter-
ary, and antiquarian interventions as well as political events that produce an
imagined city for an artist whose most extensive trip had been no farther than
Lake Garda, barely 85 miles (140 kilometers) from where he was born.
In my own essay, I look for yet another glimpse of this phenomenon of com-
pounded imagination, in an exploration of the idea of the Renaissance ideal
city, particularly as imagined by Andrea Palladio. The white city so familiar in
representations as a deeply desired and never attained site of order, beauty,
and peace—a Pathosformel, really—is, I argue, a measure of the experience
and memory of the white Istrian stone and its brilliance in the buildings and
ancient cities along the eastern Adriatic. In their clean sparseness Palladio’s
images of reconstructed temples on stark white pages captured the effects of
the white ruins and the white stone of such sites as Spalato and Pola, and
transmitted their effects across centuries as far as Georgian London and its
own white terraces.
David Young Kim looks at the mobility of the artist rather than that of
things, and identifies a counter-impulse that pushes against the collective
imagination as the origin of artistic style. Examining an array of sources from
Leon Battista Alberti to Giorgio Vasari, Aretino, and beyond, he reveals a strain
of anxiety in Renaissance artistic literature with respect to the itinerancy of
artists. As presented in their texts, this practice of travel for work threatens
historical memory, dissolves distinction between places, and contaminates
urban order and artistic style. By showing that this basic phenomenon of artis-
tic behavior was far from unproblematic, Kim reveals how deeply felt, and
potentially disruptive, the inherent mobility characteristic of the Mediterranean
territories really was.
In Part 3, the essays home in on what exactly moved, how it moved, and how
this movement across space and mediums affected the reception and the
recording of distant monuments and shores. Ioli Kalavrezou and Avinoam
Shalem examine one of the most ubiquitous items that circulated widely and
in large quantities: cloth, in the form of luxury silks, embroidered and pat-
terned textiles, sumptuous velvets and brocades. Kalavrezou asks, What circu-
lated, and who actually spoke to whom in the production of hybrid pieces that
allowed taste to circulate? Who held the needle? And who understood whom
(and how) in this process of translation? As it turns out, royal gifts of ritual
cloth or bronze doors for Mediterranean cathedrals that came out of Byzantium
were intended to gratify an existing foreign taste just as much as they
Introduction 15
Bibliography
Abulafia, David, ed., The Mediterranean in History. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum,
2003.
Belamarić, Joško, “La chapelle du bien-heureux Jean de Trogir,” in Ibid., pp. 135–157.
Bilsel, Can, Antiquity on Display. Regimes of the Authentic in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Braudel, Fernand, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II.
Paris: Armand Colin, 1949.
Cassas, Louis-Francois and Joseph Lavallée, Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Istrie et
de la Dalmatie. Paris: P. Didot, 1802.
Chastel, André, Art et humanisme à Florence au temps de Laurent le Magnifique: études
sur la Renaissance et l’humanisme platonicien. Paris: Presses universitaires de
France, 1959.
Introduction 17
Pseudo-Skylax, Periplous. The Circumnavigation of the Inhabited World, ed. and trans.
G. Shipley. Bristol: Phoenix Press, 2011.
Shalem, Avinoam, “Objects as Carriers of Real or Contrived Memories in a Cross-
Cultural Context,” Mitteilungen zur Spätantiken Archäologie und Byzantinischen
Kunstgeschichte 4 (2005): 101–109.
Spon, Jacob and George Wheeler, Voyage d’Italie, de Dalmatie, de Grèce et du Levant, fait
aux années 1675 & 1676. Lyon: A. Cellier le fils, 1678.
Tinguely, Frédéric, L’écriture du Levant à la Renaissance. Geneva: Droz, 2000.
Uggeri, Giovanni, “Relazioni marittime tra Aquileia, la Dalmazia e Alessandria,”
Antichità altoadriatiche 26 (1985): 159–162.
Zeri, Federico, “Rinascimento e Pseudo-Rinascimento.” In Storia dell’arte italiana,
part II, vol. 1. Turin: 1983.
PART 1
Mobility and History
∵
Chapter 1
Suzanne Marchand
Alina Payne’s elegant essay for this volume assesses the impact of “the view
from the boat” on centuries of European travelers to the “white cities” of the
Mediterranean littoral. That text and Erika Naginski’s essay on 18th-century
engravings of Diocletian’s Palace in Split both demonstrate the importance of
Roman monuments in shaping European visitors’ impressions of the Dalmatian
coast and their deep need to fit these monuments into a narrative of classical
antiquity’s brilliance, and its subsequent steep decline. In contrast, the essays
by Gülru Necipoğlu and Cemal Kafadar present the Ottoman world’s view of
what is today Croatian territory as simply a moderately rich and exploit-
able periphery, a place where one might harvest good marble—or good archi-
tects—but where, in the late 17th century, it was impossible to get a decent cup
of coffee. Evliya Celebi was at least mildly interested in the infidels of Dalmatia—
but because the Ottomans remained content with ruling the Bosnian hinter-
land (until 1878), his visits to the Venetian-dominated coastal regions were
perfunctory, and his impressions of the art and landscape, if not “views from
the boat,” were fleeting ones. This was not so for those to whom the Dalmatian
spoils fell in the post-1815 period: the Austrians, who might have originally
surveyed what is now Croatia from boats, but who had then to rule this distant
and diverse territory, and to do so in an era of rising nationalist sentiments.
Especially in the years after the revolutions of 1848, Croatia increasingly
attracted Austro-Hungarian scholars and bureaucrats who sought what I call
“the view from the land”—a deeper, and more invasive, understanding of the
territory—with cultural consequences that have not yet been fully
investigated.
This essay focuses on two very different Austrian art historians, Rudolf
Eitelberger von Edelberg (1817–1885) and Josef Strzygowski (1862–1941), both of
whom made very significant contributions to Austrian, and more broadly,
European, discussions of the origins and meaning of Dalmatian art and archi-
tecture. Each struggled, in his own way, to make sense of Dalmatia’s mixed cul-
tural heritage, its coastal Latinity and its Slavic hinterland, its position on the
periphery of western empires and its receptivity to the cultures of the eastern
Mediterranean. They were both in some way associated with the Vienna School
of art history—Eitelberger as one of its founders, Strzygowski as one of its
products but also ultimately one of its keenest critics. In fact, Strzygowski
would receive an appointment to Eitelberger’s University of Vienna chair after
the death of Eitelberger’s immediate successor, Franz Wickhoff, in 1909. But
their different approaches to the art of the imperial borderlands tell us a great
deal about how much that school’s work was entangled with the wider cultural
history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in its last decades.
Strzygowski and Eitelberger belonged to different generations, and to dif-
ferent political and social groups; Eitelberger was a noble from a German mili-
tary family, Strzygowski the son of a successful merchant based in Austro-Polish
Galicia. Eitelberger was a liberal who had championed revolution in 1848, but
the Habsburg Monarchy’s liberalization, and the bureaucracy’s embrace of his
ideas and projects made him, by the early 1850s, an ardent Habsburg patriot.
After three decades of bureaucratic and scholarly activity, he was made a
member of the Austrian House of Lords, and an honorary citizen of the city of
Vienna; after his death, the emperor himself visited Eitelberger’s widow to
express his regrets.1 Eitelberger’s scholarly research ranged across all artistic
epochs, but he focused his attention on the classical and medieval monuments
so important to the identity of the Holy Roman Empire; he did not like
Byzantium and feared the East, from which, he said on numerous occasions,
came the barbarian threats, past and present, that Austrians had continually
had to combat. Strzygowski, by contrast, was a Germanophile nationalist from
the Slavic provinces, a man who was touchy about his non-Gymnasium educa-
tion and who constantly felt himself underappreciated by his more urbane
and better-connected colleagues. He made his career less by ingratiating him-
self with the central bureaucracy than by associating with its critics, and by
attacking classicism in the name of a more profound understanding of folk art,
and of eastern Europe’s deep cultural connections with the Orient. Strzygowski
despised the liberal imperialist vision that Eitelberger had implanted in the
monarchy’s cultural institutions, seeing in it the lingering Roman, aristocratic,
1 “Eitelberger, Rudolf E. von Edelberg,” Allgemeine deutsche Biographie und Neue deutsche
Biographie, vol. 55. Leipzig: Dunker & Humblot, 1910, p. 738. For an excellent overview of
Eitelberger’s career, discovered by this author too late to be properly incorporated into this
essay, see Matthew Rampley, “The Idea of a Scientific Discipline: Rudolf von Eitelberger and
the Emergence of Art History in Vienna, 1847–1873,” in Art History 34, no. 1 (Feb. 2011): 54–79.
Rampley’s book-length manuscript, The Vienna School of Art History. Philadelphia:
Pennsylvania State University Press, forthcoming, 2013, also came to my desk too late to be
included, but provides an excellent overview and wider analysis of issues raised in this essay.
The View from the Land 23
If one of the goals of this essay is to understand the transition from the lib-
eral to the post-liberal study of Austro-Hungarian cultural history, taking
Dalmatian art as our focal point, another is to offer a new set of perspectives on
the consequences of empire for the sciences. Central to Eitelberger’s work, and
ultimately to Strzygowski’s as well, was the founding and development of
Austria-Hungary’s imperial monuments’ service, an institution founded in
1852 with the goal of surveying, documenting, and, if possible, saving of the
empire’s important historical and artistic monuments; in many respects it was
the equivalent of the British Archaeological Survey of India, founded in 1861.
Both projects were born in the wake of upheavals, those of 1848 in the Austrian
case, and those of 1857 in the British case, and both were intended to acceler-
ate the collection and preservation of artifacts in the face of impending mod-
ernization and (supposedly) local neglect. The Austrian project, however,
seems to have emphasized much more the preservation and appreciation of
the art of the periphery, while the British project de-emphasized cultural plu-
ralism and disdained the input of local notables. Over time, the Austrian proj-
ect seems to have done much better in generating local support and pride
(especially from indigenous elites) and in deepening the sympathy of some
imperial overseers for monuments with nontraditional decorative schemes or
architectural aspects. By focusing attention on monuments that had to be seen
in situ, photographed or sketched, and studied, usually with little help from
traditional sources, and often without texts to help make sense of them, it cre-
ated a minor tourist boom and a world of semi-amateurs, eager to protect and
display “their” treasures.
This process also increased some imperial scholars’ sympathy for the men
and women on the spot—local scholars, antiquarians, guides, and workmen,
who often knew a great deal more than did western Europeans about local
monuments, landscapes and artifacts. Though often left out of the history of
archeology and art history written in the heroic mode, these “missing persons”
often helped European scholars read manuscripts or inscriptions, locate sites
and articles for purchase, and, in the process, often suggested to them ways to
interpret materials in accordance with their own views. They played major
roles in convincing scholars such as Eitelberger in Austria and E.B. Havell in
England to rethink their categories, and they would become, too, some of the
most ardent readers of what was still regarded by western Europeans as exotic
scholarship, or folkloric, anti-classical art appreciation. And these “missing
persons” would become some of Strzygowski’s most devoted fans.
To understand the enormous changes that occurred in art collecting
and appreciation over the course of the 19th century, we should remember
that art history, as a university discipline, was itself born in that century, and
The View from the Land 25
developed mostly in its second half. History per se, while practiced through the
centuries outside the universities, was in the 1820s and 1830s just gaining a toe-
hold in university cultures—and what was taught was chiefly ancient history.
Those who wrote about the “modern” periods—everything since the fall of
Rome—were, like James Mill, J.G. Droysen, and Jules Michelet, often political
liberals, and the censors kept a careful eye upon them. Indeed, in Austria, those
scholars who pushed hard for the formation of an Academy of Sciences in the
early 19th century shied away from proposing a separate section for history for
fear of the censor, even though historians featured prominently among the
Academy’s backers. When the Austrian Academy was finally established in
1847, it did contain a historical section, but one that favored not writers of
grand narratives, but archivists, or local amateurs and antiquarians, men
referred to as Heimatforscher, who hailed from all the cultural provinces of
the Dual Monarchy.3 The post-1850 era was much friendlier to historians,
many of whom became less liberal as the great nation-building projects of
the period commenced, and as specialization and professionalization set
in. Censorship regimes, too, fell away, and historians began telling a wider set
of stories.
In the Habsburg lands, in fact, the post-1850 attempts to cultivate bour-
geois support for patriotic causes—and the new freedom to form local
associations—created the conditions for the proliferation of historical and art-
historical studies, not only by academics, but also more broadly in local com-
munities. The Academy had already set a precedent by including among its
members Heimatforscher who reflected the monarchy’s cultural diversity: men
from the Czech lands, Lombardy, Hungary and Transylvania, the Tirol, upper
Austria, Vienna, and Styria each had their own representative.4 When the
Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung (IföG) was created in 1853, it
too reached out to representatives of the various nationality groups, offering
cultural pluralism to offset the political dominance of the German-Catholic
imperial elite. These imperial attempts to survey and unite the whole by bring-
ing provincial scholars into the project would create a dynamic similar to
Emperor Franz Josef’s desire to placate the various nationality groups through
language reforms: as the central state deflected conflict by liberalizing the
treatment of non-German elites, it contributed to the development of wider
and better organized cultural nationalist groups in the provinces, who still,
however, had to work hard to convince the locals that a single ethnic identity
3 Richard Meister, Geschichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 1847–1947. Vienna:
Holzhausen, 1947, p. 86.
4 Ibid.
26 Marchand
was something they ought to have, and ought to cherish.5 In focusing espe-
cially on Austria’s medieval past—and developing strong support for projects
in Slavic and Oriental studies (including, in 1897, a Kommission für die
historisch-archäologische und philologisch-epigraphische Durchforschung
der Balkanhalbinsel, or Balkankommission)—the imperial Academy of
Sciences and the IföG would offer generate patronage for a large number of
projects that fell outside the usual purview of the universities.
If academic history tended to the classical, this was even more true of the
archeologists and art historians at the universities, at least through the early
1880s. Students spent long hours in university museums, whose collections
were heavily dominated by plaster casts. Eitelberger himself was trained in law
and then as a classical philologist, and his first essay on art theory was about
the study of ancient art; before his appointment to the first professorship for
art history at the University of Vienna in 1852, he seems to have followed a
rather conventional series of inquiries, studying art in Italy for a year, and visit-
ing London and Paris. But there was another side to Eitelberger: his real train-
ing in art appreciation, he claimed, came from his friendship with the director
of the imperial academy of engravers and the mint, Joseph Daniel Böhm.
Böhm, a devoted Catholic, encouraged his fellow Austrian artists to study local
and medieval art directly rather than merely imitate classical models and
casts; contemporary art would be improved, he argued, by looking beyond
neoclassical aesthetics for inspiration.6 In Böhm’s workshop and art collection,
Eitelberger learned to appreciate the minor arts as well as the importance of
cultivating domestic taste. However, even more important in making
Eitelberger an unusually ecumenical art historian was, ironically, his leap onto
the imperial bandwagon just as it made a liberalizing swerve, exemplified in
the arts by the founding of the K.K. Zentral-kommission für Kunst- und histo-
rische Denkmale (Central Commission for Protection of Monuments [in
Vienna]), a highly important institution to whose development we now turn.
This commission was founded in 1853 for the study of architectural monu-
ments throughout the empire; its brief was expanded in 1873 to include the
5 See Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial
Austria. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. On the early 19th century, see, for,
e.g., Daniel Baric, “Der Illyrismus: Geschichte und Funktion eines übernationalen Begriffes
im Kroatien der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und sein Nachklang,” in Transnationale
Gedächtnisorte in Zentraleuropa, ed. Jacques Le Rider et al. Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2002,
pp. 125–140.
6 “Eitelberger, Rudolf E. von Edelberg,” (as in note 1), p. 735; Rampley, “Idea of a Scientific
Discipline,” pp. 59–60.
The View from the Land 27
7 Eitelberger, Die Kunstbewegung in Oesterreich seit der Pariser Weltaustellung im Jahre 1867.
Vienna: K.K. Schulbücher Verlag, 1878, p. 16: “The effectiveness of the commission,” Eitelberger
wrote, “lies in studying and publicizing these monuments, in caring for their preservation
and protecting them from destruction or decay, in awakening of interest in them among
individuals and especially among corporations and associations with related interests.”
8 Ibid., pp. 17–19.
9 Ibid., pp. 20–31.
28 Marchand
10 Eitelberger, Bericht über eine archäologische Ausflug nach Ungarn in den Jahren 1854 und
1855. Vienna: Ebner und Seubert, 1856, Hungary, p. 95.
11 Ibid., p. 96.
12 Eitelberger, Geschichte und Geschichtsmalerei: Festrede gehalten aus Anlass der
Habsburgfeier am 22. December [sic] 1882 in der Kunstgewerbeschule des K.K. Oesterreich.
Museums. Vienna: Carl Gerold’s Sohn, 1882, p. 12.
The View from the Land 29
monuments—by no means did he take only “the view from the boat”—and
unlike the 18th-century traveler Fortis, he did not apologize for not focusing on
Greek and Roman monuments.20 But he did not push very far inland either,
and did not focus attention on Slavic antiquities. Although his brief was to
study medieval monuments, he could not resist some discussion of Diocletian’s
Palace—perhaps because it was so very classical, and so very white (see image
in Chapter 3, Fig. 7). However, he did not dwell on the question of whether or
not the palace represented artistic (as well as imperial) decline; like his liberal
successors in the Austrian School of art history, Eitelberger was inclined to
emphasize continuities across the classical–medieval divide.21 Engaged in the
project of surveying the Empire’s monuments and treasures, Eitelberger
mostly described what was left, and refrained from speculating much on which
ethnic group or empire should be credited with particular innovations. Yet his
narrative was clear: the foremost achievements were those of western, and
usually Christian cultures—and the foremost destroyers were the barbarians
of the East, and especially the Turks.
For the second edition of Die mittelalterische Kunstdenkmale, Eitelberger
had a local, liberal-Catholic antiquarian priest, Father Franz Bulić, write the
section on the unique early medieval church in Zadar, San to Donato, but he
himself praised its unique beauties; in his view it was “one of the most interest-
ing and oldest [monuments] of the Austrian monarchical realm, and is the
equal in splendor and eminence to the church to the Holy Spirit in Ravenna
und Charlemagne’s Church of St. Mary in Aachen [now known as Aachen
Cathedral], and we hope to be able to demonstrate its venerable place in the
history of the art of the ninth century.”22 San Donato was interesting, as inter-
esting as the canonical medieval buildings of Ravenna and Aachen, because it
was old and because it had splendor and grandeur (Glanz and Pracht). It was
also unique in its layout, he admitted; but Eitelberger did not dwell on the
unusual aspects of the early medieval church, and neither he nor Bulić were
eager to establish the church as “Croatian” or as “Byzantine” in its origins or
style. It was a monument among other fine monuments of the Austrian
empire—and it was as such that it should be taken care of, and admired.
Eitelberger would take many more trips to the region after that, and the
Austrians would indeed fund continuing study and preservation of Split. Zadar
20 Larry Wolff, Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001, p. 111.
21 See Don Frane Bulić (with Ljubo Karaman), Kaiser Diokletians Palast in Split. Zagreb:
Matica Hrvatska, 1929, pp. 89–93.
22 Eitelberger, Mittelalterliche Kunstdenkmale Dalmatiens, p. 88.
32 Marchand
would remain the capital, and the Hungarians the overlords, but Split increas-
ingly did become the cultural focal point in the way Eitelberger suggested,
serving to demonstrate the region’s mixed heritage, and especially its linkages
to the western Christian, medieval world. A series of later visitors, from Russian
architect Theodor Tschaghuin to British traveler T.G. Jackson, would expand
Eitelberger’s studies. While Tschaghuin focused on Byzantine monuments,
Jackson, who visited in 1882, 1884, and 1885, disdained the Slavic and rural cul-
ture of the interior for what he saw as the wholly Latin high art of the coast.23
“It was only in these towns on the seaboard or islands of Dalmatia and Istria,”
Jackson wrote in 1909, referring to cities with Roman origins such as Pula,
Dubrovnik, and Split, “that the arts and literature found a congenial home. The
Slavonic kingdoms and principalities of the interior—Bosnia, Servia [sic] and
Herzegovina—if not exactly semi-barbarous, yet produced nothing of that
kind even when they were in their prime.”24 Croatian scholars such as Bulić
also continued their work; and in the hinterlands, men who leaned in more
Slavic nationalist directions also began collecting artifacts, and opening their
own local museums (Heimatmuseen). As in Hungary, the spread of interest in
antiquities and the increasing specialization of local scholars generated a new,
more ecumenical drive to collecting, publishing, and interpreting artifacts—
and with it, new debates about the origins of the Croatians, and their relation-
ships to all the others who had occupied their land.
In the meantime, Grand Duke (and Ministerpresident) Rainer had been
inspired by his visit to London to found an Austrian equivalent to the South
Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in order to inspire
a revival in the central European decorative arts. This was an idea that
Eitelberger enthusiastically endorsed, and by 1864, the Oesterreichisches
Museum für Kunst und Industrie had opened in Vienna, with Eitelberger as
director.25 The Paris World’s Fair in 1867 fueled more inter-European competi-
tion in the decorative arts, and in the wake of this exposition—and the official
establishment of the Dual Monarchy in the same year—imperial bureau-
crats expanded and modernized the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s activities in
the arts.26
23 Ibid., pp. 132–134; Frank Arneil Walker, review of Bruno Šišic, “Obnova Dubrovačkog
Renesansnog Vrta,” in Garden History 11, no. 1 (Spring 1983), 91.
24 T.G. Jackson, “Notes on the Architecture of the Eastern Coast of the Adriatic,” in The
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 14, no. 72 (Mar. 1909), 343.
25 “Eitelberger, Rudolf E. von Edelberg,” p. 736.
26 On this see now Matthew Rampley, “Design Reform in the Habsburg Empire,” in Journal
of Design History 23, no. 3 (2010): 247–264.
The View from the Land 33
Austria’s new artistic initiatives were responses also to three other contem-
porary developments: massive projects of city expansion and beautification,
including the building of Vienna’s Ringstrasse and of the virtually new city of
Pest; the decline of craftsmen’s guilds and the rise of new industrial enter-
prises; and the perceived falling off of French dominance in the decorative
arts. Eitelberger, as a professor of art history, director of the museum, and
member of the Architectural Commission (Baukommission), again played key
roles here, speaking out publicly about Austria’s need to create educated con-
sumers who could tell good art from bad, and who would create a domestic
market for Austrian decorative arts (after which time the empire could con-
sider exporting its goods). Although he used nearly every Germanophile cliché
about French culture (luxurious, superficial, spiritless), he also encouraged
Austrians to regard outsiders as rivals rather than as enemies, and to borrow
useful foreign ideas without becoming dependent upon them: “For using the
foreign is perfectly legitimate, and the progress of today’s civilization in fact
rests on the exchange of ideas between different peoples, not on the exclusion
of foreign movements and achievements.”27 The real danger came not from
French models or from German expansionism, he asserted in a lecture given at
the peak of the Franco-Prussian War (1871); rather, the threat came from
within, from attempts to Polonize Galicia, and to Slovenianize Laibach
(Ljubljana); indeed, Austria’s domestic market threatened to fragment into
nationalized economies as Hungary, for example, embraced ideas from the
time of Matthias Corvinus, the Bohemians isolated themselves, and the art
industry in Trieste gravitated toward Italy.28
Eitelberger’s response was again to encourage cultural pluralism, or federal-
ism, as a means to blunt political and economic quests for autonomy. He
supported the development of local, proto-nationalist, but presumably mod-
ernizing institutions such as the schools and museums for industrial and deco-
rative arts founded in Lemberg (Lviv), Krakow (Cracow), Brünn (Brno),
Reichenberg (Liberec), the Tirol, and other places. In the late 1870s, there were
nearly 50 of these, although Eitelberger lamented that none of these institu-
tions had yet been founded in Dalmatia or Carniola.29 They too were projects
pushed by the central bureaucracy, by Eitelberger’s museum and its desire
27 Eitelberger, “Der deutsch-französische Krieg und sein Einfluss auf die Kunst-Industrie
Österreichs,” in idem, Gesammelte kunsthistorische Schriften, vol. 2. Vienna: W. Braumüller,
1879, p. 333.
28 Ibid., pp. 329, 334.
29 Eitelberger, “Die Gewerbemuseen in den Kronländern Österreichs,” in idem, Gesammelte
kunsthistorische Schriften 2: 266.
34 Marchand
As there is only one truth, as there is only one law, as there is only one
beauty, there is only one art. There cannot be one art for the poor and
another for the rich, one special art for [state] monuments and another
for bourgeois life, a particular form of art for churches and one for lay-
men … The laws of art are for all types of art one and the same. The laws
of nature, which our eyes follow, are in the same way and without excep-
tion valid for all types of art, and the hand, which renders bodily forms in
drawing, in sculpting, in coloring, follows the same laws.32
33 There were already private-public partnerships operating at the time, as in the case of the
link formed in 1876 between the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry and the Chemical
and porcelain producers in the hopes of improving the quality of enameled works and
techniques for gilding and polishing bronze objects. Eitelberger, Kunstbewegung,
pp. 99–101. See also Eitelberger’s list of some of the trade schools (he lists 32 of a total of 77)
under the supervision of the ministry of commerce for crafts like embroidery, wood carv-
ing, and pottery, located throughout the empire; pp. 102–103.
34 Eitelberger, Kunstbewegung, p. 34.
35 Eitelberger, “Die gewerblichen Museen und Vereine,” pp. 116–117.
36 Margaret Olin, “Alois Riegl: The Late Roman Empire in the Late Habsburg Empire,” in The
Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective, eds. Ritchie Robertson and
Edward Timms. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994, p. 111.
36 Marchand
groups recognized lingering German liberal prejudices and privileges, and pur-
sued increasingly separatist goals. Although much work needs to be done here,
the cultural realm seems also to have followed this pattern, as Austrian impe-
rial institutions continued to encourage empire-compatible pluralism, while
some local scholars and bureaucrats cultivated cultural histories that moved
more and more in the direction of autonomy.
In the years following Eitelberger’s death in 1885, the preservation and study
of local monuments (especially churches) continued to expand, while among
scholars, too, the repertoire of monuments broadened further. As enthusiasm
for the high classical monuments of Greece and Rome waned, the study of
Hellenistic, Near Eastern, and Christian art gathered steam, provoking a series
of debates about “decadent” and non-naturalistic forms of expression. As art
historian Margaret Olin has suggested, liberal art historians were particularly
at pains to deal with the period in which there had been an apparent break in
artistic evolution—when the development of naturalistic representation was
halted by the collapse of Roman realistic portraiture—and the advent of early
Christian and Byzantine styles. For Austrian scholars, too, the late antique and
early medieval periods were particularly sensitive, for this was the era in which
the Holy Roman Empire had taken shape, and Christian and classical Rome
had commingled to lay the foundations for a “modern” Europe in which the
Habsburgs had played a major role. Franz Wickhoff, Eitelberger’s direct suc-
cessor at the University of Vienna, and Alois Riegl, his successor at the Museum
für Kunst and Industrie, both worked hard to try to fill the gap between the late
classical and the early Christian period, and to do so in a way that emphasized
the cosmopolitan (but essentially western) nature of both visions. Attempting
to finesse the prejudice that early Christian art was barbaric, and that late
Roman art was decadent, they sought to relate an evolutionary, international
history which crossed the gap and laid the foundations for a liberal-imperialist
vision of the cosmopolitan origins of the common medieval art of western
Christendom. Riegl, the specialist in the minor arts, was intensely opposed to
nationalist labels—and especially it seems, Slavic ones; he sought to explain
away both national differences and oriental influences by rooting Slavic folk
art in the world of late antiquity, an exercise Olin has aptly called creating “a
Holy Roman Empire of folk art.”37
In the meantime, however, another scholar entered their midst, one who
would exploit this very gap—as well as the institutions Eitelberger did so much
to create—in order to destroy liberal imperialist cultural pluralism and to
38 Piotr Kenig, “Die Strzygowskis in Bielitz und Biala,” paper presented at “Josef Strzygowski
und die Kunstwissenschaften,” March 29, 2012, Bielsko-Biala.
39 Alfred Karasek-Langer, “Josef Strzygowski: Ein Lebensbild,” in Schaffen und Schauen:
Mitteilungensblatt für Kunst und Bildungsplege in der Wojewodschaft Schlesien 8, no. 7/8
(March/April 1932): 38.
40 Olin, “Alois Riegl,” p. 114.
38 Marchand
as a young man not to speak Polish, Strzygowski evidently did learn to pick his
way through Slavic languages—and he never forgot the lessons of his artisanal
training: to value the “minor” arts, to cherish local craftsmanship and tradi-
tions, and to resent connoisseurs of “high” art who knew nothing of working
with their hands (see Fig. 1). It is significant, too, that he chose to become an art
historian just as the state began to take over the training of artisans, as debates
about saving the empire’s “folk arts” from industrial and imperial homogeniza-
tion began to flourish, and as provincial nationalists began to insist on the
deep antiquity and unique charms of their own arts and crafts.41
text, Cimabue und Rom (Cimabue and Rome) (1887).46 While Dobbert, a man of
Eitelberger’s generation, had selected a 13th-century Italian, Niccolo Pisano, as
the subject of his first major publication, Strzygowski selected the much more
obviously non-classicizing Cimabue, and made a strong case for the powerful
influence of Byzantium on western Renaissance art. In some way, the anti-
imperial and anti-Roman perspectival shift was already palpable in this book.
The young Alois Riegl detested it, and said so in a review published in
Kunstchronik;47 ever afterward, these two very different founders of the study
of late antique art would be bitter enemies.
In the period 1888–1890, Strzygowski undertook a second and very different
apprentice’s journey, this time an extensive tour of the eastern Mediterranean,
in preparation for writing a history of Byzantine art—a book that would
remain unwritten. Strzygowski’s travels took him to Mount Athos, Istanbul,
Trapezunt (in northeast Turkey), Moscow, and Saint Petersburg—the same
places that Kondakov had visited and studied in the 1870s and 1880s, and
places that exposed him, too, to Byzantium’s eastern and northern peripher-
ies.48 This was definitely not a world that could be understood purely as a
“degenerate” product of classical antiquity.” He borrowed a camera, and took
some 700 photographs during his travels.49 These photos would help him to
illustrate claims made about artworks very few western Europeans would ever
see in person, and form the basis for the enormous visual archive on which
Strzygowski’s comparative work depended. Although Strzygowski never admit-
ted as much, the arrival of the age of inexpensive, amateur photography most
certainly was one of the most important enabling features of his scholarly
success.
Strzygowski’s travels threw him among Russians once again, but they also
resulted in the deepening of his interest in Armenian art, and of his contacts
with Armenians. On his return, he visited the Mechitharisten Congregation in
Vienna, and its archbishop, Dr. Arsenius Aidynian, who, Strzygowski said, had
remarkable insight into Strzygowski’s travel experiences, and had also taken
on the costs of producing the volume.50 We cannot know if Dr. Aidynian had
46 Josef Stryzgowski, “Ikonographie der Taufe Christi,” (diss., University of Munich, 1885),
p. 11, 28ff.
47 Olin, “Alois Riegl,” pp. 113–114.
48 For Kondakov’s expeditions, see Tim Murray, Encyclopedia of Archaeology: The Great
Archaeologists. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 1999, pp. 166–172.
49 Strzygowski, “Das Etschmiadzin-Evangeliar,” in Byzantinische Denkmäler, vol. 1. Vienna:
Mechitharisten Buchdrückerei, 1891, p. v.
50 Ibid., pp. v–vi.
The View from the Land 41
suggested to his client the idea that Strzygowski would later claim as a great, if
embryonic insight: that Armenian decorative forms were not dependent on
Byzantine ones, but instead had their primeval origins in Persia.51 This is cer-
tainly plausible: the Armenians had long prided themselves on being the first
in their region to accept Christianity, and would probably have preferred see-
ing themselves as heirs to Persian traditions than as copiers of a tradition from
which Russian and Greek orthodoxy had come.52 The Armenian community
would also support Strzygowski’s 1902 book on Coptic art and his 1918 study of
Armenian architecture.53 What is striking here is the mutual interest of both
parties in the period of early Christian art of the eastern (rather than the west-
ern) Mediterranean—with the shared hope of getting out from under the cul-
tural dominance of Rome.
Indeed, Strzygowski would make a name for himself in championing the
Orient over and against Rome, and against classicizing worldviews that treated
both oriental and indigenous European art forms as “barbaric.” Thanks to his
travels and his assignments, he had come to know a wide range of oriental
styles and monuments, although he never did learn to read any oriental lan-
guages; as in the case of the Slavic languages and of Armenian, he seems to
have chiefly relied on indigenous experts to help him interpret his materials.
But from these materials—many of them as unfamiliar to European scholars
in 1900 as Eitelberger’s Hungarian and Dalmatian monuments had been in the
1850s—Strzygowski created polemical masterpieces that exposed the linger-
ing liberal and classical prejudices of his Austrian colleagues.
Strzygowski’s Orient oder Rom? (Orient or Rome?) (1901), for example,
reputedly employed methods and materials well known to contemporary
Russian scholars in its search for the oriental origins of early Christian art; but
something about the way Strzygowski sought to break the linkages between
classical antiquity and Latin Christendom hit a sensitive nerve. Forthrightly,
and (significantly) in German rather than Russian, Armenian, or Greek,
Strzygowski laid down his challenge: Was there indeed continuity between
classical and Christian medieval art in the West, or was the latter born else-
where, far from Charlemagne’s stomping grounds? Were the Middle Ages
(Catholic culture’s halcyon days) Roman, or did they owe all their innovations
to the Orient? Was the culture of Central Europe more eastern, or western?
Although much of the book was taken up with pure, positivist description,
Strzygowski’s intent was clear: to make Europeans at the zenith of their global
power feel the pain and shame of having borrowed their cultural achievements
from somebody else. The title itself was an anti-imperial salvo, something that
helps explain the book’s long-lasting appeal not only to orientalists, but also to
cultural patriots outside Europe or on its eastern and southern borders, for
whom Orient oder Rom? long served as something of a rallying cry.54
Over the years, Strzygowski’s hatred of his all-too-Rome-centered colleagues
and of imperial Austrian Catholic culture deepened; he loathed and rejected
the Riegl-Wickhoff school’s comforting narrative of central European cultural
history, one that traced continuities from Rome to the Holy Roman Empire.
He found their tendency to homogenize differences and their celebration
of the Baroque appalling and, worse, oppressive. He did not believe, as had
Eitelberger, that there was a single art, which all could appreciate, nor did he
believe in borrowing from foreign models. He set to work, instead, seeking to
liberate individual national artistic “personalities” from the classicizing, impe-
rial yoke, doing so especially by seeking to expose that tender, transitional
moment in European art history—and instead of comforting western-
centered continuity, emphasizing the impact of the civilization-destroying
forces of the East that Eitelberger so feared.
In the prewar era, the Balkan territories particularly attracted Strzygowski’s
attention; he visited there first in 1887, and returned frequently thereafter. He
was not particularly interested in the classical monuments of Dalmatia, such
as Diocletian’s palace in Split, or the heavily Italian-influenced monuments in
Sibenik, but was drawn instead to the minor arts, to early medieval forms, and
to the art of the non-cosmopolitan interior. He was also interested in the
Hellenistic and Islamic art of Asia Minor, about which he wrote a book in 1903,
the title of which reminds us of Eitelberger’s enthusiasm for “unknown” artis-
tic realms: Kleinasien: Ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte (Asia Minor: A New
Region for Art History). But in what way could such artifacts be treated as
“art”—and how could a Galician German learn how to “liberate” them from
prevailing imperial historical and aesthetic narratives?
suggested that he had absorbed not just Jagić’s specific knowledge but some of
the Croatian scholar’s worldview as well:
[This book] has the goal of finally giving the treasures of south Slavic art
their due representation before a scholarly forum. The following case
study should demonstrate that in so doing, one may not only achieve the
furthering of proper national pride but also one may call into play many
more things that enable the opening of this narrow field to international
research in unimagined ways. May this study have the consequence that
the southern Slavs are provided with sufficient means to edit their ancient
national monuments.58
58 Strzygowski, “Vorwort” to Strzygowski and V. Jagić, Die Miniaturen des Serbischen Psalters
der Königl. Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in München. Vienna, 1906, p. ii.
59 On Bahr, see Donald Daviau, “Hermann Bahr: An Extraordinary Example of Transnational
Networking”, with Special Reference to Central Europe at www.kakanien.ad.at/beitr/ncs/
DDaviau1.
60 Pantelić, “Nationalism and Architecture,” pp. 26–28.
61 Ibid., p. 39, fn. 68.
62 Strzygowski, Altslavische Kunst, p. xiii.
The View from the Land 45
Europe in non-European art history. His interests had expanded greatly, reach-
ing far beyond central Europe and the eastern Mediterranean into the Islamic
world, and into central and south Asia. In 1910 he was allowed to found his own
art-historical institute in Vienna, where he could realize his own passions,
shelve all his books and images, and create his own, anti-classicist, school—
although he did not get the two assistants he desired, scholars who were to be
posted to Teheran and Beijing.63 The map of his institute shows, in addition to
a lecture room, darkroom, and bookbindery, large rooms for western Asia and
eastern Europe, and smaller ones marked “Islam” and “Austria”; east Asia and
western Europe had to share the same office space. By 1930, the collection
amounted to about 4000 books and a remarkable 52,000 photographs and
images, as well as 19,930 slides.64 Before entering the institute’s seminar, stu-
dents had to pass exams covering the key features of western European art
history since the birth of Christ. However, after that, they could choose disser-
tation topics in European, Asian, Meso-American, African, Polynesian, or eth-
nographic art (Volkskunde)—and the list of 40 dissertations produced here by
1932 ranged from Chinese mirrors to medieval synagogues. The additional 98
dissertations that Strzygowski oversaw as professor at Graz and Vienna varied
just as widely, from the Athena Parthenos to sacred building types in South
India; strikingly, 37 of these theses were produced by women.65
Before the war, Strzygowski also gave a number of public lectures on
Dalmatian and eastern European art. In a 1910 lecture entitled “Orientalische
Kunst in Dalmatien” (Oriental Art in Dalmatia), Strzygowski began by remind-
ing his listeners “how close to the Orient we actually live.”66 He emphasized
here the easternness of the early Christian art of the Adriatic region, and its
deep connections with Syrian and Mesopotamian forms. Uninterested in
coastal monuments, he could not fail to mention Santo Donato in Zadar and
the early medieval monuments its museum contained, collected from Nona
and from Knin, “the seat of long-lost Croatian power.”67 In this narrative, Slavic
63 Faculty report, June 17, 1912, in Vienna, University Archives, Philos. Fakultät, Mappe
Strzygowski, pp. 96–99.
64 [Anon], “Anhang,” in Josef Strzygowski Festschrift, p. 193. The rooms were reorganized
when the institute moved in 1922 to conform to Strzgyowski’s new methodological
formulations.
65 Ibid., pp. 196–200.
66 Strzygowski, “Orientalische Kunst in Dalmatien,” in Dalmatien und das österreische
Küstenland, ed. Eduard Brückner. Vienna: Deuticke, 1911, p. 153. Thanks to Daniel Baric for
providing me with a copy of this difficult to find essay.
67 Ibid., p. 166.
46 Marchand
art was worthy of study, more so than the later Venetian and Hungarian peri-
ods in which Dalmatia was connected to the “sea lanes of the West,” but less so
than the art of the Christian Orient (which the Slavic invasions had destroyed),
or even that of Islam.68
Strzygowski’s work on eastern European art demonstrates his debt to the
peripheries and to the wooden monuments and minor arts of his hometown,
which he lovingly documented (see Strzygowski’s wooden church map, Fig. 2).
His work in this field also demonstrated his departures from the tradition of
Eitelberger, eager to value Hungarian styles, but also eager to tie these firmly to
the art production of the West. The comments of Romanian nationalist art
historian Coriolan Petranu—who studied with Strzygowski in Vienna, from
1913 to 1916—about his mentor’s inspiration for the study of the art of
Transylvania (Siebenbürgen) nicely captures the appeal of the chaired profes-
sor for those like himself struggling against lingering Western, humanistic
prejudices. “The significance of Strzygowski’s scholarship for the art historical
work in Transylvania, felt in the inspiration his works have given [to scholars
here], is obvious,” Petranu wrote in 1932. He continued:
one,” and he seems to have felt no nostalgia at all for an empire whose Catholic
aristocracy and liberal bureaucracy he detested. He developed a deeply racial-
ized view of the history of art, and pushed the origins of European art increas-
ingly further to the East, making Iran the ultimate seat of innovation. Not
surprisingly, the dawning era of hyper-nationalism would indeed be one in
which his stock would rise. He did not make peace with the Rome-fanciers, nor
they with him; but he retained his friends on Europe’s peripheries, and he
attracted more and more students.76 He received job offers from Santiniketan
University in India in 1920, at the (now Polish) University of Warsaw in 1922, at
the University of Dorpat (which had become Estonian Tartu) in 1923, and at
Bryn Mawr in the United States in 1926, a hotbed of Byzantinizing modern-
ism.77 He was widely read and quoted by Turkish Republican nationalists, by
eastern European cultural patriots, and by the most ardent champions of
Croatian antiquity; and his contributions to art history were valued by
Armenian and Iranian as well as German proponents of local cultural auton-
omy.78 Strzygowski told them what they wanted to hear—or they picked out of
his work the tributes to national autonomy and to cultural and ethnic continu-
ity they found appealing and useful—in part because he had listened to and
depended on some of their anti-classicizing forefathers.
Again, the Dalmatian context provides a striking example of what had
become of the tradition of Austrian art history in the hands of this most bel-
ligerent proponent of taking “the view from the land”—or, more exactly, tak-
ing the view from those who wanted to celebrate their own monuments as a
means of asserting their autonomy from others. After World War I, Strzygowski
was one of the few Austrian scholars to continue studying Balkan art, and one
of the few who was celebrated in the new Yugoslavia. He was invited to speak
in Zagreb in 1924, and at the festival commemorating the 1000th anniversary
of Croatia in 1925. He was honored to have his lecture published in Croatian;
and he hoped (as he wrote in a German version of it) that in doing so he
“could awaken the excitement and participation of the Croatian nation.”79
He befriended or taught a number of Yugoslavs, and he published in 1927
Starohrvatska umjetnost, which would be published in German 2 years later
76 Strzygowski comments on his new popularity himself in Altslavische Kunst, pp. 7–12.
77 Kourelis, “Byzantium and the Avant Garde,” pp. 426–428. Although his mentor turned
down Bryn Mawr’s offer, Strzygowski’s student Ernst Diez got the job.
78 Udo Kultermann, Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte: Der Weg einer Wissenschaft. Vienna:
Econ, 1966, p. 294; see Christina Maranci, Medieval Armenian Architecture: Constructions
of Race and Nation. Louvain: Peeters, 2001; Talinn Grigor, “Orient oder Rom? Qajar ‘Aryan’
Architecture and Strzygowski’s Art History,” in The Art Bulletin (Sept. 2007): 562–590.
79 Strzygowski, Altslavische Kunst, p. xiii.
50 Marchand
under the title Die Altslavische Kunst (Early Slavic Art). Both versions were ded-
icated to Ivan Meštrović, a Croatian sculptor and architect who, despite his
education in Vienna and Paris, had become wholly identified with the new
Yugoslav state and with its desire to create for itself a Slavic, autonomous cul-
tural identity.80 The first major treatment of pre-Romanesque art in Croatia,
the book greatly pleased the Croatian public, who rejoiced to hear themselves
described as “the Greeks among the Slavs.”81
In the introduction to Altslavische Kunst, Strzygowski announced that the
book was his effort to do for the Slavs what he had already done for the
Germanic peoples, and for the Anglo-Saxons, the Norwegians, and the Finns:
to see their art from another perspective than that of the Mediterranean. He
could not be suspected of Slavic partisanship, he declared, as, despite his
Polish name, his family was purely German and in the small Germanic island
of Bielitz had defended “Germandom” (Deutschtum) against Slavicization.82
But Western art history still had not recognized the importance of eastern
Europe, the “hinterland of true Asia.”83 “I myself,” Strzygowski wrote, “had to
step by step leave behind classical archeology, and over the course of decades
had to give up one prejudice after another before I reached the perspective
I offer in this book.” Only now, he continued, “I believe I can see how to solve
the problem that was raised in my Cimabue and Rome, written 40 years ago.”84
The solution lay in Croatian (south Slavic) art, which had left the earliest traces
of Nordic art on southern soil; what their pre-Romanesque wooden architec-
ture (which he speculatively generated from stone fragments) showed was the
influence of the Iranian East, the enduring power of Nordic blood. The
European and Asian North were once unified, in the era of Iranian dominance,
for which only a single proof could today be offered: the strong similarities
between Iranian fire temples made from mud bricks and the ancient Slavic
wood temples, both of them ancestors of the orthodox cross-domed church
(Kreuzkuppelkirche).85 Supporting his claims with evidence from a Croatian
80 Strzygowski would later describe Meštrović as “one of the culturally most important rep-
resentatives of the Slavic peoples who left the North to settle on southern soil”; Josef
Strzygowski, “Ivan Meštrović: Zur Einführung,” in anon., Meštrović. Zagreb: Nova Evropa,
1935, pp. 11–17, quotation, p. 11.
81 Vladimir P. Goss, “Josef Strzygowski and Early Medieval Art in Croatia,” Acta Historiae
Artium Academie Scieniarum Hungaricae 47 (2006): 335.
82 Strzygowski, Altslavische Kunst, p. xi.
83 Ibid., p. xii.
84 Ibid., p. xiii.
85 Ibid., p. 28.
The View from the Land 51
scholar (who drew on 10th-century Arabic sources), with Russian and German
studies of Slavic pagan temples, and with French archeological evidence from
Persia, Strzygowski speculated that perhaps a direct relationship could be
found among the three successive religious structures: Persian and Slavic
pagan temples and Christian church buildings.86
Ridiculing other art historians for being too narrow-minded even to imagine
the linkages he was making, Strzygowski proceeded as if the Iranian-Slavic
relationship was now fact, adopting the Slavs as a Nordic people, and claiming
Croatian art as proof of its pre-Romanesque existence, the memory of which
had been destroyed by centuries of imperialist rule and Roman Catholic pro-
paganda.87 It was Strzygowski’s duty to reawaken consciousness of this lost,
early medieval culture, the world “before the Emperor and Pope sacrificed all
indigenous art to their wills to power and gave themselves over to cosmopoli-
tan art (übervölkischen Kunst).”88 In this effort, Santo Donato played a starring
role, and its unique features were made proof of its status as an exemplar of
the autonomous art of ancient Croatia.89
While in his prewar work Strzygowski was rather catty about his relation-
ship to Slavic-language sources, in Altslavische Kunst he invoked writings in
Croatian, Czech, and Polish and monuments throughout the eastern European
world. He dismissed Eitelberger, who, he said, “created the foundations for the
study of monuments and identified much that today has vanished. Other than
that, he had no understanding of the ancient Croatian period.” Jackson was
worse, in his estimation, his work being full of “unfounded claims”; and the
Italians were too blind to notice that Dalmatia wasn’t just an extension of
Italy.90 Bulić, and especially his collaborator Ljubo Karaman, though Croatian,
had fallen for the humanistic line of thought; Karaman’s heresy particularly
pained Strzygowski, since Karaman had studied with him in Vienna but pre-
ferred the more ecumenical perspective of Strzygowski’s now-deceased rival
Max Dvořak. What was needed, in Strzygowski’s view, were more profession-
ally trained Croatian scholars, individuals who would not, like Karaman, fall
for the claims made by old imperial elites but would instead work out from the
material itself, as Strzygowski himself had done. He praised as pioneers Brother
Luigi Marun, local archeologist and creator of the Musej Hrvatski Spomenika
91 Ibid., p. 104.
92 Ibid., pp. 110–112.
93 Ibid., p. 56.
94 Ibid., p. xi.
95 On the Croatian historians, Stjepan Pantelić, Die Urheimat der Kroaten in Pannonien und
Dalmatien. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1997, pp. 21–22; Strzygowski cites Max Vasmer,
A. Bugge and J. Peisker, in Altslavische Kunst, pp. 40–41.
96 Ibid., pp. 35–36.
The View from the Land 53
Fig. 3 Stone monuments from Knin. Strzygowski “documented” his claims by photograph
ing and reproducing these pieces from Brother Marun’s museum in Knin (from
altslavische kunst, p. x).
attention on the subject.97 If before the war Strzygowski had been concerned
with widening art history’s purview (as well as with promoting his own, anti-
Roman and anti-Habsburgian worldview), now Croatian art, like Armenian art
and Serbian art, had become a means to an end—that is, to the complete
97 “There is almost no other country in all of Europe in which the remains of the pre-
Romanesque era, that is, the period before the Kaiser and Pope sacrificed all indigenous
54 Marchand
art to their will to power and implemented everywhere an elitist form of art, can be so
exactly documented through inscriptions as in Dalmatia and in one example also in the
interior of Croatia itself.” Ibid., p. 65.
98 Strzygowski, Forschung und Erziehung: Die Neuaufbau der Universität als Grundlage aller
Schulverbesserungen. Stuttgart: Strecker & Schröder, 1928, pp. 17–18, 45–46.
99 Don Frane Bulić (and Ljubo Karaman), Kaiser Diokletians Palast in Split, p. 120.
100 Ibid., p. 170.
The View from the Land 55
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Tübingen: Schmersow, 1907.
_____, “Orientalische Kunst in Dalmatien,” in Dalmatien und das österreische
Küstenland, ed. Eduard Brückner. Vienna: Deuticke, 1911.
_____, “Ostasien im Rahmen vergleichender Kunstforschung,” in Ostasiatische
Zeitschrift vol. 2 (1913/1914): 1–15.
_____, Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa, vol. 2. Vienna: Schroll, 1918.
_____, Forschung und Erziehung: Die Neuaufbau der Universität als Grundlage aller
Schulverbesserungen. Stuttgart: Strecker & Schröder, 1928.
_____, Altslavische Kunst: Ein Versuch ihres Nachweises. Augsburg: Filser, 1929.
_____, “Ivan Meštrović: Zur Einführung,” in anon., Meštrović. Zagreb: Nova Evropa, 1935,
pp. 11–17.
Strzygowski, Josef and V. Jagić, Die Miniaturen des Serbischen Psalters der Königl. Hof-
und Staatsbibliothek in München. Vienna: In Komission bei A. Hölder, 1906.
Török, Laslo, “Strzygowski’s Coptic Art,” in Acta Historiae Artium 47(2006): 305–309.
Wolff, Larry, Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Zaloscher, Hilde, “Kunstgeschichte und Nationalsozialismus,” in Kontinuität und Bruch,
1938–1945–1955: Beiträge zur österreichischen Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte,
ed. Friedrich Stadler. Vienna: Jugend und Volk, 1988, pp. 284–294.
Chapter 2
Evliya Çelebi (1611–d. after 1683), the Ottoman traveler whose 10 hefty volumes
are perhaps the most monumental testament to the genre of travel writing in
any language,1 seems to have worried deeply about how one might understand
the interconnectedness of the world that imposed itself on the consciousness
of thinking people around the globe in the early modern era. It may seem odd
to readers today, accustomed to regarding the Balkans as a backwater to world
history, that he had a moment of epiphany when he was in Bosnia, of all places.
In Sarajevo, specifically, he got carried away, in a “stream of consciousness,”
imagining the fluvial links that connect the city to the rest of the world: “the
stream that runs through the city of Sarajevo … flows into the river of Saray,”
which meets waters arriving from Herzegovina and Croatia before it flows
over mountainous terrain into the Sava, which in turn “meets the Danube
right beside Belgrade.” The Danube itself, in all its majesty, eventually runs
into the Black Sea, and “it is clearer than sunlight” (he obviously had in mind
readers in Istanbul, his beloved city of birth) that the Black Sea meets
the Mediterranean Sea in Istanbul. The Mediterranean, in turn, flows through
the straits of Gibraltar into the “Surrounding Sea,” which meets the larger
Ocean “by the order of the Creator of both worlds.” This passage also gives us
a good example of his narrative style, which proceeds like an animated movie
at times.
1 All 10 volumes of Evliya Çelebi’s travel writings were finally properly edited and published
under the title Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, 10 vols. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yaynlar, 1996–2007. In
this essay, I refer frequently to vol. 5, ed. Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman, and İbrahim Sezgin;
and vol. 6, ed. Seyit Ali Kahraman and Yücel Dağlı. The relevant sections in volume 5 have
been published, in German translation with excellent commentary by Helena Turkova, as
Die Reisen und Streifzüge Evliya Çelebis in Dalmatien und Bosnien in den Jahren 1659–61.
Prague: Orientalische Institut, 1965. A generous selection of parts of the travelogue, including
the section on Dubrovnik, can now be found in Robert Dankoff and Sooyong Kim, trans.
and eds., An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliya Çelebi. London:
Eland, 2010.
In a certain sense, this was indeed the center of the world from an Ottoman
point of view. Namely, it was the struggle for world dominion (or world har-
mony, if you consider the settled and peacefully negotiated circumstances that
prevailed for much of the time during the 15th through 17th centuries between
the Ottomans and their European counterparts. Kâtip Çelebi (1609–1657), also
known as Khadji Khalifa, the prolific and influential savant who managed to fit
several works of world history and world geography into his short life noted in
his work on the naval wars of the Ottomans that
the people of Islam passed to the European part of the four parts of the
world and developed a relation to it only recently. Former rulers, with
battles and measures approaching extraordinariness, were able to seize
only Bosnia in Rumelia and a portion of Hungary. These mentioned
places are at one edge of Europe. Since security on the seas is essential to
maintaining and protecting even this much, they paid great attention [to
naval affairs] in former times. And now, too, it is important to abandon
neglect and to exert serious effort [in that matter].2
Now to you, sirs, who are gathered here I wish to sing the measure of a
song, that we may be merry. It is a song of the olden times, of the deeds of
2 Kâtip Çelebi, Tuhfetü’l-kibār fī esfāri’l-bihār, Süleymaniye Library, Esad Efendi ms. 2170,
p. 121a. When Hungary and Bosnia are mentioned as part of the same puzzle, it is not because
they happened to have been two distinct corners of Europe that the Ottomans came to rule
(in part). The link between Hungary and the northwestern corner of the Balkans was a matter
of physical as well as political geography: the former is encapsulated in Evliya elebi’s descrip-
tion of the waterways and the significance of the Danube; the latter was known to the
Ottomans through historical memories, since parts of the region of Serbia/Bosnia/Croatia
had been taken from the Hungarians.
Evliya Çelebi in Dalmatia 61
great men of old and the heroes on both sides in the time when Sulejman
the Magnificent held empire. Then was the empire of the Turks at its
highest. Three hundred and sixty provinces it had, and Bosnia was its
lock, its lock it was and its golden keys, and a place of all good trust
against the foe.3
Evliya Çelebi’s visits to Dalmatia always started from the highlands of Bosnia,
where he found several opportunities to sojourn over the years. From that “hin-
terland,” he descended three times to the littoral—the first time as a compan-
ion to raiders who wreaked havoc in and laid waste to the area between Split
and Zadar, and twice as a messenger to facilitate negotiations for a truce.
Whatever his excuse to hit the road, he was first and foremost a “world trav-
eler,” as he liked to call himself, studying sites, comparing what he saw with
what he had seen, filtering it all through his wide open eyes and inquisitive
mind, cultivated by decades of travel.
Born in 1611 to an Abkhazian slave woman and the chief goldsmith of
Istanbul, the adolescent Evliya burned with a desire “to be rid of the burden of
dad-and-mom [in that order] and master-[and]-brother and to wander the
world.” By the time he died, sometime after 1683 and presumably in Cairo, he
had been traveling for nearly half a century and had written thousands of
pages about many different cities, countries, peoples, languages, monuments,
and customs from all around the Ottoman world and beyond, including Iran,
Dalmatia, Austria, and the Sudan. Of the lands past “the well-protected
domains,” he twice visited Iran, in 1647 and 1655, while his first experiences in
“the lands of the Franks” were in Dalmatia, which he treated as an encounter
with Latinity.
The first time Evliya saw the Dalmatian littoral, in 1660, it was not exactly as
a visitor but as a member of a raiding expedition. A relatively long period of
peace between 1573 and 1645 had brought commercial vigor and prosperity to
the region and had led to unprecedented initiatives such as the collaboration
between the Ottoman Porte and the Serenissima to transform Split into an
emporium, as an alternative to Dubrovnik in trans-Adriatic trade, and the con-
struction of a Fondaco dei Turchi for Ottoman Muslim merchants in Venice.4
3 Međedović, Avdo, The Wedding of Smailagić Meho, trans. Albert B. Lord. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1974, p. 79.
4 Kafadar, Cemal, “A Death in Venice (1575): Anatolian Muslim Merchants Trading in the
Serenissima,” in “Raiyyet Rüsumu: Essays Presented to Halil İnalcık on His Seventieth
Birthday by His Colleagues and Students,” special issue, Journal of Turkish Studies 10 (1986):
191–218.
62 kafadar
During the protracted Ottoman-Venetian war of 1645–1669, Crete was the main
theater and ultimate prize; however, the frontier forces of these states, and
their cronies, also engaged each other and raided territories in Dalmatia, which
rapidly declined into a lower-intensity war zone (Fig. 1).
When Melek Ahmed Pasha (1588–1662), Evliya’s uncle and patron, and the
governor of Bosnia in 1659–1660, received an imperial order to undertake a
punitive raid against Zadar and Sibenik, the indefatigable traveler joined the
soldiers and saw the region mostly on horseback.5 This gave him an opportu-
nity to describe numerous forts and whatever else he could make out from afar.
Fig. 1 Dubrovnik and Cavtat (Piri Re’is, Kitab-ı Bahriye, Süleymaniye Library, Ayasofya ms.
2612, p. 176a).
5 On the relationship between Evliya and Melek Ahmed Pasha, see Robert Dankoff, trans.
and ed., The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman: Melek Ahmed Pasha (1588–1662) as
Portrayed in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels (Seyahat-name). Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991.
Some passages from Evliya’s account of the pasha’s governorship in Bosnia are translated on
pp. 237–253.
Evliya Çelebi in Dalmatia 63
He even mentions a swift raid “of one day and night” beyond Zadar, deeper
toward the north, which brought him within 50 miles of Venice, allowing him
to see the “shine” of the city’s glittering buildings. In his usual studious manner,
he interviewed the captives, including one who was “extremely knowledgeable
in history,” to find out whatever he could about the culture and languages of
the area. In one instance, he used binoculars to make out the inscriptions on a
building he was unable to approach (Fig. 2).6
An excellent opportunity for Evliya to visit Venetian Dalmatia arose soon
after the Ottoman expedition returned to Livno (in Ottoman Bosnia), when
Fig. 2 Zadar (Piri Re’is, Kitab-ı Bahriye, Süleymaniye Library, Ayasofya ms. 2612, p. 186b).
the governor of Split sent a delegation bearing letters and gifts, as well as a
number of formerly captured Muslims, in order to sue for a truce. The next
morning, Evliya was merrily on his way to Split, bearing the pasha’s response.
He records this as his journey to “the Venetian land/province” and gives a glow-
ing depiction of the city, where he was able to enjoy three days of unhurried
sightseeing after completing his diplomatic duties. On his way back, he carried
the governor’s personal gifts, including a watch, a set of binoculars, and “a
world-describing book called Papa Munta (mappa mundi?).”
He had a longer stay in Dubrovnik (Ragusa) in 1663, when he was sent with
letters from the sultan, the grand vizier, and other officials to request contribu-
tions from this tributary city-state to the Ottoman war coffers. The Ragusans
declared their compliance, but not without making sure to explain that they
expected their suzerain state to keep its raiders in Nova (Castelnuovo) from
stealing their sheep. Evliya was prepared for this, as he produced a vizierial let-
ter that had already commissioned him to go to Nova and arrange for the
release of the sheep of the Dubrovnikers. This meant an excursion to
Castelnuovo and a return visit to Dubrovnik for another three days, during
which he was not that well treated, since the matter turned out to be a bit too
complicated to be resolved so expeditiously. In his shorter, and less favorable,
second depiction of the city, he would call it a “stone-istan.”
These, in short, are the travels of Evliya Çelebi in Dalmatia outside the
Ottoman domains. He took back with him not only numerous gift objects, of
course, but also precious impressions of some Frankish people in their own
lands, while also engaging with their cultural practices, including their archi-
tecture and visual regimes. To the degree that he experienced a sense of for-
eignness there, however, it was filtered through an equally strong perception
of the intimate links among different parts of the region, between towns and
peoples, hinterland and littoral, whether under Ottoman or Frankish rule.
Evliya well understood that the physical and human geographies of Bosnia,
Herzegovina, and Croatia—one should not look for precise correspondences
between his usages and today’s boundaries—were shaped into a specific
regional configuration through deep historical connections and complex
demographic patterns, only to be constantly reshaped and reinforced through
the mobility and activities of those who lived there, as well as of the merchants,
bandits, and soldiers drawn to the region for a variety of reasons.
Long before descending from the hilly Bosnian hinterland to the lower
coastal area, Evliya started to familiarize himself, and his readers, with those
connections. Sarajevo, for instance, was built first as a small settlement
and then as a fort by “the kings of Dubrovnik,” as could be gleaned from
“Yanvan, the Latin chronicler”; Travnik was also built by Dubrovnikers
Evliya Çelebi in Dalmatia 65
(5, p. 231).7 As he moved around in the region, he provided at least a brief depic-
tion of every town or settlement that he visited or passed through, giving the
names and identities of founders and conquerors of different towns (or leaving
blanks for information he wanted to fill in later). He thus wove an intricate nar-
rative of the dense networks that evolved through construction, settlement,
and conquest.
The region was historically also shaped by—and thus connected to the
dynamics of—power structures whose forces and influences reached it from
the northern and western Adriatic, central Europe, and the eastern Roman
lands. Split was first built by Puglian kings, Prusac by Venetians.8 Closer to
Evliya’s own time, the Hungarians, Habsburgs, and Ottomans join his lists of
builders and conquerors.
He is no less keen to write about the movements of peoples. Much of that
occurred through mercantile pursuits, which perhaps slowed down or became
somewhat less regular but continued even during the war years when Evliya
was in the region.9 Even flight and defection went into the making of memo-
ries, unhappy as they may have been, as they reinforced or severed the connec-
tive tissues between places and identities. People in Livno remembered that
just before the castle fell to the Ottomans, its Christian defenders fled to Split
and their descendants now constituted part of that city’s population.10
Renegadism and apostasy were not uncommon, and implied that some folks
“over there” and “of them” had been “among us.” The ranks of the Uskok cor-
sairs, the most detested of “infidel bandits” for Evliya and the Ottomans, were
replenished by fugitives from the “well-protected domains.”11
While a fixation on political boundaries is all too clear—as seen, for exam-
ple, in the intentions and ambitions of various local lords and generals to keep
or aggrandize their possessions within a framework of “us” against “them”—
life in the frontiers functioned according to codes that all parties recognized
and even shared. Warfare and raiding could not be arbitrary, not in principle at
least, but needed to be legitimized according to such codes. Captives were to
be held safe with the hope of being ransomed. When raiders were let loose,
they could commit terrible atrocities, but this was only to occur when there
was some supposed justification for it, such as revenge, and they were to be
held at bay when commanders decided to establish a truce or were ordered by
their respective imperial centers to refrain from aggressive action. Evliya was
astonished and bemused to find that Christian and Muslim soldiers on this
frontier had developed a bizarre custom of “swapping religions.” If a Christian
soldier were to befriend a Muslim captive, or vice versa, one would promise to
save the other from captivity, with the one so saved pledging to return the
favor one day if necessary; in a private ceremony, each swore to “take the reli-
gion of the other” and both would take oaths by blood, thus becoming
“brothers-in-religion.”12
Porous and even mutually constitutive as they may have been, the frontiers
also instilled an awareness of difference, of alterity, in the minds of travelers,
whose accounts were colored by explicit or implicit boundary markers. For
instance, beginning in the late 16th century, when Queen Elizabeth’s England
established a diplomatic presence in Istanbul, and Sultan Murad III (r. 1574–
1595) granted trade privileges to her subjects, several English travelers used the
Balkan land routes stretching between Split or Dubrovnik and Istanbul.13 In
the eyes of Peter Mundy, who was traveling westward from Sarajevo to Split in
1620, the difference between the hinterland and the littoral was not simply
between mountainous terrain and coastal plains, but between the “Turkish
Dominions” and “Christendome,” between barrenness and fertility. He found
himself “seeminge to bee in a New World … not only in the Inhabitants, but
also in the Soyle as soon as he passed a milestone that established the bound-
ary;” and continued his description as follows:
for, for three days before, wee sawe nothinge but rockey, barren, stoney
ground, scarce any Corne, tree, or greene things to bee perceived, except-
ing in the vallies. But here it was otherwise. For a man hath scarcely
seene, or could imagine a more fertill peace of ground or delightsome
prospect, for of the very stones, of which there are abundance, being a
great hindrance to any soyle, they turned them by their Industrie to as
great a furtherance benefit by makeinge of them pertitions, like walls,
instead of hedges. And the fields are soe well manured … in the Middst of
their Cornefeilds … were rancks in the Furrowes of Olive trees, Pomgranett
Trees, Pines and fig trees.14
While still in the mountains a couple of days earlier, Mundy had seen some
“great store of horses, kyne, sheep and swine” in an area where “Theeves … usu-
ally lurked,” but it was too alien for him to identify this strange sight as part of
the ecosystem of Vlach pastoralists. The latter were not so invisible to Henry
Austell, who, as Mundy reported, had journeyed through the same region in
1585, but their manner was certainly strange: “[i]n these contryes the people
wyll call one to a nother and delyver ther myndes III myles of one from the
other for the hyles be so hyghe and the valleys so depe that yt wylbe ther half
dayes work to go to ther neighbors dwelling III myles of.”15 While pastoral com-
munities known as Vlachs (or, Morlacchi, as they were increasingly called in
Venetian and other European sources during the 18th century) had been a part
of the landscape since the early medieval era, they met with a more accom-
modating attitude under Ottoman rule in the 16th century and were allowed
not only add to their ranks through the colonization of similar populations in
the area but also to practice their seasonal transhumance on a wider scale,
leading to the “virtually complete pastoralization of the area” in the hinter-
lands of Trogir and Sibenik.16 The Ottoman policy of colonization and pastor-
alization may have been dictated by their reading of the realities of the
frontiers, but it was also informed by the fact that large-scale transhumance
remained a valid form of life for the Ottomans, who maintained their own
administrative mechanisms to reckon with it, register it, and extract revenue
from it in their complex system of taxation. During a border dispute between
Venetian and Ottoman administrations, for instance, the former recognized
only three villages, while the latter “described the territory as consisting of
some 70–80 villages, hamlets, pastures, summer pastures and settlements.” The
insistence on the notion of “vacant land” could be a matter of political strategy,
no doubt, but one’s eyes were also trained by education and experience,
whether politically motivated or not: certain populations could indeed remain
invisible, and certain political economies could indeed be equated with unciv-
ilized nature when viewed from a certain perspective, as in Mundy’s case.17
15 Ibid., p. 6.
16 Buzov, Snjezana, “Vlach Villages, Pastures and Chiftliks: The Landscape of the Ottoman
Borderlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century” Medieval and Early Modern
Performance in the Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Evelyn Birge Vitz and Arzu Ozturkmen
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2013).
17 During the 18th century, Venice would need to take stock of the Morlacchi, as many of
them became subjects of Venetian Dalmatia, either by migration to coastal lands or
through the expansion of Venetian territorial possessions. The means and wisdom of set-
tling them down to an agrarian life and making them abandon their life of “banditry”
generated one of the liveliest public debates in Venice and throughout the rest of Europe,
68 kafadar
As for city life, at the time of Evliya’s visit, coffee still constituted a boundary
marker as a popular item of consumption that was a distinctive characteristic
of the Ottoman world. Travelers did not always mention it as such, but they
seem to have been aware of it.18 Compared to Evliya’s accounts of hundreds of
Ottoman cities up to that point, coffeehouses are noticeably absent in his
descriptions of Dubrovnik and Split. The implications of this difference for
social life and vernacular architecture in those cities need further investiga-
tion. The story of coffee and coffeehouses in Dubrovnik followed the pattern of
European rather than Ottoman cities. Among the latter, including some of
Dubrovnik’s nearby neighbors, the institution had been familiar and popular
since the second half of the 16th century. In the early 17th century, there are
instances of some of the coffee trade coming from Egypt to Balkan cities
through Dubrovnik; there were also many references to coffee in the official
correspondence of the city’s archives, since Ragusan envoys were frequently
treated to the beverage by their Ottoman hosts. But only in the latter decades
of the 17th century did the beverage become popular in Dubrovnik as well, and
only toward the very end of the century were shops devoted to coffee men-
tioned as venues for sociability around the beverage.19 Evliya seems at a loss in
and came to constitute one of the most colorful chapters in Enlightenment ethnology. For
a fascinating account of that discovery, see Larry Wolff, Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery
of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
18 See, for instance, the travel diary of Klaes Rålamb, the Swedish ambassador to the
Ottoman empire in the mid-17th century, as discussed in Cemal Kafadar, “The City That
Rålamb Visited: The Political and Cultural Climate of Istanbul in the 1650s,” in The Sultan’s
Procession: The Swedish Embassy to Sultan Mehmed IV in 1657–1658 and the Rålamb
Paintings, ed. Karin Ådahl. Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 2006,
pp. 58–73. A thorough survey of European travelers’ depictions of coffee consumption
and coffeehouses in the Ottoman realm and the East, with generous selections from their
texts, beginning with Leonhart Rauwolf (travels between 1573–1576), is provided in
Antoinette Schnyder-Von Waldkirch, Wie Europa den Kaffee entdeckte: Reiseberichte der
Barockzeit als Quellen zur Geschichte des Kaffees, Veröffentlichungen des Jacobs Suchard
Museums zur Kulturgeschichte des Kaffees 1. Zurich: Jacobs Suchard Museum, 1988.
19 Vinaver, Vuk, “Prilog istoriji kafe u jugoslovenskim zemljama,” Istorijski Časopis 14–15
(1963–1965): 329–346: “In the first half of the 17th century the Ragusan envoys were con-
stantly drinking coffee while visiting Turks, but they started to bring coffee as a gift for the
Turks relatively late… only after 1660 did the Ragusan envoys start to give coffee as a gift….
The Ragusan government passed in 1670 its first custom regulations about the taxes on
import and export of coffee … Already at the end of the 17th century cooked coffee,
i.e. ‘black coffee,’ was among articles sold in two shops in Ragusa.” I am grateful to Nenad
Filipović for the reference and for his translation. For a more recent overview, see
Aleksandar Fotić, “The Introduction of Coffee and Tobacco to the Mid-West Balkans,”
Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung. 64, no. 1 (2011): 89–100.
Evliya Çelebi in Dalmatia 69
writing about the social life of Dubrovnik—that is, he fails to give us a perspec-
tive on everyday life, which he was so successful in conveying for many
Ottoman towns—mostly because he was not allowed to freely roam around
Dubrovnik but also because he did not encounter some of his familiar refer-
ence points. He could not have known, of course, that the Ottomans’ favorite
stimulant would soon conquer the lands of the Franks as well; during his trav-
els, coffee had not yet become a public phenomenon beyond the Ottoman bor-
ders to the west and north.
If the role of coffee as a sign of difference is noticeable only by its absence
in the lands that Evliya visited, another marker—much more important
for my purposes in this essay—is palpable throughout his narrative by its
very presence: a different visual regime that gave free rein to technical ingenu-
ity in architecture and to images, both two- and three-dimensional, in public
spaces.
This is not to say that the Ottoman world did not offer any delights of that
sort. Ottoman subjects, including Muslims, certainly knew of figural images of
both kinds in their own cities, particularly if those cities had a rich ancient and
Byzantine past; nor should we imagine that Muslim intellectuals were reluc-
tant to look up at images on the walls of churches or elsewhere because of a
presumed aversion to figural imagery. Katip Çelebi, Evliya’s intellectually more
illustrious contemporary, for instance, proffered a severe warning about addic-
tion to opium: “one suffers its grief until the end of one’s life, and as one ages,
one loses one’s gait and begins to look like those images in disrepair on the
walls of churches.”20 Even without journeying anywhere else, one would have
encountered various examples of figural imagery in Istanbul, where Evliya
grew up. He gives a long and detailed account, for instance, of the talismanic
qualities of the images on a number of ancient columns in different parts of
the city, which he evidently studied closely long before he embarked on his
travels. But as that other famous çelebi (cultivated, urbane gentleman) of the
mid-17th century wrote in his account of the construction of the city by
Constantine, it was “their custom [the custom of the Romans, that is] to depict
the image of their rulers on columns and coins.”21 What Evliya encountered in
20 Kâtip Çelebi, Mîzânü’l-hakk fî ihtiyâri’l-ehakk. Istanbul: Kabalcı, 2008; repr. of the edition
of 1888/1889, p. 294.
21 Kâtip Çelebi, Fadhlaka, cited in Kâtip Çelebi’den Seçmeler, ed. Orhan Şaik Gökyay. Istanbul:
M.E.B. Devlet Kitapları, 1968, p. 188 (italics mine). A Turkish-Italian dictionary prepared
by an Italian contemporary of the two çelebis provides the following explanations for the
title: “ciuile, nobile.” See Rocchi, Luciano, ed., Il Dizionario Turco-Ottomano di Arcangelo
Carradori (1650). Trieste: Edizione Università di Trieste, 2011, p. 104. The editor also cites
the 1641 glossary of G. Molino, which offers “gentil’huomo.”
70 kafadar
Dalmatian cities such as Split or Dubrovnik, and later in Vienna, was of a dif-
ferent order than what he could find in Istanbul: this was a world where infi-
dels gave free rein to image making and readily included the pictures thus
produced in public life.
One of the persistent themes in Evliya’s treatment of Dubrovnik (and, to a
certain degree, of Venetian-held Dalmatia as well) concerns what he consid-
ered to be the highly deserved reputation of its learned citizens in the sciences
of astrology and history. “Their histories are considered trustworthy among all
nations” since “they never write anything contrary [to truth]…. They have very
critical and deductive scholars … and excellent historians.”22 Evliya wrote that
these were “farsighted infidels, concerned about the future,” and that their his-
tories held tremendous prognosticative power.
This assessment stemmed, at least in part, from the high regard the Ottomans
had for this particular city. They admired Dubrovnik’s extraordinary skill in
maintaining its integrity and identity for centuries, despite the fact that it was
a tiny polity in the middle of a region coveted and fought over by different
superpowers. Surely the city was well served in this respect by its exceptional
location, which rendered it exceedingly difficult to capture; but many such
challenges had been overcome by the Ottomans and other empire-builders.
The site in itself would not have mattered as it did, were it not for the wisdom
of its citizens in understanding their peculiar position in the world and making
the best out of their circumstances through foresight and skill. By studying the
past through the science of history and looking into the future through the sci-
ence of astrology, they were able to predict—long before the Ottomans were
recognized or had even started their conquests in the Balkans—that these
upstarts would go far. Owing to their excellence in geopolitical prognostics,
Dubrovnik’s wise leaders sent emissaries to Orhan Beg (r. 1323–1359) during his
siege of Bursa (1323?) to offer tribute and accept his suzerainty, long before the
Ottomans could actually threaten them. Hence the small city-state preco-
ciously found a means of dealing with the Ottomans in a diplomatic manner,
even if it meant subservience.
Not only Evliya’s but all later Ottoman historical writing, at least since the
17th century, tended to locate Dubrovnik’s subjugation to the reign of Orhan or
Murad I (r. 1359–1389); a charter that the sultans supposedly gave the mercan-
tile city in the 14th century was for a long time accepted as authentic by
modern scholars.23 Such accounts, while clearly anachronistic, could be
read as Ottoman recognition of, and tribute to, what was indeed Dubrovnik’s
foresight and early cooperation with the expanding imperial power. Nor is
Dubrovnik’s success in self-preservation explained solely on the basis of
political forecasting and diplomacy. This city, as well as some others along
the Dalmatian coast, is also noted for its vigilant attention to maintaining
military readiness, particularly in the form of ingenious fortifications that
were regularly improved upon as Ottoman power encircled and, eventually,
threatened them.
In fact, the description of Dubrovnik and the whole Dalmatian region is
regularly framed within a historical narrative by Evliya, who offered, through
numerous cross-references, parallel accounts of the region’s distant as well as
proximate past. In terms of the latter, which weighed heavily on the region
during the mid-17th century, the reader is regularly reminded of the drawn-out
state of war (1645–1669) between the Ottoman Empire and Venice over Crete,
and the repercussions that this had on the delicate balance of Dalmatian
affairs. In terms of diachrony, every fort or city is introduced by reference to
some founding figure or people (the Spanish, Venetians, Puglians, Croatians,
Ragusans, Bosnians, Hungarians, Ottomans, etc.); place names are explained—
or at least intended to be explained—in terms of their linguistic derivation,
even if his information is incomplete, as indicated by blank spaces (“the name
is in Latin [or Croatian, Bosnian, etc.] and means…”); mention is made of when
and if a site was captured or besieged by the Ottomans, and when and if some
of them fell back into “infidel hands.” Dalmatia, in other words, offered Evliya
a means of dealing with the interface between Ottoman and Latin Frankish
history and of situating all that within a larger narrative of the Mediterranean
region.
In terms of dealing with the broader geography of the sea as well, Evliya
found the vantage point of Dalmatia useful for a perspective on the whole
Adriatic and beyond in the western Mediterranean. The Latinity that he
encountered in Croatia and the littoral enabled him, and possibly his Ottoman
readers, to imagine Venice and Puglia and the whole sea to the west, where
the State Archives of Dubrovnik. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1967, 26n22. On the early rela-
tions and correspondence between Dubrovnik and the Ottoman empire, see Boško I.
Bojović, Raguse (Dubrovnik) et l’empire ottoman (1430–1520): Les actes impériaux ottomans
en vieux-serbe de Murad II à Sélim Ier. Paris: Association Pierre Belon, 1998. For an up-
to-date survey of Ottoman-Ragusan relations that pays welcome attention to the
rhythms of Dubrovnik’s commercial history parallel to her relationship with Istanbul,
see Zlatar, Zdenko, Dubrovnik’s Merchants and Capital in the Ottoman Empire (1520–
1620): A Quantitative Study. Istanbul: Isis Press, 2011, particularly chapter 3: “The Turco-
Ragusan Relationship,” pp. 65–101.
72 kafadar
he never ventured: beyond “our castle of Nova,” and the fortified cities of
Dubrovnik, Split, Sibenik, Zadar, Moran, and Dodoshka, “the gulf ends and
southwards across the sea there is, of the lands of Spain, the province of Puglia
and the horn of the province of Calabria, a cape that extends five hundred
miles into the sea. Beyond it, again along the White Sea, there is the land of
Spain again and the land of France, and that is that.”24
Though tiny and not as glamorous and mighty as Venice, Dubrovnik com-
manded extraordinary respect in the eyes of Evliya Çelebi. He and other
Ottoman authors often played with the Arabic orthography of the name of the
city to spell it, with the addition of one letter, as what would be transliterated
as Dobra-venedik, which could be understood as “the good Venice.” If the con-
stitution of Venice allowed it to be what it was, namely a mercantile oligarchy
governing a republic, that of Dubrovnik certainly brought this logic to its cul-
mination. “These magistrates have no claim of precedence among themselves;
they simply sit in a circle, and thus no one of them is in a more prominent
position. The government circulates among them, each ruling for one month
of the year.”25 Clearly, then, in Dubrovnik the consolidation of power in the
hands of one person or family was even more unlikely than it might be for a
doge in Venice. Moreover, the Ragusans simply had superior cunning, having
nurtured the prosperity of their less well-positioned republic for so long. Evliya
admired how the people of Dubrovnik laid low, feigning loyalty to all sides,
while informing Europeans of the Ottomans, and vice versa, without stoking
anyone’s ire to such a degree that they would be in danger. The “damnable
swine” may have been duplicitous, playing the Ottomans against other Franks
and those other Franks against the Ottomans, but that was also a manifesta-
tion of their wisdom, since it was the only way they could survive in the Euro-
Ottoman jungle of interstate politics at the northern and western edges of the
empire, where sustained stability eluded many vassals much bigger than
Dubrovnik.
As for the Most Serene City, as mentioned earlier, Evliya was unable to
approach any closer than 50 miles, by his own admission. Still, with all his
antennae up, he suggests that he was served something substantive about
Venice by having been to Split and having come close to Sibenik and Zadar. He
used these occasions to speak of the Venetian language (“Talyan … sweeter
than all other Frankish languages.”)26 currency, and form of government, in the
manner of his coverage of places that he had actually visited.
encouraged and protected by Venice. The letter concludes with no more than a
warning that bandits ought to be punished and that liberties should not be
taken with the terms of “obedience” to which Venice had agreed.
Notwithstanding such complications and tensions, cooperation prevailed
while mercantile activity flourished. Two years later, the governor of Bosnia
received a letter from Istanbul reminding him that the doges had been com-
mitted to “loyal and sincere friendship” with the Porte since olden times, and
urging him to cooperate with Venetian generals in their attempts to subdue
the Uskoks, and not to interfere with those who went over to Venetian service
“of their own free will.”29 When Henry Blount was on his way to Istanbul in
1634, he found Split to be thriving, thanks to such collaboration: “in this Towne
the Venetians allow the great Turke to take custome of the Merchandize;
whereupon there resides his Emir or Treasurer, who payes him thirtie five
thousand Dollars a yeare.”30 Blount also perceptively noted that Split could
remain a site of modus vivendi and mutually profitable exchange partly
because it did not offer a secure bay for large ships and was, therefore, only a
small and “unusefull” haven, from a military point of view, “wherefore the
Turke esteemes Spalatro in effect, but as a land towne, nor so much worth as
his present custome, and so covets it not like Sara [Zadar].”
Zadar was something else, however. Inside its rectangular fort of “worked
stone,” protecting a harbor that offered a safe haven to many galleys, one could
see “seventy bell towers,” indicating a prosperous Christian town. Gilded
crosses graced their banners, behind outer walls hollowed inward “like a tur-
tle’s shell” and with cannons placed “like the quills of a porcupine.” Confident
in the security provided by such a fort, the people of Zadar were emboldened
to enjoy the unparalleled broad walkways on the buttresses, so that “thou-
sands of infidels” could play around as if they were having a game of polo and
watch Ottoman tents as if they were on a promenade, even when Ottoman
raiders were at the very gates of their town. They could playfully fire a small
and festive cannon shot by way of a “welcome,” or even engage in competitive
displays of bravado by decorating all the entrenchments with crosses, just as
the defenders of Sibenik would embellish all of their walls with banners of San
Marco. “In short, such a solid fort and sturdy wall of infidels cannot be found
anywhere—not only in these frontiers but in all the lands of the Turks, Arabs,
Persians, Swedes, Czechs, or Dutch.”31
Whatever his sentiments about the degree to which Zadar and various other
forts presented an obstacle to Ottoman ambitions, Evliya was clearly capti-
vated by the look of the built environment in this region, in Ottoman Bosnia
and Herzegovina as well as in Dalmatia. Above all, he admired the white stones,
to which he rapturously turned again and again, using the twin metaphors of
“pearl” and “swan” for many a city. He could not inspect how many gates or
churches Sibenik had, “since it is an enemy castle,” but it stood “white and light
like a pearl.” Since the walls of Split are ancient, they were repaired every year
and “bleached like a swan.” The city walls of Sarajevo were “bleached” by his
uncle, Melek Ahmed Pasha, who thus turned it into a “peerless white fort like a
pearl.” Zadar was also noteworthy in this regard, since “all its walls are bright
and gleaming like a white pearl.” In many other towns on either side of the
frontier, he was taken by the fair look of stone, including a small town called
Alina after its founder, a princess.32
When he had an opportunity to go inside the fortifications, as he did in
Ottoman-held towns freely or when he was permitted to, as in Split and in
Dubrovnik, Evliya also observed features of these public spaces that he seems
to have appreciated, even as other aspects puzzled him. Some of the cities had
striking stone-paved roads; the houses were also mostly of stone, with tile
roofs, and there were hardly any wooden buildings—all signs of prosperity.
Most of the shops in Split did a brisk business. Dubrovnik, being cramped for
space, did not have as many shops, but many people conducted their liveli-
hoods in their homes, including many women, whose involvement in trade in
public was not considered shameful. Both cities were also notable for their
handsome palazzos, the Rector’s Palace in Dubrovnik above all, which Evliya
was able to see before it was destroyed by the devastating earthquake of 1667.33
While he did not fail to describe, albeit briefly, the external features of
churches and cityscapes, such as bell towers and cupolas, Evliya was not per-
mitted to go inside any Christian temple during his stay in Split or in Dubrovnik.
For that, he had to wait until his visit to Vienna in 1665, as part of an Ottoman
ambassadorial delegation. By then he seems to have been yearning for the
experience, since he waxed rhapsodic about his tour of Stefansdom in an
enraptured depiction that is longer than any description of a single building
complex by a European traveler in Istanbul. He focused at length on the images
he saw, particularly those of heaven and hell, which led him to exclaim that
“truly, when it comes to painting, the Franks prevail over the Indians and the
Persians.”34
Even without entering any churches, however, Evliya encountered a pleth-
ora of images in Dubrovnik and was most struck by the ingenuity with which
they were put together and put to public use. He had the opportunity to see
the paintings in the audience hall of the Rector’s Palace, where the walls
would not have surprised him so much if they had been “covered with paint-
ings of bygone magistrates” only, but they also had “depictions of future
Ottoman sultans … marvelously done according to the science of astrology.”
He then relates the tale of an uncouth Ottoman governor of Bosnia, who took
offense at these works of art and “wondered why these infidels had depicted
the Ottomans below their Bans.” The joke is clearly on the Ottoman pasha
rather than the infidels, who responded to his crude intervention by repaint-
ing “the depictions in this palace so artfully that not everyone is aware of
them” anymore, “but someone knowledgeable in the science of painting who
examines them carefully can appreciate their painterly qualities.”35 It is not
clear what exactly Evliya saw, or was trying to suggest that he saw, on the walls
of the palace, but he seems to have heard about and was possibly shown some
examples of perspectival anamorphosis and other playful experiments of
early modern European painting. His later “eyewitness” depiction of the
Habsburg emperor in Vienna, for instance, with its hilarious allusions to fruits
and vegetables, seems like a verbal calque on Arcimboldo’s famous portrait of
Rudolf II.36
In terms of images, the real shock for Evliya was a nocturnal procession in
which statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ were carried by crowds.
Evliya was able to watch this only from a window, since unbelievers like him
were not allowed to take part in that religious event, but he could not refrain
from writing about the “statues of Jesus and Mary—without comparison.”
According to Evliya, these “magical images … the utmost degree of artifice of
the infidels” were so powerful that “the viewer would think them alive.” A cou-
plet that follows indicates that he thought these images to be more lifelike
than even those produced by the legendary Persian painter Bihzad.37
Evliya noted that even on everyday objects such as coins, the Franks felt
no inhibitions about placing the likenesses of not only their “accursed” rulers
but also prophets like the “beloved” Jesus Christ. Still, he was apparently not
shocked by this, writing in the most neutral tone that “a depiction of Jesus
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Chapter 3
Erika Naginski
…
It can be scarcely believed, the ornaments of Diocletian’s palace at Spalatro
should have loaded our dwellings contemporaneously with the use among
the more refined few of the exquisite exemplars of Greece, and even of
Rome, in its better days. Yet such is the fact; the depraved compositions of
Adam were not only tolerated, but had their admirers.
(gwilt, ����)2
∵
Among the notable leitmotifs of architectural culture in the late Georgian
period was the increasingly fractured state of the classical canon, which
resulted from an ever-widening array of antique sources of inspiration.
3 See Robin Middleton, Gerald Beasley, and Nicholas Savage, The Mark J. Millard Architectural
Collection, Vol. 2: British Books, Seventeenth through Nineteenth Centuries. Washington, DC/
New York: National Gallery of Art/George Braziller, 1998, pp. 3–11; Iain Gordon Brown,
Monumental Reputation: Robert Adam & the Emperor’s Palace. Edinburgh: National Library of
Scotland, 1992; Eileen Harris and Nicholas Savage, British Architectural Books and Writers
1556–1785. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 71–81; John Fleming, “The
Journey to Spalatro,” Architectural Review 123 (February 1958): 103–107.
4 Adam, Ruins of the Palace, p. 1.
The Imprimatur of Decadence 81
Yet against this assertion stood the judgment handed down by England’s great
historian Edward Gibbon that Diocletian’s Palace was the architectural
emblem of the decline of empire. What did Adam mean to suggest when he
proposed that same palace as a pinnacle of architectural expression (he called
it a “Climax in Architecture”)? By extension, how might his proposal be weighed
against the radically different gloss made from the 1760s onward by antiquari-
ans and historians who saw in the ruins the instantiation not of achievement
but of deterioration, not of magnificence but of degeneration? Such questions
necessarily frame the late 18th-century stylistic revival of ancient Roman pro-
totypes in which Adam’s plates can be understood as participating.
In view of these questions, the aim here is neither to catalogue in a compre-
hensive manner the architectural forms recorded by Adam’s team of drafts-
men over the course of their trip to Dalmatia in the summer of 1757, nor is it to
track in systematic fashion the subsequent dispersion of those forms in the
designs of British architects—that is, the ways in which they were alternately
adapted or rejected, as in Sir John Soane’s use at Tendring Hall, Suffolk, of dec-
orative motifs derived from Adam’s book, on the one hand, and his interesting
repudiation of the detached columns and corbels found in Split as “licentious,”
on the other.5 Identifying the projects in which this migration of ornamental
syntax appeared is precisely the aspect that has been addressed in writings on
English neoclassical architecture.6 Instead, this essay explores the terms in
which this migration might be understood as a cultural construction after 1750.
How did the transmission of the ruins of Diocletian’s Palace to the late
Georgian imaginary reveal architecture’s ambivalent relationship to contem-
poraneous historical accounts of antiquity? However self-serving, the aspira-
tion to revive an architecture that had been rendered ostensibly moribund by
canonical stringency and predictability led Adam to enlist another sort of clas-
sical authority—one from the edges of empire—which, in his eyes, could
reveal that “[t]he great masters of antiquity were not so rigidly scrupulous,
they varied the proportions as the general spirit of their composition required.”7
In this sense, the publication of Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at
Spalatro in Dalmatia underscores that the diffusion of architectural ideas and
5 Sir John Soane, Lectures on Architecture, ed. Arthur T. Bolton. London: Sir John Soane
Museum, 1929, p. 52. The record copy drawn in 1786 by Soane’s first pupil, John Sanders, of the
“Capital to Columns and pilasters of Bed Chamber Floor” (ref. SM vol. 41/75 verso, Sir John
Soane’s Museum, London) includes a design directly derived from the so-called Spalatro
order shown in Adam, Ruins of the Palace, plate XLIX (see Fig. 4).
6 See Damie Stillman, English Neo-classical Architecture, 2 vols. London: A. Zwemmer, 1988.
7 Robert Adam, “Preface,” to The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Esquires,
vol. 1. 1778; Dourdan: E. Thézard fils, 1900, pp. 4–5.
82 Naginski
forms during the Enlightenment was tied in essential ways to developing ratio-
nales, in both antiquarian and architectural treatises, for the encounter
between Occidental and Oriental civilizations.
In July 1817, the Gentleman’s Magazine published a brief description of the Earl
of Bute’s house at Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire (1767–1772, completed about 1827
and subsequently modified). This was one of the more sizable private resi-
dences for which Adam was responsible, and the magazine’s description of it
accordingly heralded as a great achievement the transmission of architectural
models to which the building attested: “What had been begun was then com-
pletely finished; and Adam has transferred to England the splendours of the
Palace of Dioclesian at Spalatro, which he has so ably elucidated.”8
The execution of Adam’s design began just 3 years after the publication of
Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia, and intro-
duced “a kind of exterior decoration, which resembles that of a publick work
rather than of a private building, and gives an air of dignity and grandeur, of
which few dwelling-houses are susceptible.”9 In the final scheme for the prin-
cipal west façade, the search for a monumental public statement translated
into an impressively horizontal expanse: 13 bays bookended by two curved
projections behind whose balustraded parapets were set, on either side, a
single Diocletian or thermal window (Fig. 1). The façade’s blind Corinthian
Fig. 1 Tobias Miller ( fl. 1744–1790) after Robert Adam (1728–1792), plate III, “Elevation of the
Principal or West front of Luton-Park House, One of the Seats of the Earl of Bute”
from Works in Architecture of the late Robert and James Adam, Esqs. London:
Priestley and Weale, 1822. engraving. yale center for british art, paul mellon
collection.
8 E.M.S., “The Marquis of Bute’s Mansion at Luton Hoo,” Gentleman’s Magazine 87, no. 2 (July
1817): 5.
9 “Explanation of the Plates,” Works in Architecture, vol. 1, no. III, plate III.
The Imprimatur of Decadence 83
10 David King, The Complete Works of Robert and James Adam. Oxford: Butterworth, 1991,
pp. 4, 119.
11 Adam, Ruins of the Palace, plates IX, XVIII, and XX. On the harmonizing disposition of the
peristyle colonnade, see Sheila McNally, The Architectural Ornament of Diocletian’s Palace
at Split. Oxford: Tempus Reparatum, 1996, p. 29.
12 Richard Warner, Excursions from Bath. Bath: R. Cruttwell, 1801, p. 213.
84 Naginski
Fig. 2 [Francesco, Antonio Pietro, or Giuseppe Carlo] Zucchi, plate XXI, “Elevation of the
Portico to the Vestibulum” from Robert Adam, Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor
Diocletian at Spalatro. London, 1764. engraving. courtesy of the frances loeb
library, harvard university graduate school of design.
13 Eileen Harris, The Country Houses of Robert Adam. London: Aurum, 2007, pp. 36–47, and
Joseph Rykwert, and Anne Rykwert, Robert and James Adam: The Men and the Style.
New York: Electa/Rizzoli, 1985, p. 70.
The Imprimatur of Decadence 85
Fig. 3 Francis Patton ( fl. 1745–1770), plate VI, “General Plan of the Palace Restored” from
Robert Adam, Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro. London,
1764. engraving. courtesy of the frances loeb library, harvard university
graduate school of design.
14 Barry Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000,
p. 37. The drawing in the collections of Sir John Soane’s Museum (SM Adam vol. (61) 40/3)
was reproduced in John Woolfe and James Gandon, Vitruvius Britannicus, or the British
Architect, vol. 4. London: J. Taylor, 1767, plate 51.
15 Eileen Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam: His Interiors. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2001, p. 5.
86 Naginski
Fig. 5 Paolo Santini (1729–1793), plate VII, “View of the Crypto Porticus or Front towards
the Harbor,” from Robert Adam, Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at
Spalatro. London, 1764. engraving. courtesy of the frances loeb library, harvard
university graduate school of design.
16 The connection has most recently been discussed by Ariyuki Kondo, Robert and
James Adam, Architects of the Age of Enlightenment. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012,
pp. 65–70.
17 Damie Stillman, The Decorative Work of Robert Adam. London: A. Tiranti, 1966, p. 35.
88 Naginski
[F]ew vestiges remain of those innumerable villas with which Italy was
crowded, though in erecting and adorning them the Romans lavished the
18 A different view was later given in James Lees-Milne, The Age of Adam. London: B.T.
Batsford, 1947, p. 30: “It has been asserted that Luton Hoo was designed on the model of
Diocletian’s palace at Split. A glance at Adam’s own plates in his book is enough to prove
that this was far from being his intention.”
19 Marie-Joseph Peyre, “Dissertation sur les distributions des anciens, comparées avec celles
des modernes, et sur leur manière d’employer les colonnes,” Mercure de France (August
1773): 163. Peyre read his lecture to the Academy on April 27, 1772; Henry Lemonnier, ed.,
Procès-verbaux de l’académie royale d’architecture 1671–1793, vol. 8. Paris: Armand Colin,
1924, p. 130.
20 Thomas Moule, An Essay on the Roman Villas of the Augustan Age, Their Architectural Dispo
sition and Enrichments; and on the Remains of Roman Domestic Edifices Discovered in Great
Britain. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1833, pp. 150–151.
The Imprimatur of Decadence 89
wealth and spoils of the world. Some accidental allusions in the ancient
poets, some occasional descriptions in their historians, convey such ideas
of the magnificence, both of their houses in town and of their villas, as
astonish an artist of the present age.21
In order to “convey such ideas of the magnificence” he had witnessed and give
his subscribers a real world equivalent to Vitruvian abstractions as well as Pliny
the Younger’s descriptions of his villas, Adam’s folio offered an elaborate fron-
tispiece and 60 plates: picturesque views of the entire castrum in its spectacu-
lar setting on the Dalmatian coast as well as plans, sections, elevations, and the
decorative details of the major monuments within its precinct: the three
entrance gates, the octagonal mausoleum (mistaken for a Temple of Jupiter),
the so-called Temple of Jupiter (mistaken for the Temple of Aesculapius), and
the palace facing the Adriatic Sea. One of the publication’s distinguishing fac-
tors, according to Adam, was the juxtaposition of ruined states with measured
reconstructions. The plates were based on studies, made over the course of a
mere 5 weeks in late July and August of 1757, by Adam and those in his employ.
The team included the highly accomplished French architect Charles-Louis
Clérisseau (who was shamelessly exploited) as well as the Italian painter
Agostino Brunias and the Liègois architect Laurent-Benoît Dewez (both of
whom Adam brought to England).22
For all the potential serviceability of Adam’s Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor
Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia as a pattern book promoting the extrava-
gance of ancient palatine traditions, it should be stressed that this was the first
systematic survey of a generally well-preserved example of ancient domestic
architecture associated with the establishment of the Tetrarchy marking the
end of the Crisis of the Third Century. This political system, established by
Diocletian in 293 ce, divided the Roman empire into four major regions and
placed these under the rule of two Augusti and two Caesari: the former
included Diocletian in the east (Oriens), and Maximian in the west (Italia et
Africa); and the latter, Constantius Chlorus in Gaul and the Iberian peninsula
23 Lord Alexander Fraser Tytler Woodhouselee, Plan and Outlines of a Course of Lectures on
Universal History, Ancient and Modern. Edinburgh: William Creech, 1782, pp. 75–76.
24 Slobodan Ćurčić, “Late-Antique Palaces: The Meaning of Urban Context,” Ars Orientalis
23 (1993): 67. On confusion in the ancient nomenclature applied to Diocletian’s residence,
see Tadeusz Zawadzki, “La résidence de Dioclétien à Spalatum. Sa dénomination dans
l’antiquité,” Museum Helveticum 44, no. 3 (1987): 223–230.
25 The archaeological evidence for a possible quadrifons arch, which is central to Ćurčić’s
argument, is discussed in Branimir Gabričević, “Decussis Dioklecijanove palače u Splitu,”
Vjesnik za Arheologiju I Historiju Dalmatinsku 63–64 (1961–1962): 113–124. See McNally,
Architectural Ornament of Diocletian’s Palace, pp. 51–52, and J.J. Wilkes, Diocletian’s Palace,
Split: Residence of a Retired Roman Emperor. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1986, pp. 40–43.
The Imprimatur of Decadence 91
It was this particular cruciform organization, with its cardinal axiality and
association with the legionary fortress, which was intimated by Andrea
Palladio in a pen-and-ink drawing from about 1540 first published by Howard
Burns (Fig. 6).26 A single line tracing the north–south axis bisects the plan of
the quadrangle, the perfect rectangularity of which elides the actual asymme-
tries of the site. The contour of the perimeter carefully follows the succession
of the 16 towers of the castrum: the square towers at each corner; the pair of
intermediary towers on the north, east, and west fronts; and the octagonal
towers framing the three city gates. Only the east and west gate courts are ten-
tatively penciled in, while the cryptoporticus and its porches are emphasized
Fig. 6 Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), Plan of the Palace of Diocletian at Spalato, c. 1540.
Pen, ink, and wash over incised lines, underdrawing in brown chalk and metalpoint,
360 × 292 mm. © devonshire collection, chatsworth. reproduced by permission of
chatsworth settlement trustees.
26 Howard Burns, Lynda Fairbairn, and Bruce Boucher, Andrea Palladio 1508–1580: The
Portico and the Farmyard. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1975, p. 105. See also
Douglas Lewis, The Drawings of Andrea Palladio. Washington, DC: The Foundation, 1981,
pp. 39–40. Two additional drawings purchased by Inigo Jones in Italy are preserved in the
92 Naginski
with ink wash (although the drawing contains an error, as these were not four
but five in number). The plan records more or less correctly the 12 columns of
the peristyle, the stairs, portico, and inner sanctum of the rectangular temple
as well as the internal organization of the octagonal mausoleum (with its alter-
nating semicircular and squared-off apses). However, other aspects of the plan
are entirely incorrect; for instance, the entry to the palace portico is miscon-
strued as a double stair, while the vestibule is left without niches; and although
pencil lines attempt to elaborate the spaces linking the vestibule and the cryp-
toporticus, these oscillate between a second circular room and a diminished
rectangular hall followed by a sequence of two square rooms. The area inside
the precinct given the most prominence is the formal apparatus of the monu-
mental core, which is finalized in ink. Palladio focused on the alignment of the
mausoleum and the temple across from each other as well as that of the palace
entrance with the Golden Gate (Porta Aurea) to the north. In this way, the vital
urban character of the architectural disposition of elements is fully conveyed
despite the incomplete nature of the plan, which was one of the very first mea-
sured drawings of the site.
This exchange between palatium and urbs was likewise noticed (if not cor-
rectly interpreted) in late 17th-century antiquarian, historical, and apodemic
literature describing “the city of Spalatro,” whose etymological roots were con-
tinuously if erroneously traced back to the Latin word palatium.27 Francis
Vernon, a travel writer, in a letter of January 10, 1675, that he sent to the natural
philosopher Henry Oldenburg and subsequently published in Philosophical
Transactions, described the palace as “a vast and stupendous fabrick, in which
[Diocletian] made his residence, when he retreated from the Empire. It is as
big as the whole town; for the whole town indeed is patch’t up out of its ruines,
and is said by some to take its name from it. The building is massive.”28 It is
Diocletian…spent the last nine years of his life in the peace and retreat
provided by a country house near Salona, which apparently, if we heed
Constantine, ‘wasn’t even very magnificent.’ It is believed to have been at
Spalatro by the seaside…. Today the palace of Diocletian is visible, and
even takes up two thirds of the city; and one counts up to four temples
there of which one now serves as the cathedral. If this is indeed the site to
which Diocletian retired, it is hard to believe that Constantine wasn’t
belittling it a bit too much…. [I]n its entirety, it was of a magnificence
that exceeded verbal description.29
29 Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont, Histoire des empereurs, et des autres princes qui ont
regné durant les six premiers siècles de l’église … justifiée par les citations des auteurs
originaux, vol. 4. Paris: Charles Robustel, 1697, pp. 52–53. This is in reference to chapter
XXV of the “Oration to the Saints,” attributed to Constantine I, which describes Diocletian
“in the confines of one contemptible dwelling”; Mark Edwards, ed. and trans., Constantine
and Christendom: The Oration to the Saints, The Greek and Latin Accounts of the Discovery
of the Cross, The Edict of Constantine to Pope Silvester. Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2003, p. 58. Le Nain de Tillemont goes on to paraphrase Constantine VII
Porphyrogenitus, who asserts that “emperor Diocletian founded the city of Spalato and
built therein a palace beyond the power of any tongue or pen to describe, and remains of
its ancient luxury are still preserved today, though the long lapse of time has played havoc
with them”; Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, rev. ed., ed.
Gyula Moravcsik, trans. R.J.H. Jenkins. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Center for
Byzantine Studies, 1967, p. 123.
30 Jacob Spon and George Wheler, Voyage d’Italie, de Dalmatie, de Grèce et du Levant, vol. 1.
Lyon: Antoine Cellier le fils, 1678, pp. 98–106.
94 Naginski
perspectival elevations of the east and west walls and the temples, and includes
the cardinal directions and a scale based on feet. The numbered index denotes
the city gates, the exact center of the site, the “square open temple” (the peri-
style), the octagonal “temple” (the mausoleum), and “the round temple” (the
palace vestibule). It is interesting that Spon and Wheler’s image should reiter-
ate in perspectival elevation the basic ingredients and disposition of
Palladio’s plan—indication that a visual prototype, which would reappear in
more robust form as “Diocletian’s country house” in the third volume of
Bernard de Montfaucon’s Antiquité expliquée en figures (1719), had been
established.
Spon, a doctor from Lyon, was one of a new breed of antiquarians who
upheld the ethics of site-specific knowledge—that is, the kind of knowl-
edge heralded in such epistolary texts as Charles-César Baudelot de Dairval’s
De l’utilité des voyages (1686). As Baudelot exclaimed, in a section devoted
to architecture and public works: “What instructive beauties one finds in
the architecture of temples, sepulchers, pyramids, gymnasia; in the structure
of altars, theatres, obelisks, triumphal arches, libraries, baths, aqueducts; in
the disposition of harbors, terms, statues, and military columns.”31 This
celebration of the erudition to be gleaned from architectural artifacts was in
some sense prophetic, for it announced the methodological connections
that subsequently emerged between architectural and antiquarian practices
in the late 17th and 18th centuries.32 Thus it is no surprise that the Austrian
architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach should have devoted two
plates to Diocletian’s Palace in a folio publication that has been credited as
the first comparative global history of architecture: Entwurff einer histo-
rischen Architectur (1721), issued in successive editions in 1725 and 1742 as
well as in an English translation by Thomas Lediard in 1730 (reprint 1737).
For his plates, Fischer drew on the pictorial tradition of the Seven Wonders
of the Ancient World consolidated in the Renaissance by the Dutch painter
Maarten van Heemskerck; in so doing, Fischer was evoking the Hapsburg
dynasty’s imperial claims to global domination at a moment when
Emperor Charles VI feared the extinction of the royal line.33 Fischer also
31 Charles César Baudelot de Dairval, De l’utilité des voyages, et de l’avantage que la recherche
des antiquitez procure aux sçavans, vol. 1. Paris: Pierre Auboüin et Pierre Émery, 1686,
pp. 287–288.
32 See Erika Naginski, “Historical Pyrrhonism and Architectural Truth,” Journal of Visual
Culture 9, no. 3 (December 2010): 329–343.
33 Anthony Grafton, Glen W. Most, and Salvatore Settis, eds., The Classical Tradition.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010, p. 878.
The Imprimatur of Decadence 95
turned to ancient sources and antiquarian compendia (by Spon and the
German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher among others). In the case of
Diocletian’s Palace, drawings and measurements were procured for him by
Giovanni Pietro Marchi, the Dalmatian count and doyen of the so-called
Accademia Illirica in Split.34
Fischer’s explanation of the site begins with a complaint about the lack of
attention paid to properly measured drawings in Spon and Wheler’s account.
He then upholds the etymological connection between Spalato and palatium
(as Adam later would), and refers to a passage from Eusebius of Caesarea’s
Ecclesiastical History (c. 325 ce) describing the fire that destroyed Diocletian’s
Palace in Nicomedia in 303 ce (which Fischer confuses with the palace in
Split), well-known to have been the event that prompted the emperor’s repres-
sive edict against Christians.35 Yet what holds Fischer’s attention is not the
historical context of things but, rather, the urban aspect and scenic orientation
of the site; the ruins, he observes, leave clear traces of a quadrangular precinct
in which the palace “took over a part of the city” and faced the sea.
Plate X accordingly gives a bird’s eye view from a southwesterly perspective
(Fig. 7). It encompasses within its margins an idealized reconstruction of the
entire complex nestled along the shore below the dramatic Mosor mountain
range. The harbor in which ancient galleys and shipping vessels are moored
bustles with activity; diminutive figures dot the quays and piers (marked with
the letter I) or stroll in the landscape beyond the enceinte. The colonnade of
the distinctive cryptoporticus, which is set over the massive barrel vaults of the
palace’s subterranean parts, includes six porches. Such emphasis on magnifi-
cence is reiterated internally at the crossroads of the monumental core
marked not by a quadrifons arch but, rather, by a pair of triumphal columns
34 Fischer’s ink wash drawings of the palace and its individual monuments are preserved in
the National and University Library of Zagreb (GZAS 15 fis 1, 16 fis 2, 17 fis 3). See Artur
Schneider, “Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlachs Handzeichnungen für den ‘Entwurff
einer historischen Architectur,’” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 1, no. 4 (1932): 249–270;
Justus Schmidt, “Die Architekturbücher der beiden Fischer von Erlach,” Wiener Jahrbuch
für Kunstgeschichte 9 (1934): 147–156; George Kunoth, Die Historische Architektur Fischers
von Erlach. Düsseldorf: L. Schwann, 1956; Joseph Rykwert, The First Moderns. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1980, pp. 67–75; and Kristoffer Neville, “The Early Reception of Fischer von
Erlach’s Entwurff einer historischen Architectur,” Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians 66, no. 2 (June 2007): 160–175. On Marchi, see Danica Božić-Bužančić, “Ivan
Petar Marchi-Markić: Njegovo djelovanje i njegova oporuka,” Radovi Zavoda za povijesne
znanosti HAZU u Zadru 41(1999): 181–202.
35 Eusebius, The History of the Church, trans. G.A. Williamson. London: Penguin, 1989,
pp. 261–262.
96 Naginski
Fig. 7 Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656–1723), “Des Kaisers Diocletiani Pallast
heüte zütage Spalato,” plate X from Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Entwurff
einer historischen Architectur. Leipzig, 1725. engraving. courtesy of the frances
loeb library, harvard university graduate school of design.
(marked H) whose foundations, the caption tells us, are extant. The city gates
(marked A to C) are described in terms of their cardinal directions, and the
relevant structures are classified as follows: (D) the octagonal Temple of Jupiter
(actually the Diocletian mausoleum); (E) the round temple (or palace vesti-
bule); (F) the square Temple of Sibyl (the rectangular Temple of Jupiter);
(G) the interior arcade (the peristyle). The only reference to the contemporary
city pertains to the area near the pier identified at the lower right as “now used
as a lazaret” (a quarantine station for maritime travelers).
The second plate assembles in trompe l’oeil fashion five measured drawings
with torn margins and curling edges, shown pinned against a dark ground on
which they cast delicate shadows (Fig. 8). Two of these describe the octagonal
mausoleum (which Fischer mistook, as would Adam later, for a Temple of
Jupiter): the first, at the plate’s upper left, is a plan of the internal arrangement
of alternating apsidal spaces and the depth of the entrance porch; the second,
to its right, juxtaposes an elevation with a section, adding monumental statues
to the balustrade of the building’s exterior octagonal colonnade. A third image
gives a prospect of the peristyle; it includes a playful figure with a leaping dog
and records the Romanesque bell tower added to the mausoleum as part of its
The Imprimatur of Decadence 97
Fig. 8 Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, “Grundriss von dem acht Eckigten Tempel…,”
plate XI from Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Entwurff einer historischen
Architectur. Leipzig, 1725. engraving. courtesy of the frances loeb library,
harvard university graduate school of design.
transformation into the Cathedral of Saint Domnius; Saint Domnius was the
Bishop of Salona, martyred in 304 ce during the persecutions of Diocletian,
who became the patron Saint of Split.36 At the bottom left, the Diocletian
aqueduct between Salona and Split appears in a fairly pristine state, sceno-
graphically arranged in a landscape with elegantly attired equestrian figures.
At the bottom right, the reconstructed north gate is shown in elevation and
mistakenly identified as the Porta Ferrea (instead of the Porta Aurea). The
ostensive pictorial veracity of all this is certified, as it were, at the top of the
plate by numismatics: that is, with the insertion of the recto and verso of an
example of the imperial coinage of Diocletian.
Fischer’s aerial view of the palace complex continued to conjure a building
complex whose north–south and east–west axes were entirely symmetrical.
Three decades later, the Jesuit historian Daniele Farlati reiterated Fischer’s
interpretation.37 The longevity of this configuration in text and image—from
Palladio to Farlati—underscores that one of the achievements of Adam’s Ruins
of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia was to break
with tradition. For he “revealed,” as Marco Navarra has observed, “the asym-
metry of the buildings, [and] measured the deformations produced by the
relationship between the site and the idea of a castrum.”38 Yet those images by
Palladio, Spon, and Fischer should not be dismissed for their inaccuracies, for
their importance lies less in claims to planimetric precision than in the evi-
dence they proffer of the emerging significance of the site—its having been
regarded as exemplary and revelatory—well before 1750.
Antiquity Hunting
37 Daniele Farlati, Illyrici Sacri, vol. 1. Venice: Sebastianum Coleti, 1751, pp. 488–490; vol. 2
(1753), p. 397.
38 Robert Adam, Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia, ed.
Marco Navarra. Cannitello: Biblioteca del Cenide, 2001, p. 175. See also n. 1 above.
39 Quoted in John Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1962, p. 156.
40 Adam, Ruins of the Palace, p. 31.
The Imprimatur of Decadence 99
and Delineated, whose first volume appeared in 1762 (forcing Adam to delay
publication of the Spalatro plates by 2 years). Before embarking on the trip to
Dalmatia, Adam had entertained other options. The possibility of revising
Antoine Desgodetz’s Les édifices antiques de Rome dessinés et mesurés très
exactement (1682) turned out to be too labor-intensive, even though it had
been fueled by the need, expressed in the first volume of the English edition
issued in 1771 by the architect George Marshall, for something “even more
accurate than the original publication.”45 Adam had also considered, then
abandoned, depicting the Baths of Caracalla and Baths of Diocletian in both
their ruined and reconstructed states; this project was later partly carried out
by another Scottish architect, Cameron (1772), whose Baths of the Romans
Explained and Illustrated claimed to have “corrected and improved”
Palladio’s renditions (well known in architectural circles through Lord
Burlington’s publication of Fabbriche antiche disegnate da Andrea Palladio
Vicentino).46 Adam’s ambition for the study of Roman thermal complexes had
likewise aimed for just such rectification—no innocent intention given his
eventual campaign to reject the geometric regularity and predictability of
English Palladianism evident in, say, Colen Campbell’s prototypical Wanstead
House. As Dallaway (1800) remarked in Anecdotes of the Arts of England, if for-
eigners assigned to
45 George Marshall, Preface to The Ancient Buildings of Rome; by Antony Desgodetz, vol. 1.
London: 1771, [5]. On Desgodetz, see Wolfgang Herrmann, “Antoine Desgodets and the
Académie Royale d’Architecture,” Art Bulletin 40, no. 1 (March 1958): 23–53.
46 Charles Cameron, The Baths of the Romans Explained and Illustrated. With the Restorations
of Palladio Corrected and Improved. London: George Scott, 1772, p. iv: “This work of
Palladio, never having received his last corrections, appears under a very imperfect form.
What is now offered to the public is intended to supply this deficiency: the buildings he
has described have been again measured; and the errors which have escaped him, cor-
rected.” Despite the date of 1730 engraved on its title page, Burlington’s edition of Palladio’s
Fabbriche antiche was apparently not published until sometime between 1736 and 1740;
Middleton, Beasley, and Savage, Mark J. Millard Architectural Collection, vol. 2,
p. 196.
The Imprimatur of Decadence 101
47 James Dallaway, Anecdotes of the Arts in England, or, Comparative Remarks on Architecture,
Sculpture, and Painting. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1800, pp. 150–151.
48 Adam, Ruins of the Palace, p. 4.
102 Naginski
If from the center of the Crypto Porticus, we look back to those parts of
the Palace which we have already passed through, we may observe a
striking instance of that gradation from less to greater, of which some
connoisseurs are so fond, and which they distinguish by the name of a
Climax in Architecture. The Vestibulum is larger and more lofty than the
Porticus. The Atrium much exceeds the grandeur of the Vestibulum; and
the Crypto Porticus may well be the last step in such a Climax, since it
extended no less than 517 feet. We may likewise observe a remarkable
diversity of form, as well as of dimensions, in these apartments…and the
same thing is conspicuous in other parts of the Palace. This was a circum-
stance to which the Ancients were extremely attentive, and it seems to
have had an happy effect, as it introduced into their buildings a variety,
which, if it doth not constitute Beauty, at least greatly heightens it.
Whereas Modern Architects, by paying too little regard to the example of
the Ancients in this point, are apt to fatigue us with a dull succession of
similar apartments.49
Four streets, intersecting each other at right angles, divided the several
parts of this great edifice, and the approach to the principal apartment
was from a stately entrance, which is still denominated the Golden Gate.
The approach was terminated by a peristylium of granite columns, on one
side of which we discover the square temple of Aesculapius, on the other
the octagon temple of Jupiter…. By comparing the present remains with
the precepts of Vitruvius, the several parts of the building, the baths, bed-
chamber, the atrium, the basilica, and the Cyzicene, Corinthian, and
Egyptian halls, have been described with some degree of precision, or at
least of probability…. The range of principal apartments was protected
towards the south west, by a portico five hundred and seventeen feet
long, which must have formed a very noble and delightful walk…For this
account of Diocletian’s palace, we are principally indebted to an inge-
nious artist of our own time and country, whom a very liberal curiosity
carried into the heart of Dalmatia. But there is room to suspect that the
elegance of his designs and engraving has somewhat flattered the objects
which it was their purpose to represent. We are informed by a more
recent and very judicious traveller, that the awful ruins of Spalatro are
not less expressive of the decline of the arts than of the greatness of the
Roman empire in the time of Diocletian. If such was indeed the state of
architecture, we must naturally believe that painting and sculpture had
experienced a still more sensible decay.56
56 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1. London: W.
Strahan and T. Caddell, 1776, pp. 396–398.
The Imprimatur of Decadence 105
The judgment veers ambivalently between the dismissal of tasteless art and
grudging admiration for grandiose architecture. But the final verdict is deliv-
ered without hesitation; Diocletian’s Palace is no model for aspiring architects.
In this scheme of things, the principle of magnificence begins to prompt some-
thing very different from the admiration expressed by architects and antiquar-
ians before 1750. What magnificence provokes here is the castigating, fearful,
and exoticizing glance of the Occident back at the Orient, as the following pas-
sage from the journey made to Dalmatia by the antiquary and landscape
painter Louis-François Cassas renders even more palpable:
Though this edifice must be allowed to possess some dignity, and its
inside has a grand and magnificent appearance, it must nevertheless be
admitted that its style is not pure: … it may easily be discovered, that at
57 See Henry Aldrich, The Elements of Civil Architecture According to Vitruvius and Other
Ancients, and the Most Approved Practice of Modern Authors, Especially Palladio, trans.
Rev. Philip Smyth. Oxford: D. Prince and J. Cooke, 1789, pp. 48–49.
58 Alberto Fortis, Travels into Dalmatia, originally published as Viaggio in Dalmazia. Venice:
Alvise Milocco, 1774, trans. from the Italian under the author’s supervision. London:
J. Robson, 1778, p. 201.
106 Naginski
this period architecture had made rapid progress in its decline. These
defects are to be attributed to the false taste which pomp and riches,
always eager for ornament, had forced the architects of that age to adopt;
and it may readily be supposed that princes who, like Diocletian, had
quitted the simplicity of the Roman toga for the costume and luxuries of
Asiatic sovereigns, were inclined to value every decoration in proportion,
not to its beauty but to its richness. For when we consider the pure style
of the door of this temple, and of the external gallery, it is easy to be con-
ceived that the architects were still sensible of the beauties of the antique,
and knew how to study them with advantage.59
The ancient palatine tradition, in his hands, amounted to a complex model for
emulation and made manifest what can best be described as an architectural
counterdiscourse, in the second half of the 18th century, to the historian’s analy-
sis of the development and classification of the art of antiquity.
Acknowledgments
I would especially like to thank Alina Payne and Antoine Picon for their com-
ments and suggestions.
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The Imprimatur of Decadence 111
∵
Chapter �
Marzia Faietti
Some time ago I was engaged in studying Andrea Mantegna, and while review
ing the ample literature I came across an article by Michael Vickers published
in The Burlington Magazine in 1976, the title of which, “Mantegna and
Constantinople,” immediately attracted my curiosity, although it lay outside
my interests at the time.1 Subsequently, I realized that Vickers’ contribution—
though not unknown to the authors of the texts published on the occasion of
Mantegna’s fifth centenary—was invariably commented on only in a marginal
way, or even hurriedly dismissed.2 Yet it seemed to me to contain stimulating
* This essay was translated from the Italian by Frank Dabell, with revisions by Alina Payne and
Cara Rachele.
1 Michael Vickers, “Mantegna and Constantinople,” The Burlington Magazine 118 (1976): 680–
687. After I finished writing this text in March 2010, several relevant studies were published
on Andrea Mantegna in particular, but also on other individuals and themes treated here,
and I have added citations to these. A review of the current literature in early 2013 did not
turn up any specific intersections with the material I discuss in this essay; therefore, I have
not altered my text other than to update the relevant citations.
2 See, in particular, Andrea De Marchi, in Mantegna 1431–1506, exh. cat., eds. Giovanni Agosti
and Dominique Thiébaut. Paris: Hazan, 2008, p. 164, no. 51, expressing a negative opinion on
Vickers’ theses regarding the Agony in the Garden in Tours and originally part of the predella
of the San Zeno altarpiece in Verona; De Marchi also wrote the entry about the painting in
London, ibid., pp. 158–159, no. 48. On the San Zeno predella, see also cat. nos. 1–3 by De
Marchi in the exh. cat. Mantegna: La prédelle de San Zeno de Vérone, 1457–1459, exh. cat., ed.
Philippe Le Leyzour. Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2009, p. 63. Vickers’ opinions were
considered unfounded, though not discussed or outlined, in Corpus der Italienischen
Zeichnungen 1300–1450, part 2: Venedig Jacopo Bellini, vol. 6 (catalogue), eds. Bernhard
Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt. Berlin: Mann, 1990, pp. 720–725, and 468 (n. 6). However,
Colin Eisler, in his book The Genius of Jacopo Bellini: The Complete Paintings and Drawings.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989, p. 200, noted that views of Jerusalem, which were fantastic
and implausible in their assemblage of antiquities (such as those reproduced in Jacopo’s
album of drawings in Paris; see, for example, Entry into Jerusalem and the Crucifixion, fols. 20
and 37, respectively) could have been inspired by views of Constantinople, well known to
Italian travelers and the center of Eastern commerce until its fall in 1453.
ideas for further research, as well as the need for some rectification as we will
subsequently see.
Examining Mantegna and his depiction of Constantinople in this volume,
therefore, allows us not only to reflect anew on a fascinating subject—the
painter’s awareness of what Ciriaco d’Ancona saw on his travels—but above
all to review a still partly tangled scholarly knot that raises a question of
method: How are we to identify and interpret the “deep meaning,” and identify
the literary and visual sources of a work of art when these are entwined within
that work in a way that is not only inextricable, but also not always coherently
related to each other? Although this is a larger issue, the question is particu
larly critical for an artist as educated and with such great antiquarian knowl
edge as Mantegna.
When an artist combined written descriptions and images as sources in
creating works of art, the result was often a very high level of originality and
complexity, which increased according to the inventive powers, culture, and
subtlety of the artist. Using this criterion, Mantegna had scarcely any rivals
in his day. I could have chosen freely from his oeuvre to make this point, but
have limited myself to a topic that sheds light on travel and cultural exchange
along Mediterranean routes (and beyond): envisioning a metaphorical journey
taken by the great Paduan painter, crossing a given space and projected through
time, from the Jerusalem of Christ and the scene of his Passion to the Con
stantinople of Mantegna’s own period, an anguished city under Ottoman
subjugation.
Vickers’ focus was especially on the Agony in the Garden (the one now in
the National Gallery, London), a painting executed by Mantegna during his
Paduan period, and whose original patronage in Ferrara should still be consid
ered hypothetical (Fig. 1).3 For Vickers the city in the background was an ideal
Constantinople, intended to stand for the Jerusalem of the Gospels, with vari
ous buildings recognizable (in his opinion) as parts of the Byzantine city, and
with the sole addition of the Torre delle Milizie, an indisputable reference to
Rome.4 To support this convinction, Vickers referred to the biography of Ciriaco
3 In Jill Dunkerton, Susan Foister, and Nicholas Penny, eds., Dürer to Veronese: Sixteenth-
Century Painting in the National Gallery. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, p. 292,
no. 30, it is hypothesized that the painting may be identified with the “operetta” painted in
1459 for the Venetian Jacopo Antonio Marcello; however, see Luciano Bellosi’s further remarks
on what the “operetta” was, in Agosti and Thiébaut, Mantegna, pp. 122–123, cat. nos. 31–32.
4 Vickers, in “Mantegna and Constantinople,” p. 680, rules out all earlier opinions regarding
the identification of Roman monuments such as the Colosseum and Trajan’s Column, one or
the other surmounted by a statue of Marcus Aurelius.
From Solomon’s Temple to Hagia Sophia 117
Fig. 1 Andrea Mantegna, Agony in the Garden. london, the national gallery.
5 Biblioteca Capitolare di Treviso, codex 1:138; for an entry on this codex, see Stefano G. Casu,
in In the Light of Apollo: Italian Renaissance and Greece, vol. 1, exh. cat., ed. Mina Gregori.
Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2004, p. 146, cat. no. I.18, including a summary of the
scholarly literature on the codex. For suggestions as to how Ciriaco’s manuscripts reached
Feliciano, see Leonardo Quaquarelli, “Felice Feliciano e Francesco Scalamonti (junior?),” in
Ciriaco d’Ancona e la cultura antiquaria dell’Umanesimo: Atti del convegno internazionale di
studio (Ancona, February 6–9, 1992), eds. Gianfranco Paci and Sergio Sconocchia. Reggio
Emilia: Diabasis, 1998, pp. 333–347. On Ciriaco’s subsequent journeys to Constantinople, see
Edward W. Bodnar, ed. and trans., Cyriac of Ancona: Later Travels. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2003.
118 Faietti
Fig. 2 Andrea Mantegna, Agony in the Garden (the San Zeno Altarpiece). Tours, Musée
des Beaux-Arts.
Fig. � Andrea Mantegna, Crucifixion. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Peintures.
120 Faietti
Zeno, and installed on the main altar in July 1459.9 In the first of these two
paintings, Vickers identified not only the crescents at the summit of certain
buildings, but also the outline of the basilica of Hagia Sophia, its great win
dows resembling those described in the topographical view of Constantinople
illuminated by Péronet Lamy as an illustration to the Notitia Dignitatum cop
ied into a manuscript that had belonged to Pietro Donato, bishop of Padua and
a friend of Ciriaco (Fig. 4).10 While attending the Council of Basel in 1436,
Donato had had his scriptores transcribe the Codex Spirensis, a collection of
geographical texts from antiquity that included the Notitia Dignitatum utri-
usque imperii, and this must have been an impressive text, especially for its
more than 80 images.11
Vickers’ hypothesis for the remaining area of the image was that it probably
showed the neighborhood of Constantinople named Galata or Pera, once
9 For an entry on the polyptych, see Alberta De Nicolò Salmazo, in Mantegna e le Arti a
Verona 1450–1500, exh. cat., eds. Sergio Marinelli and Paola Marini. Venice: Marsilio,
2006, pp. 195, 199, cat. no. 1, including a summary of the scholarly literature on the polyp
tych; see also Andrea De Marchi, “Autour du triptyque de San Zeno de Vérone,” in
Agosti and Thiébaut, Mantegna, pp. 153–157; Marco Ciatti and Paola Marini, eds., Andrea
Mantegna: La Pala di San Zeno: Studio e conservazione. Florence: Edifir Edizioni Firenze,
2009; Le Leyzour, Mantegna: La prédelle de San Zeno de Vérone; Giulio Bodon, “Andrea
Mantegna e l’antico 2: Iconografie classiche nelle opere padovane di Mantegna: rifles
sioni sul caso della pala di San Zeno,” in Andrea Mantegna impronta del genio: convegno
internazionale di studi, Padova, Verona, Mantova, 8, 9, 10 novembre 2006, vol. 1, eds.
Rodolfo Signorini et al. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2010: pp. 53–71; Stephen J. Campbell,
“Lo spazio di contemplazione: Mantegna, Gregorio Correr e la pala d’altare di San
Zeno,” in Andrea Mantegna impronta del genio, vol. 1, eds. Rodolfo Signorini et al.,
pp. 163–179.
10 The manuscript is now housed in the Bodleian Library, Oxford Ms. Canon. Misc. 378: Otto
Pächt and Jonathan James Graham Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian
Library Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966–1970, vol. 1: p. 52, no. 666; vol. 2: p. 60, no.
599 (includes a summary of the scholarly literature on the manuscript); Jonathan James
Graham Alexander, “The Illustrated Manuscripts of the Notitia Dignitatum,” in Aspects of
the Notitia Dignitatum, eds. Roger Goodburn and Philip Bartholomew. Oxford: British
Archaeological Reports, 1976, pp. 11–13; Giovanna Saroni, “I manoscritti per Pietro Donato
e la ‘Notitia Dignitatum’ di Parigi,” in La Biblioteca di Amedeo VIII di Savoia (1391–1451).
Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 2004, pp. 99–106. See also Ian Holgate, “Paduan Culture in
Venetian Care: the Patronage of Bishop Pietro Donato (Padua 1428–47),” Renaissance
Studies 16, no. 1 (2002): 19, fig. 5.
11 On Lamy’s addition of the view of Constantinople, see Alexander, “The Illustrated
Manuscripts,” pp. 15, 17; Saroni, La Biblioteca di Amedeo VIII di Savoia, p. 103, in which she
asserts that from the patron’s point of view the most significant insertion is the miniature
view of Constantinople (absent in the surviving copies of the Codex Spirensis).
From Solomon’s Temple to Hagia Sophia 121
Fig. � Péronet Lamy, View of Constantinople. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Cod. Misc.
Lat. 280, c. 84.
again using the description offered by Scalamonti.12 Yet in its turn this descrip
tion was intertwined with the celebrated image of a view of Constantinople
in the Liber Insularum Archipelagi by Cristoforo Buondelmonti (c. 1385–after
1430), that is, a literary source depended on a visual one.13 To achieve this,
12 “Exinde alia ex parte ad ulteriorem portus ripam viderat Galatheam illam Peram, nobi
lem pulcherrimamque in conspectu Constantinopolitanae urbis coloniam, turritis moe
nibus, aedibus sacris negociatoriis scenis, praetoriis et altis undique civium palatiis
perornatam.”: Mitchell and Bodnar, Vita viri clarissimi et famosissimi Kyriaci Anconitani,
pp. 40–41.
13 On the Liber Insularum Archipelagi in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice,
see, with the discussion of the previous literature on the Liber, Silvia Foschi, “Santa Sofia
di Costantinopoli: immagini dall’Occidente,” Annali di architettura: Rivista del Centro
Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio di Vicenza 14 (2002): 16–17, 23–24;
122 Faietti
Susy Marcon, in Gregori, In the Light of Apollo, vol. 1, p. 143, no. I.14; Scott Redford, in
Byzantium Faith and Power (1261–1557), exh. cat., ed. Helen C. Evans. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2004, pp. 400–401, cat. no. 246; Kathleen Doyle, in Byzantium 330–1453,
exh. cat., eds. Robin Cormack and Maria Vassilaki. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2009,
p. 380, cat. no. 11. On Cristoforo Buondelmonti, see also Giuseppe Ligato, “Cristoforo
Buondelmonti e la Colonna di Teodosio I a Costantinopoli: retaggi medievali e curiosità
antiquarie della prima età umanistica,” in Oriente e Occidente nel Rinascimento: Atti del
XIX Convegno Internazionale (Chianciano Terme—Pienza 16–19 luglio 2007), ed. Luisa
Secchi Tarugi. Florence: Franco Cesati, 2009, pp. 177–192.
14 Stefano G. Casu, “Travels in Greece in the Age of Humanism. Cristoforo Buondelmonti
and Cyriacus of Ancona,” in Gregori, In the Light of Apollo, p. 142; Casu, “‘Veluti Caesar
triumphans’: Ciriaco d’Ancona e la statuaria equestre,” Paragone 55, no. 3 (2004): 10;
Christine Smith, “Cyriacus of Ancona’s Seven Drawings of Hagia Sophia,” The Art Bulletin
69, no. 1 (1987): 29. Vickers’ opinion is mentioned in passing in Mitchell and Bodnar, Vita
viri clarissimi et famosissimi Kyriaci Anconitani, p. 147 (n. 47). On Ciriaco, see the recent
study by Michail Chatzidakis, “Antike Prägung: Ciriaco d’Ancona und die kulturelle
Verortung Griechenlands,” in Fremde in der Stadt: Ordnungen, Repräsentationen und
Soziale Praktiken (13–15 Jahrhundert). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010, pp. 225–253,
489–497, and Silvia Fiaschi, “Inediti di e su Ciriaco d’Ancona in un codice di Siviglia
(Colombino 7.1.13),” Medioevo e Rinascimento, n.s., 22 (2011): 307–368, 448–449, I–IV.
15 Casu, “‘Veluti Caesar triumphans,’” p. 10, believes that Ciriaco’s interest in classical statu
ary was nourished by his admiration for the monument of Theodosius, which he had
occasion to study during his sojourns in Constantinople; Casu refers to a drawing on fol.
144v. of Codex It. 3 attributed to Ciriaco in the University Library, Budapest (specific bib
liographical references in n. 42 on pp. 37–38); see especially Bernhard Degenhart and
Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der Italienischen Zeichnungen 1300–1450, part 2: Venedig Jacopo
Bellini, vol. 5 (text). Berlin: Mann, 1990, pp. 211–212 and 212, 213 (nn. 34b, 34c). Note
that the same sheet is still used to illustrate the equestrian statue of Justinian drawn
by “Nymphirius”; see Koray Durak, “Constantinople, réalités et utopies médiévales,” in
De Byzance à Istanbul: Un port pour deux continents, exh. cat., eds. Nazan Ölçer and
From Solomon’s Temple to Hagia Sophia 123
affirms the presence of Hagia Sophia in the version in Tours.16 In the catalogue
of the 2008 Mantegna exhibition in Paris, Andrea De Marchi also dwells on the
city in the London Agony in the Garden, observing how the walls—collapsed
and then restored—allude to the future ruin of Jerusalem, a theme that had
become widespread thanks to the successful reception of Flavius Josephus’s
Antiquitates Judaicae.17
De Marchi argues that this was the first all’antica urban fantasy after
Mantegna’s depiction of the city dominating the background of the lost
Martyrdom of Saint James in the Ovetari Chapel (Eremitani church, Padua),
thus following the opinion of Martin Davies in the catalogue of Italian paint
ings in the National Gallery (1961), where the latter refers to “fanciful struc
tures.” De Marchi also reaffirms other suggestions made by Davies, namely that
the equestrian monument placed at the top of a spirally historiated column
(which Vickers saw an evocation of the column of Theodosius) was intended
as a tribute to Donatello’s Gattamelata monument, completed in 1453; he also
demonstrates its resemblance to the equestrian statue erected on a column in
the Crucifixion drawn by Jacopo Bellini on folio 37 recto of the album now in
the Louvre.18 According to De Marchi, the Jerusalem depicted in the Tours
Agony in the Garden was also reinvented on the basis of the erudite topography
of the Antiquitates Judaicae, and he sees no grounds for concurring with
Vickers’ iconography of Constantinople in the London and Tours pictures,
preferring to focus exclusively on the literary source of Flavius Josephus.19
Most recently, Keith Christiansen creates a veritable ékphrasis of different
texts he believes could have been brought to Mantegna’s attention by his
patron Gregorio Correr for the Tours predella.20 Once again Flavius Josephus’s
Edhem Eldem. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2009, p. 76, fig. 2. Referring specifi
cally to Alexander, “The Illustrated Manuscripts,” p. 15, Casu (in “‘Veluti Caesar trium
phans,’” p. 10) reaffirms that Ciriaco’s description of the monument in Constantinople
had a certain success, influencing depictions of Byzantium in the mid-15th century such
as the miniature by Lamy in the Bodleian Library codex mentioned earlier.
16 Smith, “Cyriacus of Ancona’s Seven Drawings,” p. 29.
17 De Marchi, in Agosti and Thiébaut, Mantegna, p. 159, cat. no. 48.
18 Martin Davies, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, 2nd ed. London:
National Gallery, 1961, pp. 335–338, no. 1417. On fol. 37 (inv. R. F. 1505) of the Louvre album,
see Degenhart and Schmitt, Corpus der Italienischen Zeichnungen 1300–1450, part 2:
Venedig Jacopo Bellini, vol. 6, pp. 357–358, plate 44.
19 De Marchi, in Agosti and Thiébaut, Mantegna, p. 164, cat. no. 51. The derivation from
Flavius Joseph, as well as other sources, was noted earlier in Jack M. Greenstein, Mantegna
and Painting as Historial Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 66–70.
20 Keith Christiansen, “The Genius of Andrea Mantegna,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Bulletin 67, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 20–26; from the same author, see also “Some Thoughts on
124 Faietti
Jewish War stands at the forefront of the argument, particularly Book V, cited in
relation to certain elements of landscape, including the three circles of walls
punctuated by solid, square towers, the upper fortress, the temple, and the
fountain of Siloam.21
I agree with the view that Flavius Josephus’s text was a source of inspiration
for the description of Jerusalem in the Agony in the Garden in Tours, which in
my opinion extends to the Crucifixion in Paris, itself a part of the predella of
the San Zeno altarpiece. Yet I would not give credit to all of Vickers’ references
to Constantinople: more precisely, as I will show, I reject almost every one of
those propose for the Agony in the Garden in London and limit those in the
subsequent version in Tours, where the arguments for the depiction of Galata
(identified, again without a secure basis, in the Crucifixion in the Louvre) are
particularly weak. However, I would confirm the presence in the Tours Agony
in the Garden of a monument that stands as a symbol of Constantinople: Hagia
Sophia, as illuminated by Lamy and used quite faithfully by Mantegna, apart
from some variants such as the small columns added to the sides of the great
windows. Indeed, in this case, I believe that it is precisely the presence of the
great basilica that lends a special meaning to the crescents.
It could be argued that it is not uncommon to find crescents in depictions of
Jerusalem: suffice it to think of how it is described in the album of drawings by
Jacopo Bellini in the British Museum22 or in the pen-and-ink map by Sebald
Rieter the Younger,23 just to cite two examples—both fairly significant ones,
Mantegna’s Place in the Renaissance,” in Il più dolce lavorare che sia: Mélanges en l’honneur
de Mauro Natale, eds. Frédéric Elsig, Noémie Etienne and Grégoire Extermann. Cinisello
Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2009, pp. 343–349.
21 See Christiansen, “The Genius,” pp. 24, 26, and Christiansen, “Some Thoughts on
Mantegna,” pp. 343–349. For the passages in Book V that are likely to have inspired
Mantegna, see Delle opere di Giuseppe Flavio dall’original testo greco nuovamente tradotte
in lingua italiana e illustrate con note dall’abate Francesco Angiolini Piacentino, Tomo Sesto.
Rome: Pel Desiderj a S. Antonio de’Portoghesi, 1792, book 5, chapter 4, pp. 134–140
(“Descrizione di Gerusalemme”); book 5, chapter 5, pp. 140–149 (“Descrizione del
Tempio”).
22 A recent entry on this album (inv. 1855, 811, 1–98), including a summary of literature, is by
Hugo Chapman, in Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings, exh. cat., eds.
Hugo Chapman and Marzia Faietti. London: British Museum Press, 2010, pp. 122–129,
cat. no. 16.
23 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Bibl.-Sign. Cod. icon. 172; for an entry on the draw
ing, with bibliographical notes, see Sylvaine Haensel, Orte der Sehnsucht: Mit Künstlern
auf Reisen, exh. cat., ed. Hermann Arnhold, Münster. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2008,
p. 199, cat. no. 147.
From Solomon’s Temple to Hagia Sophia 125
given Mantegna’s connection to the Bellini family and the contiguous date of
Rieter’s map to the Agony in the Garden in London and Tours.24 These two
paintings may be considered products of the 1450s,25 either contemporaneous
with or immediately after the Fall of Constantinople, a historical event that
was to have an enormous resonance in the West, and to which a cultivated and
sensitive artist such as Mantegna would not have been unresponsive. The
recurrence of crescents in his paintings of the 1450s—note also the one placed
on the bell tower in the background of the Martyrdom of Saint Christopher in
the Ovetari Chapel—can be explained in this context as well. However, it is
only in the Tours Agony in the Garden that we witness a further step, both logi
cal and interpretative: here the symbol of the crescent alludes not only to a
historical event. In conjunction with the image of the church of Saint Sophia,
it also becomes a proper identifying element of a cityscape.
Other clues tied to the Paduan cultural context that shaped Mantegna have
led me to approve Vickers’ connection with models provided directly or indi
rectly by Ciriaco d’Ancona and other antiquarians such as Pietro Donato, who
collected inscriptions and corresponded with Ciriaco. Again, of all the parallels
made by Vickers I accept only Hagia Sophia in the Tours Agony in the Garden,
and perhaps—with some reservations—the equestrian monument of
Theodosius in the London version, where the image was probably created in
combination with another visual source that had an integral view of the col
umn, such as Buondelmonti’s Liber Insularum Archipelagi (Fig. 5).26 Following
24 Note that Athens and Florence also have crescents in the celebrated Cronaca Fiorentina
figurata attributed to followers of Maso Finiguerra and dated to the 1470s (see fol. 19 and
fols. 97–98 respectively); this volume has recently been discussed by Hugo Chapman, in
Chapman and Faietti, Fra Angelico to Leonardo, pp. 166–171, no. 34.
25 The Agony in the Garden in London is generally considered to precede the version in the
San Zeno predella by a few years. See Alberta De Nicolò Salmazo, Andrea Mantegna.
Geneva: Rizzoli/Skira, 2004, pp. 136, 138; Andrea De Marchi in Agosti and Thiébaut,
Mantegna, pp. 158–159, cat nos. 48 and 164, cat. no. 51; Le Leyzour, Mantegna: La prédelle
de San Zeno de Vérone. However, see Foister and Penny, Dürer to Veronese, p. 292, no. 30,
for its dating to c. 1460.
26 According to Vickers, “Mantegna and Constantinople,” pp. 684, 687, references to
Constantinople are also evident in the sixth canvas of the Triumphs of Caesar cycle at
Hampton Court, where the background includes a column surmounted by an equestrian
statue with a rider who is beardless, as Theodosius and Justinian were (in reality, we
know that this was the equestrian statue of Justinian). On the Triumphs, see most recently
Caroline Elam, “Les ‘Triomphes’ de Mantegna: la forme et la vie,” in Agosti and Thiébaut,
Mantegna, pp. 363–371 (she is also the author of an entry on the fourth canvas in the cycle,
pp. 380–382, cat. no. 160); Paola Tosetti Grandi, I Trionfi di Cesare di Andrea Mantegna:
Fonti umanistiche e cultura antiquaria alla corte dei Gonzaga. Mantua: Sometti, 2008; and
126 Faietti
Paola Tosetti Grandi, “Andrea Mantegna pittore umanista,” Grafica d’arte 20, no. 78
(2009): 14–17.
From Solomon’s Temple to Hagia Sophia 127
32 Bernard Ashmole, “Cyriac of Ancona and the Temple of Hadrian at Cyzicus,” Journal of
the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 19 (1956): 179–191; Edward W. Bodnar and Charles
Mitchell, Cyriacus of Ancona’s Journeys in the Propontis and the Northern Aegean 1444–
1445. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1976, pp. 27–31, fig. 3; pp. 37–41,
fig. 14; and Phyllis Williams Lehmann, “Cyriacus of Ancona’s Visit to Samothrace,” in
Phyllis Williams Lehmann and Karl Lehmann, Samothracian Reflections, esp. 47–55,
figs. 29 and 31.
33 Verona, Biblioteca Civica, Ms. 374; see Agostino Contò, in Marinelli and Marini, Mantegna
e le Arti, pp. 458–459, cat. no. 190, including a summary of the literature on the
manuscript.
34 Giovanni Marcanova, Ludovico Trevisan, Bartolomeo Sanvito, Biagio Saraceno, and
Felice Feliciano—to cite only the principal figures—were at the heart of various aspects
of antiquarian collecting, including coins, Latin inscriptions, bronzes, and perhaps even
gems. The recent Mantegna exhibitions held in Padua, Mantua, Verona, and Paris empha
sized the connections Mantegna had with these figures, with accompanying catalogues
that provide new scholarship, to which I refer the reader: Davide Banzato, Alberta De
Nicolò Salmazo, and Anna Maria Spiazzi, eds., Mantegna e Padova 1445–1460, exh. cat.,
Padua. Milan: Electa, 2006; Mauro Lucco, ed., Mantegna a Mantova 1460–1506, exh. cat.,
Mantua. Milan: Electa, 2006; Marinelli and Marini, Mantegna e le Arti; and Agosti and
Thiébaut, Mantegna. In addition, see the bibliographical references in the notes to my
essay “L’alfabeto degli artisti,” in Linea I: Grafie di immagini tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento,
eds. Marzia Faietti and Gerhard Wolf. Venice: Marsilio, 2008, esp. 227–234, as well as the
published proceedings from a symposium held in Rome in 2007: Teresa Calvano, Claudia
Cieri Via, and Leandro Ventura, eds., Mantegna e Roma: L’artista davanti all’antico. Rome:
Bulzoni, 2010, and Irene Favaretto, “Andrea Mantegna e l’antico 1: Cultura antiquaria e
tradizione umanistica a Padova nel Quattrocento,” in Andrea Mantegna impronta del
genio, vol. 1, eds. Signorini et al., pp. 45–52; and Bodon, “Andrea Mantegna e l’antico 2,”
pp. 53–71.
From Solomon’s Temple to Hagia Sophia 129
35 Vickers, “Mantegna and Constantinople,” p. 687; and see Philip Sherrard, Constantinople,
Iconography of a Sacred City. London: Oxford University Press, 1965, esp. 79–110. The lit
erature on the links between the Veneto (and Venice in particular), Constantinople, and
the “Orient” is substantial; here are some of the most recent relevant exhibition cata
logues: Evans, Byzantium; Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong, eds., Bellini and the East,
exh. cat. London: National Gallery, 2005; Stefano Carboni, ed., Venise et l’Orient 828–1797,
exh. cat. Paris: Gallimard, 2006; and Ölçer and Eldem, De Byzance à Istanbul.
36 See Tosetti Grandi, I Trionfi di Cesare di Andrea Mantegna, pp. 91–108, which also includes
a summary of the essential literature; and Tosetti Grandi, “Andrea Mantegna,” pp. 14–17.
See also Christine Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism: Ethics, Aesthetics,
and Eloquence 1400–1470. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 150–170 and 199–215
(appendix with English translation), and Manuel Chrysoloras, Roma parte del cielo:
Confronto tra l’Antica e la Nuova Roma, trans. and ed. Guido Cortassa. Turin: Utet, 2000.
37 For the Italian translation of the passage regarding the church in Constantinople, see
Roma parte del cielo, p. 92 (n. 52).
130 Faietti
Ciriaco, and first among them was Feliciano, scriptor (or scribe, as he is defined
in his will of 1466), magister in arte minii (master of illumination, as in a
Bolognese document of 1467), and antiquarius, the epithet both he and his
contemporaries used to describe him. He counted among his correspondents
artists, magistrates, notaries, merchants, courtiers, almost always foreign or
marginal to the world of letters and to a great extent not prominent, if one
excludes painters such as Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, and Marco Zoppo, or
sculptors such as Cristoforo di Geremia.41 Feliciano, who must have known
and appreciated the drawings of Ciriaco42 and was in his own right a collector
of drawings,43 transcribed the sole surviving account of Ciriaco’s life, written
by Francesco Scalamonti,44 preparing every aspect of it, from the physical
writing of the text to its rich decoration and splendid binding; but Samuele
da Tradate was the one who commissioned it. The codex contains a letter
addressed to Feliciano on October 5, 1457, by the Venetian cartographer
Antonio Leonardi, which offers some striking references to the circulation of
Ciriaco’s opuscula that link back to the thread connecting him to Feliciano.45
Moreover, Leonardi was the recipient of a gift from his close friend Cardinal
Francesco Piccolomini, the Fragmentum cosmographiae sive historiae rerum
ubique gestarum by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini. This connection is revealed by
a note appended to folio 82 recto of the codex in the Biblioteca Marciana, the
first part of which contains Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Liber Insularum Mari
Aegeai, with folio 22 recto bearing the view of Constantinople mentioned
above.
It is to Feliciano that we owe the description in Latin of the archaeological
excursion to Lake Garda (Iubilatio).46 The paradigm for Feliciano’s narrative
has been identified in a letter describing the story of a journey at sea and sent
by Ciriaco to Andreolo Giustiniani.47 Ciriaco’s Itinerarium was probably the
source of the iunctura inserted by Feliciano before the first part of his Memoratu
digna and also used by him in his dedicatory letter to Mantegna. It has been
said that this text by Feliciano is not an entirely accurate account but more of
a literary narrative; and whether or not the Lake Garda excursion took place
(indeed some have doubted it),48 one should note the entertaining tone of the
45 For the text of this letter see Mitchell and Bodnar, Vita viri clarissimi et famosissimi Kyriaci
Anconitani, pp. 196–198, Appendix IV.
46 It is known in two versions, which differ as to the excursion’s duration (it is thought to
have taken place either on September 24, 1464 or on September 23 and 24) and its partici
pants. A bibliography of the various transcriptions published in the 20th century can be
found in Myriam Billanovich, “Intorno alla ‘Iubilatio’ di Felice Feliciano,” Italia medio-
evale e umanistica 32 (1989): 351 (n. 1). See also the oft-cited transcription made early in
the 20th century by Paul Kristeller, Andrea Mantegna. New York: Longmans, Green, 1901,
pp. 472–473, no. 15, as well as that by Charles Mitchell, “Archaeology and Romance in
Renaissance Italy,” in Italian Renaissance Studies: A Tribute to the Late Cecilia M. Ady, ed.
Ernest Fraser Jacob. London: Faber and Faber, 1960, p. 477. Billanovich also transcribed
the Memoratu digna (pp. 351–352 [n. 3]), which in Treviso codex 1 corresponds to the
first day, while the Iubilatio describes the second.
47 Mitchell, “Archaeology and Romance,” pp. 476–477; Avesani, “Felicianerie,” pp. 11–12;
Marcello Ciccuto, “Album di Ciriaco d’Ancona,” in Figure d’artista: La nascita delle immag-
ini alle origini della letteratura. Fiesole: Cadmo, 2002, pp. 188–189. For linguistic citations
from Ciriaco, see Billanovich, “Intorno alla ‘Iubilatio,’” pp. 356–357 (n. 25). See also Carlo
Roberto Chiarlo, “‘Gli fragmenti dilla sancta antiquitate’: studi antiquari e produzione
delle immagini da Ciriaco d’Ancona a Francesco Colonna,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte
italiana, vol. 1, ed. Salvatore Settis. Turin: Einaudi, 1984: pp. 281–282, in which Chiarlo
adds two further comparisons with Ciriaco’s text from the same codex in Treviso, present
in Scalamonti’s biography, in a passage regarding Ciriaco’s visit to Cyprus, and in Ciriaco’s
text entitled Venatio actiaca regia, respectively.
48 Billanovich, “Intorno alla ‘Iubilatio,’” pp. 351–358; see also Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice
and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, p. 121.
From Solomon’s Temple to Hagia Sophia 133
narration and the peculiarity of the language, which is not really antique and
certainly does not correspond to the “elegantia maiorum.”49 This “messa in
scena antichizzante” (“affectation of antiquity”)50 almost symbolically embod
ies an antiquarian reappropriation of the past that consumes itself in its search
for a lifestyle masquerading all’antica. “Antiquity was becoming an ideal of life,
rather than an object of inquiry,” as Charles Mitchell has argued, noting the
difference between Ciriaco on the one hand, and Feliciano and his compan
ions on the other.51
In Mantegna’s time, philology had made giant steps, while the temporal
power of the pope was under attack. In 1440, Lorenzo Valla struck a mighty
blow with his demonstration that the Constitutum Constantini (Donation of
Constantine), purportedly justifying the papacy’s claims to temporal rule, was
false, shortly after the philosopher Nicholas of Cusa expressed his doubts
about the document. Valla, in his De falso credita et ementita Constantini dona-
tione declamatio (published in 1517), used historical and linguistic scholarship
to demonstrate his thesis. Among the errors made, for example, by the forger,
who according to Valla lived in the eighth century, was the mention of the city
of Constantinople, which had not yet been founded—just one of many major
mistakes that Valla discovered in the text. While the use of philology assisted
Valla in properly arguing his thesis, the field experience of antiquarians and
archaeologists such as Buondelmonti and Ciriaco provided objective data
about the awareness of place.52
Closer still in time to when Mantegna is thought to have made his excursion
to Lake Garda, Pius II Piccolomini convened the Council of Mantua (May 27,
1459–January 19, 1460), hoping to unify a Christian Europe around the idea of a
crusade against the Ottomans. Among those who promptly adhered to the
pope’s intentions, Duke Ludovico II Gonzaga showed that the Eastern ques
tion was particularly close to his heart; he felt that he was involved in
Paleologan vicissitudes through family ties and traditions, and, unsurprisingly,
wished to present his own city and court as ideal heirs of Byzantium and the
imperial court.53
49 Billanovich, “Intorno alla ‘Iubilatio,’” pp. 351–358; and Avesani, “Felicianerie,” pp. 15–16.
50 The phrase is by Giovanni Romano, “Verso la maniera moderna: da Mantegna a Raffaello,”
in Dal Cinquecento all’Ottocento: I. Cinquecento e Seicento. Turin: Einaudi, 1981, p. 11.
51 Mitchell, “Archaeology and Romance,” p. 478.
52 On the falsity of the Donation of Constantine and Lorenzo Valla, see The Treatise of
Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine, trans. and ed. C.B. Coleman. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press and RSA, 1993.
53 Tosetti Grandi, I Trionfi di Cesare di Andrea Mantegna, p. 100, with a summary of the lit
erature in note 180.
134 Faietti
54 I have drawn this information mainly from Roger Aubenas and Robert Ricard, La Chiesa e
il Rinascimento (1449–1517), Italian ed. by Carlo Dolza. Turin: S.I.A.E., 1963, esp. 69–72.
55 “La regina dell’Oriente ha assistito impotente tra le sue mura al massacro del successore
di Costantino e del suo popolo e alla profanazione dei templi del Signore; ha visto coster
nata lo splendido monumento innalzato da Giustiniano contaminato dal culto abomi
nevole di Maometto”; as quoted in Aubenas and Ricard, La Chiesa e il Rinascimento,
p. 71.
56 Foschi, in “Santa Sofia di Costantinopoli,” p. 7, begins her study on Hagia Sophia with
these two descriptions, which she considers among the most elevated and resonant of
those condemning and lamenting the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. For the text of these
two letters, and a third addressed to Leonardo Benvoglienti, Sienese ambassador to
Venice, on September 25 of the same year, see Agostino Pertusi, ed., La caduta di
Costantinopoli: L’eco nel mondo. Verona: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1976, pp. 40–76, 434–437.
57 Foschi, “Santa Sofia di Costantinopoli,” pp. 17–18, esp. 32 (nn. 55–56).
58 Delle opere di Giuseppe Flavio, book 6, chapter 4, pp. 209–214.
From Solomon’s Temple to Hagia Sophia 135
Fig. � North Italian artist (c. 1484–1519), Annunciation. chicago, the art institute.
59 As indirect confirmation of the reading proposed here for Mantegna’s Agony in the
Garden, see the following (kindly brought to my attention by Dario Donetti): Stefano
Miccolis, “L’arco di Costantino e i Turchi nella pittura italiana del Quattrocento,” Belfagor
3 (1998): 277–296, in which the sources for the iconographic fortune of the Arch of
Constantine were already conceptualized by the 1450s as an architectural metaphor for
the martyrdom of Constantinople.
60 Nello Forti Grazzini, in Gli arazzi dei Gonzaga nel Rinascimento, exh. cat., eds. Guy
Delmarcel and Clifford M. Brown, Mantua. Geneva: Skira, 2010, pp. 36–45, cat. no. 1. I will
not go deeply into this matter, which has become particularly muddled, since, for exam
ple, the details of landscape and setting appear to be more clearly Mantegnesque than the
figures, so much so as to imply that different cartoons might have been used, which
would necessitate a reconsideration of its chronology.
136 Faietti
the left side of the Annunciation with that of the architecture depicted in the
Agony in the Garden in Tours, which he believes are both freely inspired by the
cupola conceived by Leon Battista Alberti for the Tempio Malatestiano in
Rimini, documented in the well-known medal made by Matteo de’ Pasti in
1451.61 Yet it seems to me that despite such an Albertian updating, the tapestry
could still reflect the Hagia Sophia as illustrated in Lamy’s miniature, which
was probably introduced into Mantua through Mantegna, after which it
became a point of reference for the depiction of Solomon’s Temple.
With respect to the Council of Mantua, it must be recalled that it was
Mantegna himself—the Gonzaga court’s artist—who was entrusted some
years later with expressing homage to one of the council’s indisputable pro
tagonists, Pius II Piccolomini. I allude here to the episode of the so-called
Incontro (“The Meeting”) in the Camera degli Sposi, most likely intended to
illustrate the meeting at Bozzolo on January 1, 1462 between Ludovico Gonzaga,
bound for Milan, and his sons Federico and Francesco,62 as a sign of his grati
tude toward Pius II. The reasons for this thanksgiving were twofold: the pontiff
had been behind the nomination of Francesco Gonzaga as cardinal, and he
had chosen Mantua as the venue for the council of Christian princes of
Europe.63 Once again the representation of the landscape background became
the favored place for allusions and praise: in fact, the artist depicted an ideal
view of Rome, together with Tivoli, Palestrina, and Tusculum, the cities in the
region of Lazio described by the geographer Strabo that had been the theater
of conflict between Pius II and the Roman barons during the summer of 1461.64
61 Forti Grazzini, in Delmarcel and Brown, Gli arazzi dei Gonzaga, p. 42.
62 Rodolfo Signorini, Opus hoc tenue: La camera dipinta di Andrea Mantegna: Lettura storica
iconografica iconologica. Mantua: Giovetti Fotografia e Comunicazioni Visive, 1985,
pp. 143–170, with a discussion of earlier literature and various hypotheses. Christiansen,
“The Genius,” pp. 28, 30, does not mention this reference, but maintains that the land
scape includes a fantastic image of Mantua on the summit of a hill and enriched by
Roman ruins, villas, and quarries.
63 Rodolfo Signorini, “Il trionfo del pavone: L’anima greca della Camera Dipinta,” in A casa di
Andrea Mantegna: Cultura artistica a Mantova nel Quattrocento, ed. Rodolfo Signorini.
Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2006, p. 113, and Michele Cordaro, La Camera degli Sposi di
Andrea Mantegna, 2nd ed. Milan: Electa, 2007, p. 19. On the frescoes in general, see also
Rodolfo Signorini, “La ‘Camera Dipinta’ detta ‘Degli Sposi,’” in Il Palazzo Ducale di
Mantova, ed. Giuliana Algeri. Mantua: Sometti, 2003, pp. 117–136; Katharina Lauinger,
Italienische Deckenmalerei: Die Ausgestaltung der Camera degli Sposi. Hamburg: Loges,
2011; and Giovanni Reale, Vittorio Sgarbi, and Rodolfo Signorini, Andrea Mantegna: Gli
sposi eterni nella Camera Dipinta. Milan: Bompiani, 2011.
64 Signorini, Opus hoc tenue, pp. 152–170.
From Solomon’s Temple to Hagia Sophia 137
65 Fritz Saxl, “L’antichità classica in Jacopo Bellini e nel Mantegna” (1935), in La storia delle
immagini. Bari: Laterza, 1965, p. 63.
66 Mantegna as an engraver (in a direct sense) has in recent years been the subject of a lively
debate that has aimed to define the limits of his activity. More prudent considerations
were expressed in the catalogue of the Paris exhibition by Agosti and Thiébaut, Mantegna,
pp. 237–289, with entries by various authors on Mantegna’s prints. Among those who still
deny Mantegna’s direct involvement in printmaking see Suzanne Boorsch, “Mantegna
and the Engraving: What we know, what we don’t know, and a few hypotheses,” in
Signorini et al., Andrea Mantegna impronta del genio, vol. 1, pp. 415–437, and Luke Syson,
“Reflections on the Mantegna Exhibition in Paris,” Burlington Magazine 151 (2009): 533–
535. In contrast to these two texts, Christiansen, “The Genius,” pp. 47–63, takes a more
flexible and articulated position (with which I fully concur); see also Giovanni Romano,
“Mantegna incisore,” Artibus et historiae 62, no. 31 (2010): 131–135.
67 Marzia Faietti, “Mantegna’s Line: Beyond Vasari’s Terza Maniera,” in Renaissance Theory,
eds. James Elkins and Robert Williams. New York: Routledge, 2008, pp. 376–385; Marzia
Faietti, “L’alfabeto degli artisti,” pp. 227–234; Marzia Faietti, “Andrea Mantegna e i segni
dell’antico,” in Mantegna e Roma, eds. Calvano, Cieri Via, and Ventura, pp. 193–218; Marzia
Faietti, “Il segno di Andrea Mantegna,” in Andrea Mantegna impronta del genio, vol. 1, eds.
Rodolfo Signorini et al., pp. 15–44.
138 Faietti
Acknowledgment
The author wishes to give special thanks to Elena Bonato, a loyal friend
during hours of study in the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-
Planck-Institut.
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Pächt, Otto and Jonathan James Graham Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon, 1966–1970.
From Solomon’s Temple to Hagia Sophia 143
Pertusi, Agostino, ed., La caduta di Costantinopoli: L’eco nel mondo. Verona: Arnoldo
Mondadori Editore, 1976.
Quaquarelli, Leonardo, “Felice Feliciano e Francesco Scalamonti (junior?).” In Ciriaco
d’Ancona e la cultura antiquaria dell’Umanesimo: Atti del convegno internazionale di
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144 Faietti
Alina Payne
Over the course of centuries, artists and architects have employed a variety of
means to capture resonant archaeological sites in images, and those images
have operated in various ways. Whether recording views, monuments, inscrip-
tions, or measurements so as to pore over them when they came home and to
share them with others, these draftsmen filled loose sheets, albums, sketch-
books, and heavily illustrated treatises and disseminated visual information
far and wide, from Europe to the margins of the known world, as far as Mexico
and Goa. Not all the images they produced were factual and aimed at design
and construction. Rather, they ranged from reportage (recording what there
is) through nostalgic and even fantastic representations to analytical records
that sought to look through the fragmentary appearance of ruined vestiges to
the “essence” of the remains and reconstruct a plausible original form.
Although this is a long and varied tradition and has not lacked attention at
the hands of generations of scholars,1 it raises an issue fundamental for the
larger questions that are posed in this essay: Were we to look at these images
as images rather than architectural or topographical information, might they
emerge as more than representations of buildings, details and sites, measured
and dissected on the page? Might they also record something else, something
more ineffable, such as the physical encounters with and aesthetic experience
of these places, elliptical yet powerful for being less overt than the bits of
carved stone painstakingly delineated? Furthermore, might in some cases the
very material support of these images participate in translating this aesthetic
1 For Italian material the list is long. Despite an accumulation of more recent publications that
have exploited the possibilities offered by technology, the following older studies are still
fundamental: Arnold Nesselrath, “I libri di disegni di antichità: tentativo di una tipologia,” in
Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, vol. 3: Dalla tradizione all’archeologia, ed. Salvatore
Settis. Turin: G. Einaudi, 1986, pp. 87–147 and Hubertus Günther, Das Studium der Antiken
Architektur in den Zeichnungen der Hochrenaissance. Tübingen: E. Wasmuth, 1988. For more
recent research, see The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: Printing and Collecting the
Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, ed. Rebecca Zorach. Chicago: University of Chicago
Library, 2008.
response to the ruins and transmit it? And if so, what does it convey that may
have slipped between the words and lies locked in the materiality of the paper
on which the images are recorded?
The images that were made as reportage are images of the ruins as they are—
or, more often, as they might be, because they are never quite untouched by
the artist’s perspective. Scattered, partially buried, and decaying, the ruins of
an ancient site present the vestiges of an urban coherence and magnificence
irretrievably lost that interrupt the present unexpectedly and challenge under-
standing as well as any sense of permanence. Sebastiano Serlio’s “Roma quanta
fuit ipsa ruina docet” on the title page of his Terzo Libro (Venice, 1540), which
wraps all of lost Rome with its past tense into the nebula of oblivion (Fig. 1) is
iconic of this type of presentation.2 But if the decayed grandeur of Rome
appealed to some, especially poets and artists, the desire to reconstruct this
past was its corollary and appealed to others. Indeed, the two approaches may
be seen as the yin and yang of the Renaissance engagement with the past, one
of them melancholy, the other constructive. And the sketchbooks and treatises
of the architects, groaning with reconstructions of the orders, of temples and
other buildings, testify to this curiosity driven by practicality.
However, sometimes more than observation and analysis pierces through
even these apparently factual representations. For example, Andrea Palladio’s
illustrations of the temple at Pola in Capodistria, in his Quattro Libri (Venice,
1570) like a number of other images depicting temple sites in the same treatise,
exhibit a somewhat bizarre presentation that has not been addressed thus far.
In fact, Palladio’s single, compact image of the temple of Pola (Fig. 2) emerges
as an interpenetration of several images—views, details and sections—
connected by cutouts, raking angles, superimpositions, and overlaps. The
images nestle inside one another, compelling the viewer to decipher the result-
ing composition with some difficulty, and forcing the architect or patron for
whom such an image was intended to puzzle it out, literally to twist and rotate
the sheet in order to read it—in short, to work at it. The treatment of scale in
this compound group of images adds yet another layer of interpretive complex-
ity. The large scale is small (the overall view of the temple), the small scale is
large (the ornamental details), and the shift from one to the other vertiginous,
2 Sebastiano Serlio, Il terzo libro di Sebastiano Serlio Bolognese. Venice: Francesco Marcolini da
Forlì, 1540.
The Thin White Line 147
so sudden and extreme that it is almost alarming. Of course, there are practical
reasons for it: a detail would be copied and needs to be enlarged; a view cannot
be presented much larger within a book, and so will necessarily remain a par-
tially detailed silhouette; and so on. And yet, as an image, this illustration of the
temple at Pola presents the appearance of a topsy-turvy, destabilized reality.
148 Payne
Fig. � Andrea Palladio, Temple at Pola, I quattro libri dell’architettura. Venice, 1570.
The Thin White Line 149
Fig. � Anonymous, Fragments of the Temple of Augusts and Roma in Pola. Alinari,
No. 21192.
(small) were at the root of most of his choices when composing his images. But
there is more to it, for within these practical restrictions artistic choices have
been made. The mise-en-page, along with the addition of a frame that is as
strong as the laserlike gaze of the witnessing pedimental figure, and the sug-
gestion of space through the implied perspective created by the statue’s visual
ray—these are all deliberate gestures. Not all antiquarian-architects follow
suit, neither Antonio Labacco nor Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, for example.3
Vignola, in his Regola delli cinque ordini (Rome 1562; Fig. 5), does frame his
reconstructed orders, but he does not attend to ruins as such or to their sites as
Serlio and Palladio do: his presentation is more abstract, aiming more toward
a visual “dictionary” than to a holistic description of an actual location.
As has been noted often in the literature on Palladio, his treatise is very
cerebral, and his approach to illustration takes a giant stride toward the
modern professional’s drawing set and format,4 a notion that seems to be
supported not only by the images’ factura, his crisp lines, strict orthogonal
3 Antonio Labacco, Libro appartenente all’architecttura. Rome: In Casa Nostra, 1552; Jacopo
Barozzi da Vignola, Regola delli cinque ordini d’architettura. Rome: s.n., 1562.
4 See Licisco Magagnato, Introduction, in Andrea Palladio, I quattro libri dell’architettura, eds.
Licisco Magagnato and Paola Marini. Milan: Il Polifilo, 1980, p. xx.
The Thin White Line 151
Fig. � Sebastiano Serlio, Architectural Details of Arch, Il terzo libro. Venice, 1540, f. cvii.
152 Payne
Fig. � Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, The Ionic Order, La regola delli cinque ordini
d’architettura. s.n., 1562.
The Thin White Line 153
r epresentation, and apparently logical slicing of a whole into its parts but also
by their content. Yet, more pierces through these apparently objective images,
and the visual information laid out for view also captures the complexity of the
site and the architect’s response to it. What may be sensed from its complex
mise-en-page is an anxiety in the face of a reality that cannot be fully grasped,
that literally escapes the page no matter how hard it is compressed in it, and is
that much more revealing as it is manifested differently, more covertly, and
more unselfconsciously than in the studies of ruins by his contemporaries.
The opening and closing images to Daniele Barbaro’s 1556 edition of
Vitruvius’s De architectura (Fig. 6)—on which Barbaro collaborated with
Palladio, although the image is not by him—may offer a parallel testimony to
this greater range of responses to the recovery of the past than architectural
treatises usually convey. The architect gazing skyward through his astrolabe
while turning his back on the chaos of tools and fragments that surround him
offers a possible confirmation of this complex response to antiquity and is its
pendant narrative explanation.5 The confusion through which the architect
tries to see clearly (sight is once again the main subject matter), surrounded as
he is by the scattered instruments of his profession and a collapsing building,
is a powerful expression of the condition of the archaeological site among
whose ruins he finds himself trapped as in a labyrinth or cavern. There is
drama here—the drama of controlling that which escapes, to raise one’s eyes
from earth to heaven, one step ahead of the collapse of the edifice surrounding
him and drawing him back into the vortex of oblivion.
There is one other significant feature in these reconstruction images of
Palladio’s. It has been noted that they are clean, precise, apparently objective
and dispassionate, in pure orthogonal projection.6 What has not been said is
that the overall impression they give is of being white. The absence of any
shading, the plain paper background as a major protagonist of the images, is
both new and rare. However compressed the images (such as those of the tem-
ple at Pola), the overall whiteness of the architecture is never in doubt. Indeed,
the compression and crowding are that much more striking seen against this
emptiness, against this lavishness of white, unmarked paper. Many pages have
hardly any writing on them, sometimes only three or four lines. In this sense,
Palladio is so different from Serlio, his one great predecessor, who changes
5 Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, I dieci libri dell’architettura con il commento di Daniele Barbaro.
Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1556.
6 A summary with related bibliography is in Magagnato, Introduction, pp. xx–xxii, and Alina
Payne, “Andrea Palladio,” in Architecture and Its Image, eds. E. Blau and Kaufmann. Montreal:
CCA, 1989.
154 Payne
fonts and scripts to fit his writing into one page and fill it completely (Figs. 7
and 8). The overall impression of his pages is one of grayness, and to this effect
the writing surrounding the illustrations contributes significantly. The same is
true of Vignola’s images in his treatise, albeit his text is minimal though still
present on the illustration page and, together with the stippling of the flat
The Thin White Line 155
Fig. � Andrea Palladio, Temple of Mars Ultor, I quattro libri dell’architettura. Venice, 1570.
156 Payne
Fig. � Sebastiano Serlio, Details of the Pantheon, Il terzo libro. Venice, 1540.
God.”7 Clearly the ancients concurred. After all, as Augustus said, he had found
Rome brick and left it marble (a quip well-known in the Renaissance)—
a statement not only about opulence and magnificence as it has been always
understood but also about color: Augustus found Rome red (“brick- or
terra-cotta-colored”) and left it sparkling white. Understanding the ruins
requires a leap of the imagination; and the difficulty underlying this effort
comes through nowhere more poignantly than in Raphael’s letter to Pope Leo
X in which he tries to convey both the appeal of the mirage and the near-
impossibility of conjuring it.8 Beyond the tangible evidence of the ruins them-
selves, something else needs to be at work to recover what is irreplaceable lost,
Raphael hints, and it is to this challenge that Palladio seems to have responded
both objectively and intuitively.
What lies embedded in Palladio’s images, therefore, is also a sensitivity to
stone and a discourse about it. The sharp outlines with no shading to soften
the contours, the absence of sfumato, the sparseness of lines—all of these
enhance the sense of sharp edges, of a chisel doing its work, of cut stone and
sharp contrasts of light and dark. More important, these gestures signal the
whiteness of the stone itself—in particular the brilliance of the Istrian stone of
which Venice’s principal monuments were built (as were Palladio’s) and that
record the memory of the ancient marble of the Roman edifices dotting the
Adriatic shores.
7 The original Italian is “tra tutti I colori niuno è che si convenga più ai tempii della bianchezza,
conciosiaché la purita del colore e della vita sia sommamente grata a dio”; Andrea Palladio, I
quattro libri dell’architettura. Milan: l Polifilo, 1908, p. 254.
8 “Holy Father, there are many who, measuring with their small judgement the great things
that are written of the Romans’ arms and of the city of Rome regarding its marvellous artifice,
richness and ornaments, sooner estimate these to be fabulous rather than true, however to
me it seems otherwise. Because, judging the divinity of those ancient spirits from the relics
that can still be seen amongst the ruins of Rome, I do not think it beyond reason to believe,
that many of those things which to us seem impossible to them seemed extremely easy.”
As translated in Ingrid Rowland, “Raphael, Angelo Colocci, and the Genesis of the
Architectural Orders,” Art Bulletin 76, no. 1 (March 1994): 81–104.
158 Payne
Dalmatian ruins, and hence of the Dalmatian stone (the Istrian variety, so
much appreciated on both sides of the Adriatic, and indeed throughout Italy)?
This was the stone the Venetians built with, or wished to build with; several
unrealized projects to dismantle the Pola ruins and treat them as a quarry for
marble to be reused back home testify to the appetite for this particular mate-
rial.9 Indeed, the citizens of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) used ancient stones to build
their own city, turning to the ruins of Epidaurum (an ancient Roman city
located nearby) as a source of ready quarried and cut material.10 To be sure, the
limestone that is such a common denominator of the built landscape along the
Mediterranean and links the Iberian peninsula and Provence with North Africa
across Greece and the Middle East is light in color, an effect that is reinforced
by the strong sunlight and reflection from the water. But the brilliant whiteness
of the Istrian stone, the almost painful white that makes up entire cities and, as
aggregates, the length of the Dalmatian shore is an extreme case (Fig. 9). And
it is this Istrian/Dalmatian/Illyrian experience that Palladio responded to and
that reverberates from the white pages of his treatise.
Geologist and naturalist abbot Alberto Fortis (1741–1803) confirmed this
preference for the white stone, by then well established, during his travels
along the Adriatic in the late 18th century. His Viaggio in Dalmazia (1774)
shows him to have been particularly attentive to the many types of stone visi-
ble from the sea as he glided slowly along the shores.11 Indeed, he stopped on
purpose to explore the rock formations and he was struck by their colors,
although what he was looking for and expected to see was the Istrian white.
9 The cannibalization of ancient ruins was a common occurrence during the Renaissance
in Rome as elsewhere; for example, Michelangelo used the travertine from the Coliseum
for the Palazzo Farnese he was completing in Rome. For a general treatment of this
subject as it relates to Rome (and a summary of the literature on it), see David Karmon,
The Ruin of the Eternal City: Antiquity and Preservation in Renaissance Rome. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011.
10 Joško Belamarić, “Renaissance Villas on the Dalmatian Coast,” in Quattrocento Adriatico:
Fifteenth-Century Art of the Adriatic Rim, ed. Charles Dempsey. Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1996,
p. 106.
11 “Costeggiando per mare colla barchetta questo tratto di paese, io feci piu volte prender
riposo a miei ramatori per esaminare”; Alberto Fortis, Viaggio in Dalmazia dell’abate
Alberto Fortis. Venice: Alvise Milocco, 1774, p. 31. Fortis’s book was not received with
unanimous acclaim but was popular in Western Europe. Giovanni Lovrich, a native of
Dalmatia (from Socivizca) immediately published an entire volume correcting the topo-
graphical and etymological errors Fortis made, as well as his own comments on the antiq-
uities and customs of the area, although he admits ignorance as regards the naturalist
aspects of the book; Giovanni Lovrich, Osservazioni di Giovanni Lovrich sopra diversi pezzi
in Dalmazia del Signor Abate Alberto Fortis. Venice: Francesco Sansoni, 1776.
The Thin White Line 159
Fig. � Window Detail, c. later 15th century, Sebenico (photo by the author).
And he noted with surprise, and in a lyrical tone, that the white, marblelike
crests of the mountains that rose above the sea rested on ordinary stone that
could not be more different from its luminous splendor.12
Clearly the white silhouettes along the shore were not only those of the
mountains but also of the cities strung along the littoral. The ancient buildings
that could be easily seen were all of Istrian stone, as Vincenzo Scamozzi noted
12 The original Italian is “tutto il corpo del monte che serve di base alla descritta sommita
marmorea persino al mare, e di materia dissomigliantissima dal marmo Dalmatino,
e Istriano volgare”; ibid., p. 32.
160 Payne
13 As quoted in Francesco Rodolico, Le pietre delle città d’Italia. Florence: Le Monnier, 1965,
pp. 189–189.
14 Ibid., pp. 214–215.
15 Rodolico, Le pietre.
16 Ibid., pp. 198–199 and esp. 206 (n. B). Deborah Howard has also noted that the Istrian
stone was impermeable to water and was therefore used for foundations; see Howard,
The Architectural History of Venice. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002, p. 57.
The Thin White Line 161
17 The original Italian is “Ma di qualunque sorte che siano le pietre Histriane, tuttavia,
dicansi per ostentazione quello che si vogliono altri (che non le hanno vedute né
162 Payne
guide to Venice, adding that the Istrian stone was similar to marble, “very
white, fine, sonorous, solid, and durable.”18
o sservate) elle sono assai più nobile, e bianche, e fine del trevertino di Roma e delle pietre
di Napoli, e Genova, e Fiorenza.” Vincenzo Scamozzi, L’idea della architettura universale,
vol. I. Venice: expensis auctoris, 1615, pp. 204–205 quoted in Rodolico, Le pietre, p. 199.
18 The original Italian is “bella e mirabil cos è la materia delle pietre vive, che sono condotte
da Rovigno et da Brioni, castelli in Riviera della Dalmatia: sono di color bianco et simili al
The Thin White Line 163
marmo, ma salde et forti di maniera che durano per lunghissimo tempo a i ghacci et al
sole; …molto bianche, fine, sonore, salde e dure”; Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobil-
issima et singolare. Venice: I. Sansovino, 1581, as quoted in Rodolico, Le pietre, p. 198.
19 Ibid., p. 212. The same observation is made in Wolfgang Wolters, Architektur und
Ornament: venezianischer Bauschmuck der Renaissance. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2000, p. 64,
and Howard, Architectural History of Venice, p. 59. Wolters posits San Michele in Isola
(1469) as the start of the trend.
20 Maybe the influence in southern Italy came from Spain and the Spanish vice-royalties of
Sicily and of Naples. See Federica Scibilia “I rossi nodulari,” Lexicon 10–11 (2010): 75–91,
and Domenica Sutera, “Grigio di Billiemi: L’uso a Palermo dal XVI al XX secolo,” Lexicon,
no. 8 (2009); 56–62.
21 On Istrian stone, Vasari wrote: “There is moreover in Istria a stone of a livid white, which
very easily splits, and this is more frequently used than any other, not by the city of Venice
alone, but by all the province of Romagna, for all works both of masonry and of carving…
A great quantity of this kind of stone was used by Messer Jacopo Sansovino…Thus they go
164 Payne
Indeed, looked at from the perspective of stone color, two main traditions
or aesthetics can be observed in the Mediterranean. One is the bicromia of
on executing all their works for that city, doors, windows, chapels, and any other decora-
tions that they find convenient to make, notwithstanding the fact that breccias and other
kinds of stone could easily be conveyed from Verona, by means of the river Adige”; Giorgio
Vasari, Vasari on Technique, trans. Louisa S. Maclehose and ed. G. Baldwin Brown. London:
J.M. Dent, 1907, pp. 56–57.
The Thin White Line 165
white/black along the Tyrrhenian coast and in Sicily (with their mixed parent-
age from the Lombard and Catalonian North and from the Middle East, espe-
cially Damascus). Even the iconic Arco Aragonese in Naples, with its white
marble triumphal arch squeezed between dark gray stone walls is a form of
bicromia and testifies to the various forms that this aesthetic could embrace.
The presence of black stone—lava stone—is also a contributing element
to the Mediterranean bichromatic aesthetic, although this was not common
on the Adriatic coast and was more visible in Sicily in the areas near active
volcanoes (such as around Catania and the Lipari islands).22 The two-tone
aesthetic—the mixture of light and dark stone in bands and two-tone orna-
ments to window surrounds—may have been inherited from southern France
(by way of Ventimiglia and Cefalu already in the 13th century) as well as
Tuscany, Lombardy, and Genoa—that is, from a more widespread Norman
influence, with Arab inflections from Spain (Fig. 13). The second principal tra-
dition is that of the brilliant white Istrian stone on the Adriatic coast (Dalmatia,
Venice, and the Italian Adriatic).
Fig. �� Window Detail, Palazzo Chiaramonte, 13th century, Palermo (photo by the author).
22 The so-called pietra lavica was used as ornament but also as construction material in
Sicily. See Emanuela Garofalo, “Le lave: Gli usi ornamentali nell’architettura storica in
Sicilia,” Lexicon, nos. 14–15 (2012): 70–88.
166 Payne
That the white aesthetic had a significant presence in the area is further
confirmed by the secrecy surrounding the production of colors, including the
luminous white and white glazes for the majolica industry in its beginnings on
the Adriatic coast (Pesaro and Gubbio in particular). The story of the color
recipe book of Antonio and Matteo da Cagli and their partner Almerico da
Ventura (from Siena)—who came from Tuscany and worked as architects and
painters in late 15th-century Pesaro, and also traded in building materials,
leather, and textiles—is a case in point. The colors whose recipes they held
(and which originated with a master in Toledo) try to imitate precious stones;
the luster applied to these colors, among which white held an important place,
was highly favored and kept most secret; ultimately, the income from the sale
of the secrets was large enough to provide a substantial dowry for the surviving
daughter of the family. This illustrates the popularity and spread of white
glazes originating with the Della Robbias across the Apennines and the signifi-
cance and demand for such wares on the Adriatic shores.23
It would seem that the whiteness of materials—ancient and new—
engendered a peculiar Adriatic imaginario to which Palladio’s buildings
stand witness. This may be one of the most significant (though little noted)
components of an “Adriatic style,” as Federico Zeri termed it several decades
ago.24 In Dalmatia, what was “portable,” in terms of architecture, was the stone
itself—the white stone that Dalmatia shipped to Italy, thus supporting the
white aesthetic as well as its attending vision of antiquity, beyond memory and
the drawn records of ruins. And Venice is perhaps the most dramatic example
of this phenomenon. As contemporary chroniclers astutely observe, since
Venice did not produce anything but needed to import all its goods from out-
side, it was inevitably one of the most active engines of Mediterranean porta-
bility, far more so than any of the other Italian cities of that time, however
intense their commercial activities.25 And Venice was a particularly greedy
23 See Un trattato universale dei colori: Il Ms. 2861 della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna,
ed. Francesca Muzio. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2012, p. xi.
24 Earlier, André Chastel had also suggested a cultural cohesion and significance of the cities
on the two shores of the Adriatic: André Chastel, Art et humanisme à Florence au temps de
Laurent le Magnifique: études sur la Renaissance et l’humanisme platonicien. Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 1959, and Federico Zeri, “Rinascimento e Pseudo-Rinascimento,”
in Storia dell’arte italiana, part II, vol. 1. Turin: Einaudi, 1979–1983, p. 568. On this argu-
ment (and for sources), see Dempsey, Introduction, Quattrocento Adriatico, p. 7.
25 The original Italian is “non nascendo in essa [Venetia] cosa alcuna, tuttavia è abbondan-
tissima di tutte le cose, le quali vi sono portate da i luoghi così maritimi, come terrestri”;
Rodolico, Le pietre, p. 201, quoted from G.M. Memmo, Dialogo nel quale si forma un
p erfetto principe. Venice, 1564.
The Thin White Line 167
user of Istrian stone. Indeed, its stone commerce was on a huge scale. The large
boats that made the crossing of the Adriatic to bring stone to the lagoon city
weighed around 200 tons and were expected to make at least five round trips
a year, which indicates the large amount of stone that was imported.26
Venice used the Istrian stone to great effect; its monuments stand out as small
islands of brilliance within the dense urban fabric, nowhere more visible than
on the large canals that marked the major approaches to the city.27 The delib-
erate visual isolation of the stone’s whiteness drew particular attention to
principal buildings and emphasized their significance, an effect that is readily
legible on the many representations and maps of the city, ranging from the
illustrations accompanying the published account of the travels of Marco Polo
to the paintings of Giovanni Bellini, Paolo Veronese (Fig. 14), and Tintoretto.
But beyond that white monochrome, how were the unique qualities of
Dalmatia’s white cities and their architecture of antiquity “transported” and
materialized in other locations? One way was the indirect one of Palladio’s
white ruins. The message was certainly not missed, however elliptical it may
have been. Indeed, it is no surprise that the 18th-century English country
houses based on the images in Palladio’s books or the new circuses in Regency
Fig. �� Paolo Veronese, Dinner at the House of Levi, Accademia Venice. art resource.
26 Rodolico, Le pietre, pp. 199–200. On traffic in Istrian stone see also Nedo Fiorentin ed., La
pietra d’Istria e Venezia, Verona: Cierre, 2006.
27 Deborah Howard has described the small church of San Michele in Isola by Mauro Codussi
(begun 1468) as looking like a floating iceberg on the lagoon; Howard, Venice, p. 135.
168 Payne
28 Colin Rowe, “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa,” The Architectural Review (March 1947):
101–104. On the imbrication between Renaissance and modernist ideals and Rowe’s role
in fostering this dialogue, see Alina Payne, “Rudolf Wittkower and Architectural Principles
in the Age of Modernism,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 53 (September
1994): 322–342, and Alina Payne, Rudolf Wittkower, trans. F. Peri. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri,
2011. On the prevalence of white in modernist architecture (though associated with
fashion rather than stone in this case), see Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
29 On the complicated and sad history of Palmanova’s foundation, see, most recently,
Deborah Howard, Venice Disputed: Marcantonio Barbaro and Venetian Architecture, 1550–
1600. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.
30 For a noteworthy contribution to the argument locating the origins of the ideal city’s
“look” in stage design, see Ludovico Zorzi, Il teatro e la città. Turin: Einaudi, 1977,
pp. 76–78.
31 The fascination with the ideal city started with Heydenreich’s (1937) essay on Pienza and
was subsequently developed both in the literature on this city and in the scholarship on
The Thin White Line 169
the treatise literature of the Renaissance. Pienza had already been discussed (though not
from this perspective) in Carl Friedrich von Rumohr’s Italienische Forschungen (1827–
1831), Jacob Burckhardt’s Der Cicerone. 2nd ed., 1869, and Stegmann and Geymüller’s
Architektur der Renaissance in der Toscana. The connection to Alberti was a contributing
factor to Pienza’s role in scholarship on the ideal city and perspective. Subsequently, dis-
cussions of Filarete’s design and description of the ideal city of Sforzinda contributed to
the development of the topic into a central theme for Renaissance scholarship. See the
seminal article by Ludwig H. Heydenreich, “Pius II: Als Bauherr von Pienza,” Zeitschrift für
Kunstgeschichte 6, nos. 2/3 (1937): 105–146. For a more recent discussion of this subject,
see Hanno Walter Kruft, Städte in Utopia: Die Idealstadt vom 15. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert
zwischen Staatsutopie und Wirklichkeit. Munich: Beck, 1989; Andreas Tönnesmann,
Pienza: Städtebau und Humanismus. Rome: Hirmer, 1990; and Jan Pieper, Pienza: Entwurf
einer humanistischen Weltsicht. Stuttgart and London: Alex Menges, 1997, pp. 128–143.
Among the earliest essays on Alberti and city design are W.A. Eden, “Studies in Urban
Theory: The De re aedificatoria of Leon Battista Alberti,” The Town Planning Review 19, no. 1
(Autumn 1943): 10–28. For a different reading, opposing the tradition of the Albertian
model as an ideal model, see Caspar Pearson, Humanism and the Urban World: Leon
Battista Alberti and the Renaissance City. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2011. On
the origins of the argument, see the celebrated essay by Eugenio Garin, Scienza e vita civile
nel rinascimento italiano. Bari: Laterza, 1965.
32 Erwin Panofsky, “Perspektive als symbolische Form,” Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg
1924–1925 (1927), pp. 258–330. The connection of Brunelleschi to perspective construction
offered another avenue for Panofsky’s idea to penetrate architectural scholarship. See, for
example, Giulio Carlo Argan, “The Architecture of Brunelleschi and the Origins of
Perspective Theory in the Fifteenth Century,” Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
8 (1946): 96–121. The latest important avatar of the city/perspective argument, though
pushing back against the traditional Renaissance triumphalist reading and convincingly
placing its origins in the Trecento, is Marvin Trachtenberg, The Dominion of the Eye:
Urbanism, Art and Power in Early Modern Florence. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1997.
33 See, especially, Richard Krautheimer, “Le tavole di Urbino, Berlino e Baltimora riesami-
nate,” in Il Rinascimento da Brunelleschi a Michelangelo: La rappresentazione
dell’architettura, eds. Henry A. Millon and Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani. Milan:
Bompiani, 1994, pp. 233–257, and Hubert Damisch, L’origine de la perspective. Paris:
Flammarion, 1987; trans. into English by John Goodman as The Origin of Perspective.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994. See also the review of the two arguments (Damisch’s
170 Payne
Fig. �� Fra Carnevale, The Ideal City, c. 1480–1484. walters art museum.
received, the fact that many views of the ideal city—whether architectural or
pictorial—also present it as white has escaped notice, as did emperor
Augustus’s having bequeathed a white Rome by turning it into marble.
The uncanny calm of the Renaissance cities as they were represented in
paintings or in architectural drawings also suggests a submerged tension vis-à-
vis various forms of horror.34 The order, control, and supreme legibility of the
city and its structures envisaged by architect/critics ranging from Alberti and
Filarete to De Marchi were as much about a desire for Olympian calm and
dignity in the face of threatening chaos that existed just beneath or on the
surface of daily life—of warfare, epidemics, invasion, and anarchy—as about
a theoretical engagement with ideal geometries and musical harmonies. The
whiteness added another layer of desire to this image, and the city inside a
while marble palace, as is the case in Spalato, epitomizes this possibility of
order and pristine white beauty. In these ideal city views—many associated
with Urbino, another Adriatic power in the 15th century—the poetry of the
calm, horizontal, white, pristine city that was such an unrealized but desired
beacon for generations of architects comes into full view. The ideal cities imag-
ined by Fra Carnevale, Francesco di Giorgio, and Piero della Francesca include
both the boats and the horizon with its white shimmer. Indeed, such visions
may be construed as the Pathosformel of the Renaissance city. Of this utopia,
the white Dalmatian cities were a constant reminder. Viewed from the water
by artists and architects, craftsmen and ambassadors, humanists and mer-
chants gliding along the shores toward their destinations just like the abbot
Fortis, the coast presented a distant yet gleaming white littoral that connected
like a string of white pearls Gallipoli and Ragusa, Spalato and Venice, Bari and
Sebenico, the white ruins and the white mountains. Geography plays a partic-
ular role here, for the Adriatic is a special case of the Mediterranean, reminis-
cent of the Aegean or even the Red Sea, for being more like a lake or closed sea,
not open like the Tyrrhenian. The two shores are close, the traffic across it
sustained, especially the circulation of goods and stone from port to port, from
quarry to site. Ancona and Bari, Otranto and Venice are just a stone’s throw
away from Ragusa and Zara, Spalato and Durazzo.
Indeed, the littoral is a powerful collective experience that binds these sites
together—the bright, sometimes white, sometimes golden shore collects them
into one winding line that blends into the horizon over vast expanses of water.
To be sure the hinterland is the “other” to this experience, but without the
shore, there is no hinterland; the mountains that add a backdrop to the eva-
nescence of the horizon are both a barrier and an attraction—they simultane-
ously protect and separate. The littoral reifies the traveler’s filmic experience,
in the 16th century as in the 18th or the 21st: the view from the boat (Fig. 16) is
the view of the passer-by who does not stop to experience the hinterland, who
does not live there, but only touches down to bed for the night in a lazaretto
and passes on. This is the view experienced and recollected by humanists such
as Ciriaco of Ancona and Cristoforo Buondelmonte, by painter Andrea
Fig. �� Louis-Francois Cassas and Joseph Lavallée, “Vue générale de Spalatro”. in Voyage
pittoresque et historique de l’Istrie et de la Dalmatie. Paris, 1802. houghton
library, harvard university, typ. 815.02.2616.
172 Payne
Jerusalem and the ideal City of God. Blended together, they reappear as an
aspiration throughout history: among the Byzantines as per Manuel
Chrysoloras’s encomium for Constantinople (the New Rome), in Petrarch’s
nostalgia for ancient Rome imagined from a distance on Mont Ventoux, in the
memory of city names such as those of the many “white cities” on the perime-
ter of the Mediterranean (both Fez and Alexandria were originally called “the
white city”), Beograd (Belgrade), and, as far as Romania (on the Black Sea, an
extension of the Mediterranean and a former Roman colony), Alba Iulia and
Cetatea Alba.35
Such a vision can be sensed in the built mise-en-scènes of the imaginary cit-
ies that make up the backdrop of so many Renaissance paintings. From
Mantegna to Veronese and Tintoretto by way of Carpaccio and Bellini, the
staging of Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria, of the Wedding at Cana, or The
Finding of the Body of Saint Mark presents a Jerusalem and Damascus, a
Constantinople and Cairo that are also white cities. All speak of an imaginario
of the white city, of the miragelike city of the Adriatic that emerges like a spec-
ter or phantasm from the blueness of the sea. This city as stage set, then, like
the perfect geometrical white cities of Fra Carnevale, owes to the white littoral
imaginario—that is, to a Mediterranean imaginario that has its most powerful
expression in the Spalato site but is not unique to it36—and it informs a
Venetian imaginario, a Pugliese one already willed by an emperor like Frederic II,
an Urbino one, and creates echoes across the Adriatic. Perhaps even a Tuscan
one: Pope Pius II’s Pienza is in many ways an enterprise like Diocletian’s, the
building of a palace/city at his modest birthplace. In Pienza, though far
from the Adriatic and not well endowed with white stone, white does make its
appearance to dignify the main square (the church façade, the fountain, the
stone ornamental details, the bi-chrome white and gray of the sgraffito façades)
that is also the palace’s forecourt, as if to enhance and ennoble the ideal city,
here planned with the recollection of white, perfect cities elsewhere.
35 Manuel Chrysoloras, “Comparison of Old and New Rome” (c. 1411) in Christine Smith,
Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Eloquence, 1400–1470.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 199–215. Leo Africanus relates the story of
Fez being called “Città Bianca” (Madīnat al-Baydā’); see Il viaggio di Giovan Leone e le
navigazioni di Alvise da Ca da Mosto, ed. Giovambattista Ramusio. Venice: Luigi Plet,
1837, p. 81.
36 Giovanni Gondola (Ivan Gundolic) a Ragusan poet (“il Tasso del Seicento raguseo”) and
political figure (1588–1638) dedicated to the Turkish Sultan a poem on Ragusa in which he
described the city as white: “Oh white city of Ragusa, famous throughout the world and
pleasing to the Heavens,” quoted in Luigi Villari, The Republic of Ragusa. London: J.M.
Dent, 1904, p. 379.
174 Payne
However, beyond its appeal as a model of civic utopia, this white, marble-
like city of Spalato (but also of Ragusa and Zara) that is one organic whole,
seemingly cut out of the same material throughout—rather like the cathedral
of Sebenico—is also a complete work of art. The same stone slab that is used
for a relief sculpture is also the surface of the ground; the same polish gives
both columns and street pavements the quality of brilliance, and suggest pre-
ciousness. No tufts of grass, no trees, no dirt spoil the pristine whiteness of
the stones that literally glisten in both moon- and sunlight. The marble floor of
the city disconnects it from nature and turns it into an artifact that could—
implicitly—be lifted. Alberti famously states that a city is like a palace and a
palace like a small city, and in so doing proposes a form of miniaturization that
suggests this peculiar quality that Spalato has of being an object placed on
the ground rather than being of the ground, a form of city as Kleinarchitektur
(small architecture).37 The city as a hand-held box—as object and portable—
comes up time and again in many painted dedications, but nowhere more poi-
gnantly than in the sculpture of Saint Blaise holding Ragusa on the main gate
of the city, or in Francesco di Giorgio’s (another adoptive Urbino architect)
image of the ideal city of Dinocrates (Fig. 18).
The city as palace and the palace as city offer a peculiar reflection upon
inside and outside, on what is finished and polished and what is not, what is
carpet and what is earth. The polished stones of the streets—so close to mar-
ble in feeling (indeed, Alberti calls the local limestone a type of marble)—
promote the sense of a heightened experience, of an additional whiteness that
completes the picture: as if on a stage set, the people walking along are silhou-
etted powerfully against the full whiteness of the background; they become
individualized, attracting focus, drawing the eye upon themselves. This is the
setting of Piero della Francesca’s Urbino sensibility, of his figure cut-outs
against a blinding whiteness, be they in the Flagellation or in his Arezzo fres-
coes; it is also that of Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico—itself white, and ghostly—
where inside and outside are blurred, both spectators and actors, living and
sculpted bodies facing each other. Most important, this extraordinary experi-
ence of viewing in and viewing out, of the blurred inside/outside that drama-
tizes the city as object and as artifact, is fully articulated by Antonio da
Proculiano, chancellor of Spalato, in his Oratione al clarissimo m. Giovan
Battista Calbo degnissimo rettor, et alla magnifica communita di Spalato
37 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988, p. 23. On
Kleinarchitektur, see Alina Payne, “Materiality, Crafting and Scale in Renaissance
Architecture,” Oxford Art Journal (December 2009): 365–386.
The Thin White Line 175
is not only the beauty of the edifice and the buildings it contains, but the fact
that the interior is of such dimensions that its inhabitants can walk and ride in
it and through its many windows, see the varied landscape and in particular
the sea, the boats, the cliffs. Even more telling is that on their platform, ele-
vated from the shore, these walking and riding personages can themselves be
seen as in a theater, from the outside, from the shore and the sea, a ballet of
shadows, as if they themselves were floating on a watery surface. Proculiano
imagines a condition of double yearning, of the outside for the inside and vice
versa:
People used to stroll and ride in circles above these sunny vaults almost
as through a never-ending square, and while strolling and riding they
looked out from the three sides at the territory in front of them, at the
grounds, gardens, vineyards, fields, hills, valleys, flatlands and mountains;
from the southern side they looked out with great delight and solace at
the sea, cliffs, islands, and at the close and more distant bays. And then
the people standing outside almost as through a beautiful and elevated
theater could look at those strolling and riding inside, one moment from
one window, the other from a different one, passing by rarely or fre-
quently; in such a way that it looked like the earth and its inhabitants
standing outside, the sea, cliffs and ships yearned for the palace and its
inhabitants, while the palace and the people inside it yearned for the
earth and the sea, and for the people outside.39
The city as object thus conveys the notion of the city as work of art, but even
more so as artifact, as man-made, man-crafted. and intellectually circum-
scribed as if by a tight, three-dimensional frame rather than left to the hazards
39 Emphasis added by author. The original Italian is “sopra I quali volti saliggiati quasi per
una perpetua piazza in circoito si spassiggiava et cavalcava, et spassigiando et cavalcando
vedea di fuori tutto il paese obietto dale tre parti, gli horti, i giardini, le vigne, i campi,
i colli, le valli, i piani et i monti; dalla faccia meridionale il mare, i scogli, le isole et i seni
vicini et piu lontani con grandissimo diletto et solaccio riguardati. Et quelli di fuori poi
quasi per entro un bellissimo et rilevato theatro cosi vedeano quei di dentro spassiggianti
et cavalcanti hor un fenestrone hor l’altro et rari et frequenti passare; di maniera che
pareva, che la terra et gli habitatori di fuori et il mare et scogli et I navigli lo palazzo et li
suopi habitatori, esso palazzo et que’ che erano dentro, la terra e’l mare et que di fuori
vagheggiassino.” Ibid. Some 400 years later, the archaeologist Raymond Chevallier makes
similar observations. Raymond Chevallier, “Les anciens voyageurs de Venise à Pola et
Salone,” in Aquileia, la Dalmazia e l’Illirico: Atti della XIV Settimana di studi aquilesi, 23–29
aprile, 1983. Antichitá altoadriatiche 26, no. 1 (1985): 27.
The Thin White Line 177
of time and accretive development. This is Fra Carnevale’s city and all the ideal
cities on cassoni and spaliere that abound in church choirs, studiolos, and wed-
ding chests. Manuel Chrysoloras, in an encomium that ignited the imagina-
tions of his Italian audiences, described Constantinople as the New Rome in
just such terms: for him the city was “not of this earth, but of heaven”; he was
struck by its silhouette (“the crown and circuit of its walls”); and saw “the city
as an island,” “a city in the sea.”40 The image is powerful and must have reso-
nated across the centuries. Ultimately, this is another way to transport a site,
to make it portable: as desire. Perhaps the most tangible records of this unreal-
ized intellectual project remain the churches of Palladio—especially San
Giorgio Maggiore, floating on the lagoon like a white apparition on the hori-
zon; or Il Redentore, viewed as a single object on its white platform from the
other side of the Canal della Giudecca. The floating white churches like minia-
ture cities on the horizon may be the most lasting effect of Istria and Dalmatia
on Palladio (Fig. 19).
Yet, for all its artificial quality, for all its pristine detachment from the soil
and its contaminants, the ideal city—be it real like Spalato or imagined like
the Urbino utopias—it is still a part of nature. Networks tie it back into the
system—a system that leads back to Rome across the roads such as the Via
Egnatia and the Via Appia but also to the hinterland. Cities need water, and
Fig. �� Andrea Palladio, San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice (photo by the author).
the aqueducts reach deep into the wild, untouched depths of the hills to feed
off rivers and rivulets. Stone roads and stone aqueducts are both mobility
petrified, turned into architecture, made visible. Manuel Chrysolaras makes
this point most eloquently: “the aqueducts carry water in underground chan-
nels and lift it high in the air over the walls, so that one might call them rivers
in the sky, arriving from great distances, as far as many days’ travel.”41 Built
riverbeds and suspended rivers, with water contained, monumentalized, and
turned into an artifact as a building, these aqueducts are strange hybrids
(Fig. 20). On the one hand, roads and aqueducts, though man-made, are rei-
fied signals of movement like arrows in space that are superimposed on
topography and on the geometry of landownership and borders like a diapha-
nous grid that connects the “empire”—one infrastructure embedded in the
soil, the other flying overhead. On the other hand, they proclaim with great
pathos that cities never really break away from nature, that it always reasserts
its presence, that the cities need to be anchored back into it by ties, however
diaphanous. Constructive or destructive nature is there—like the decay that
ultimately destroys the white cities and turns them into ruins—and leaves
their begetters with the imaginario—that is, with the desire and the anxiety.
Two systems in tension: one a spider’s web tying the city to its site; the other
Fig. �� Louis-Francois Cassas and Joseph Lavallée, “Vue de l’aqueduc de Salones,” in Voyage
pittoresque et historique de l’Istrie et de la Dalmatie. Paris, 1802. houghton
library, harvard university, typ. 815.02.2616.
41 Ibid., p. 209.
The Thin White Line 179
Fig. �� View of the Adriatic Littoral from Castel del Monte, Puglia (photo by the author).
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Chapter �
In taking the Dalmatian littoral as the center of gravity to examine the mobility
of artistic forms in the Mediterranean, one might first consider the complex
historiographic dimensions of this enterprise. Less than a century ago, Hans
Folnesics and Leo Planiscig edited the Bau- und kunst-denkmale des
Küstenlandes (1916), which sought to present in one volume the principal mon-
uments of the Austrian Empire’s coastal domains. One section in particular
documents the parallels between a capital from Salona, dated by the editors to
the Völkerwanderungszeit, to those in the Cathedral of S. Giusto in Trieste, some
490 kilometers to the north (Fig. 1).1 The authors’ discussion of the “influence”
and exchange of architectural styles along the Dalmatian coast contrasts with
earlier antiquarian publications that decried the buildings constructed when
migratory waves of Slavic tribes emerged from the hinterland. Robert Adam, in
his monumental folios illustrating Diocletian’s palace in Split (1764), lamented
the presence of post-classical accretions, stating that “modern works are so
intermingled with the ancient, as to be scarcely distinguishable.”2 Also in
regard to Diocletian’s palace, the painter Louis-François Cassas reported in a
travel journal published in 1802 that “bad taste” was responsible for the con-
struction of the early Romanesque belfry next to the Temple of Jupiter, which,
in his view, dishonored “one of the most beautiful pieces of antiquity which
remained in Europe.”3
1 Bau- und kunst-denkmale des Küstenlandes. Aquileja; Görz; Grado; Triest; Capo d’Istria;
Muggia; Pirano; Parenzo; Rovigno; Pola; Veglia, etc., eds. Hans Folnesics and Leo Planiscig.
Vienna: Schroll, 1916, p. 19. For a historiographic discussion of Völkerwanderungszeit, the
term that designates the migration of peoples between Late Antiquity and Early Middle
Ages, see Michael Kulikowski, Rome’s Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 43–70.
2 Robert Adam, Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia, ed.
M. Navarra. Cannitello, 2001, p. 28, quoted in Ivan Drpić, “The Invisible City: Split and the
Palace of Diocletian in the Age of Antiquarianism” (unpublished paper, 2004).
3 L.-F. Cassas and J. Lavallée, Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Istrie et de la Dalmatie.
Paris, 1802, pp. 136–137: “On a fait de ce temple un petit oratoire, et le mauvais goût a érigé
Fig. � Photographs of capitals from Trieste and Salona in Bau- und kunst-denkmale des
Küstenlandes: Aquileja; Görz; Grado; Triest; Capo d’Istria; Muggia; Pirano; Parenzo;
Rovigno; Pola; Veglia, etc., eds. Hans Folnesics and Leo Planiscig. Vienna: Schroll, 1916.
au-dessus une vilaine tour carrée et barlongue, terminée par un mauvais toit couvert en
tuiles; et l’importante nécessité d’ajouter des cloches à une église a déterminé à déshonorer
l’un des plus beaux morceaux de l’antiquité qui restoient en Europe, et à détruire par cette
laide gaîne la belle harmonie qui résultoit des proportions savantes des diverses parties de
cet édifice.” Cassas undertook his voyage to Dalmatia in 1782, some 20 years before the
publication of his travel journal.
Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 185
4 Bernard Berenson, Aesthetics and History in the Visual Arts. New York: Pantheon, 1948, p. 152.
5 Idid., pp. 26, 154, 167–168.
6 Comments such as “very good” can be found written on the inside cover of Berenson’s
copy of Orient oder Rom held in the Biblioteca Berenson, Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University
Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. For recent historiographic treatments of Strzygowski,
see J.A. Miguel, “Focillón y Strzygowski o la Lejana Raíz del Arte Occidental,” Espacio, tiempo
y forma (1993): 559–605; C. Maranci, “Armenian Architecture as Aryan Architecture:
The Role of Indo-European Studies in the Theories of Josef Strzygowski,” Visual Resources
13, nos. 3–4 (1998): 363–380; Margaret Olin, “Art History and Ideology: Alois Riegl and
186 kim
This hostility towards mobility and “influence” also finds a venerable ances-
tor in Renaissance art theory, a genre that reached a veritable boiling point in
the mid-16th century. Significant examples include Leon Battista Alberti’s
treatise De re aedificatoria, written, to be sure, a century before, but reaching
an intense moment of dissemination and reception via Cosimo Bartoli’s trans-
lation, published in 1550.7 The year 1550 in Florence also witnessed the publica-
tion of Giorgio Vasari’s first edition of Le vite de’più eccellenti pittori, scvltori et
architetti. In 1557 in Venice, Lodovico Dolce published his Dialogo della pittura,
better known as L’Aretino, which to a large extent disputed Vasari’s emphasis
on Tuscan and Central Italian art. Art-historical scholarship has usually
interpreted these works as competitors in the quarrel between regional
artistic styles; and these debates between disegno vs. colorito, Michelangelo
and Titian, have been well-studied, perhaps ad nauseam. Yet such interpreta-
tions could easily be mistaken to imply that the geographic scope of these
works is limited to their favored region, or even to Italy alone. While the
geographic horizons of these art theoretical works extend far beyond Italy
to include the Mediterranean world at large, their attitude toward the mobility
of artists and artworks oscillates between two poles—those of hostility and
hospitality.8
Josef Strzygowski,” in Cultural Visions: Essays in the History of Culture, eds. Penny Schine Gold
and Benjamin C. Sax. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000, pp. 151–170; Massimo Bernabò, “Un episo-
dio della demonizzazione dell’arte bizantina in Italia: La campagna contro Strzygowski,
Toesca e Lionello Venturi sulla stampa fascista nel 1930,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 94, no. 1
(2001): 1–10; Jaś Elsner, “The Birth of Late Antiquity: Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901,”
Art History 23, no. 3 (2002): 358–379; Stephen Kite, “‘South Opposed to East and North’:
Adrian Stokes and Josef Strzygowski. A Study in the Aesthetics and Historiography of
Orientalism,” Art History 26, no. 4 (2003): 505–532; Pierre Vaisse, “Josef Strzygowski et la
France,” Revue de l’art 146 (2004): 73–83. On Strzygowski’s relationship with members of the
Vienna School, see E. Frodl-Kraft, “Eine Aporie und der Versuch ihrer Deutung: Josef
Strzygowski Julius V. Schlosser,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 42 (1989): 7–52. On
Strzygowski’s opposition to the art-historical emphasis on Greco-Roman sources and human-
ism in general, see Suzanne Marchand, “The Rhetoric of Artifacts and the Decline of Classical
Humanism,” History and Theory 33, no. 4 (1994): 106–130.
7 On Cosimo Bartoli’s translation and its relationship to the theoretical precepts of the
Florentine Accademia del disegno, see Alina A. Payne, “Alberti and the Origins of the Paragone
between Architecture and the Figural Arts,” in Leon Battista Alberti. Teorico delle arti e gli
impegni civili del ‘De Re Aedificatoria’, eds. Arturo Calzona et al. Florence: Olschki, 2007,
pp. 347–368.
8 The literature on the 16th-century disegno vs. colorito debates is immense. See especially
Michel Hochmann, Venise et Rome 1500–1600: Deux écoles de peinture et leurs échanges.
Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 187
Alberti
In the prologue to his treatise, Alberti defines the architect as one who knows
“how to devise through his own mind and energy, and to realize by construc-
tion, whatever can be most beautifully fitted out for the noble needs of man.”
Included under the architect’s purview are such projects as the cutting through
rock, tunneling through mountains, building ships, and constructing bridges
and harbors. By undertaking these works, Alberti claims, the architect “has not
only met the temporary needs of man, but also opened up the new gateways to
all the provinces of the world. As a result, nations have been able to serve each
other by exchanging fruit, spices, jewels, experience, and knowledge, indeed
anything that might improve our health and standard of living.”9 Whereas
elsewhere in the prologue, Alberti associates architecture with settlement and
shelter from the elements, here architectural projects facilitate the mobility
and exchange of products. These goods are not limited to those having a con-
crete material value, such as spices. Those with a more immaterial, yet pre-
sumably even higher worth, such as experience and knowledge, can also be
transferred thanks to the architect’s intervention.
Alberti was not alone in articulating the importance of ports and harbors in
transporting the world’s variety. Francesco di Giorgio Martini devoted part of
his treatise on fortifications to that topic. In introducing the forms and parts of
ports, he noted that the diverse fruits and instruments of the earth are not to
be found in one place alone, and that, therefore, ships and ports provide the
means by which products can be transported from place to place with ease.10
Geneva: Droz, 2004; Philip L. Sohm, Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; Thomas Puttfarken, “The Dispute About
‘Disegno’ and ‘Colorito’ in Venice: Paolo Pino, Lodovico Dolce and Titian,” in Kunst und
Kunsttheorie 1400–1900, eds. Peter Ganz et al. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991, pp.
45–99; David Rosand, Painting in Cinquecento Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1982; and Sydney Freedberg, “Disegno Versus Colore in
Florentine and Venetian Painting of the Cinquecento,” in Florence and Venice: Comparisons
and Relations. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1980, pp. 309–322.
9 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil
Leach, and Robert Tavernor. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988, pp. 3–4, 114–116. Note that
Alberti compares the quality of variety (varietas) to spice: “Variety is always a most pleas-
ing spice, where distant objects agree and conform with one another; but when it causes
discord and difference between them, it is extremely disagreeable” (ibid., p. 24).
10 Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Trattati di architettura ingegneria e arte militare, vol. 3, ed.
Corrado Maltese. Milan: Edizioni il Polifilo, 1967, p. 485: “la natura ha ordinato che in
diverse parti della terra sieno diversi frutti con varie virtù e di diversi effetti, però che più
188 kim
The drawings accompanying the treatise set out his suggested typologies for
ports, including one based on the harbor of Ancona that employs a series of
sluice gates to protect ships from storms.11 Conforming to a rigid perspectival
scheme, Martini’s sketch demonstrates that the harbor, with its repetition of
the city’s loggia arcades and crenellated towers, is in effect an organic exten-
sion of the urban fabric that lay further inland (Fig. 2).
Martini’s reference to ports as well as to ships resonates with Alberti’s inclu-
sion of the latter as a form of architecture. De re aedificatoria does not restrict
the art of building to constructions wedded to a fixed site. The architect was
also a designer of ships, which have mobility as their primary function, “first to
transport you and your belongings; next [they] may provide wartime service.”
In fact, Alberti cited the claim that defines the ship as “nothing but a mobile
fortress.”12 A drawing in Roberto Valturio’s De re militari offers a contempora-
neous visual exposition of this comparison (Fig. 3). According to Alberti, the
two linked ships upon which are superimposed crenellated walls offer one
means by which war can be waged. Elsewhere in his treatise, Alberti refers to
the ship’s keel in his discussion of vaulting. This association was not purely
metaphorical, as is evident from the parallels in design between naval struc-
tures and the vaulting in S. Stefano in Venice, S. Miniato al Monte in Florence,
and the Cathedral of St. James in Šibenik, Dalmatia (current-day Croatia).13
Alberti invoked ancient authors who “maintained that the city, like a ship,
ought not to be too large, so that it rolls when empty, or too small, so that it is
cramped when full.” In addition, he mentioned that classical writers compared
the city to a ship enduring danger on the high seas, for the former is “constantly
cose contrarie non ponno comodamente essere in uno medesmo logo, ma siccome pos-
senti influenzie celesti diverse parti della terra movano, così in queste parti varii frutti et
instrumenti necessari o convenienti a l’omo de la natura si produce, di questo segue,
accioché li abitanti in una parte abbino le comodità di quelli che nell’altra abitano et e
converso, bisognò trovare all’omo mezzo per lo quale quelle mercanzie e frutti da logo a
logo si transportasse con comodità dell’omo.”
11 Ibid., p. 487: “[Et] apresso alla terra overo principio delli muri si facci due portoni da ser-
rare et aprire con saracinesche, accioché per lo flusso e reflusso del mare nel tempo delle
fortune, quelle aprendo, si possi li detti porti da ogni spurcizia o arena evacuare. Sì come
interviene nel porto di Ancona, che per spazio di tempo le parti utili del porto si riempino
e con spendio bisogna quelle evacuare, il che, essendo tale ordine dato, in tale spesa non
s’incorriria.”
12 Alberti, On the Art of Building, p. 136.
13 Ibid., p. 84 where Alberti cites Servius’s Commentary on Virgil 2.19 in making the associa-
tion between a ship’s keel and a vault. Alberti also refers to certain types of vaults as “sail
vaults” (ibid., p. 85), since they resemble a billowing sail.
Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 189
exposed to accidents and danger, through the negligence of its citizens and the
envy of its neighbors.” It should also be noted that Alberti dedicated an entire
separate treatise to the topic of ships alone, a manuscript known to Leonardo,
though now lost.14
14 Alberti, On the Art of Building, pp. 100, 136, 189. One of Alberti’s most intriguing archaeo-
logical enterprises involved raising fragments of Roman ships. More than 80 meters long,
these vessels had belonged to Caligula and had sunk to the bottom of Lake Nemi; see Ibid.,
pp. 136, 384 (n. 43), and see Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the
Italian Renaissance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 225–227, 248–252.
190 kim
Nor should you fail to consider that some places may not in themselves
be particularly inconvenient or treacherous, but are so unprotected that
when strangers arrive from some foreign land, they often bring with
them plague and misfortune; and this may be caused—not only by arms
and violence, or the work of some barbarian or savage hand: friendship
and hospitality may also prove harmful. Some whose neighbors desired
political change have themselves been put at risk by the upheaval and
turmoil. The Genoese colony of Pera, on the Black Sea, is always prone to
disease, because slaves are daily brought there sick of soul and neglected
of body, wasting away from idleness and filth.16
18 A. Roccatagliata, Notai genovesi in Oltremare. Atti rogati a Pera e Mitilene, vol. 1, Pera, 1408–
1490. Genoa: Collana Storica di fonti et studi, docs. 47, 48, 50, 53–56; quoted in Pistarino,
“The Genoese in Pera,” pp. 67–68.
19 Ibid., doc. 74. The letter offers a vivid account of the trade in the Black Sea by the Genoese,
who traded in, among other items, caviar. Torriglia describes a route from Kaffa to
Pera by ship which passed through Eregli, Porto Armeno, and Amasra. Cited in Pistarino,
“The Genoese in Pera,” p. 74.
20 It has been conjectured, in fact, that the illuminator of the map may have been a former
resident of Pera, sent in exile after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453.
On the map, a version of Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Isolario, see Ian R. Manners,
Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 193
of disease as well as bearers of wheat, salt, mastic, and caviar.21 In fact, in the
transit of ships and travelers throughout the Mediterranean, they were regu-
larly required to present bills of health to ensure that they as well as their
points of departure were free of plague.22 Alberti may have also been alluding
to the Genoese role in the spread of the Black Death. It has been suggested that
it was from another Genoese colony on the Black Sea—Kaffa—that the rats
bearing the disease came to Constantinople in 1347 and from there to the rest
of Europe.23
Later in his treatise, Alberti expands upon this injunction against the
mobility of foreigners by relating it antithetically to the order of a city. In his
discussion on the ornament to sacred buildings (see section 7.1), he states that
the principal ornament to any city resides in the organized layout of roads,
squares, and buildings. “For without this order,” Alberti declares, “there can be
nothing commodious, graceful, or noble.”24 However, this very order, is depen-
dent upon preventing, or at the very least, limiting mobility. He invokes Plato,
who in his Laws claims that in a well-ordered state, the law should forbid the
importation of foreign luxury. Furthermore, anyone younger than 40 years of
age should be prevented from going abroad, since contact with foreigners
would diminish memory and respect for ancestral frugality and traditional
customs. The word that Bartoli employs in this respect is contagione, a charged
term that suggests an equivalence between interacting with things foreign
and becoming infected with disease.25 From Plato’s recommendations, Alberti
thus draws the following conclusion: “It is best to take every precaution to
prevent the state from being corrupted through contact with foreigners.”
All the same, Alberti is no slave to his ancient authorities, asserting, “I do
not think that we ought to follow those who exclude strangers of every kind.”26
He himself preferred the system practiced by the Carthaginians, who, though
not hostile to foreigners, only gave them access to certain roads leading to the
forum while more private parts of the city were off limits, especially dockyards,
which were also the epicenter of military and technological knowledge.27
23 See Ole Jørgen Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History. Rochester,
NY: Boydell Press, 2004.
24 Alberti, On the Art of Building, p. 191. It has long been suggested that Alberti’s prescrip-
tions for city planning were made visually manifest in paintings of ideal cities, such as the
panel attributed to Luciano Laurana in Urbino (Galleria Nazionale delle Marche). On this
panel and related works, see L’uomo del Rinascimento. Leon Battista Alberti e le arti a
Firenze tra ragione e bellezza, eds. Cristina Acidini and Gabriele Morolli. Florence:
Mandragora, 435ff.
25 Alberti, L’architettura di Leonbatista Alberti, p. 201: “Et questo si fà perche egli accade che
per contagione de forestieri i Cittadini si sdimenticano di di in di, di quella parsimonia,
con la quale furono allevati da lor’ padri, & cominciano ad havere in idio quelle usanze
& costumi antichi. La qual’ cosa è potissima cagione, che le Città vadino peggiorando”
(my emphasis). On Renaissance notions of contagion, see V. Nutton, “The Reception of
Fracastoro’s Theory of Contagion: The Seed That Fell among Thorns?,” in Renaissance
Medical Learning: Evolution of a Tradition, eds. M.R. McVaugh and N.G. Siraisi.
Philadelphia: The History of Science Society, pp. 196–234.
26 Alberti, L’architettura di Leonbatista Alberti, p. 191.
Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 195
27 Here, Alberti may have been referring to Admiralty Island, where one can still detect the
traces of dry docks for war ships. The dockyard in Carthage, in the 2nd century bce, was
walled off with a double wall to prevent visiting voyagers from looking in. See John
Morrison and Robert Gardiner, The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since
Pre-Classical Times. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1995, p. 225.
28 Daniele Barbaro, I dieci libri dell’architettura tradutti et commentati, vol. 5. Venice, 1556,
p. 163, quoted in Tafuri, p. 120.
29 On restricted visits to the Arsenale, see Robert C. Davis, Shipbuilders of the Venetian
Arsenale: Workers and Workplace in the Preindustrial City. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1991, p. 94. There were many descriptions of the Arsenale, called the
Factory of Marvels (L’Officina delle Meraviglie) written by foreign visitors, especially in
the 17th century. In 1620, for instance, Peter Mundy, who traveled with the British ambas-
sador to Constantinople, noted that the shipyards were “the most worthy [of] notice of all
that is in Venice,” and an English guidebook of this period stated that the Arsenale was
“as big as the city of Canterbury”; Ibid., p. 4.
30 Ibid., p. 94.
31 Note also that Alberti recommends segregation in hospitals, where the sick are segre-
gated from the healthy; see Alberti, On the Art of Building, pp. 129–130.
32 On the segregation of foreigners in Renaissance urban planning, see Les étrangers dans la
ville: minorités et espace urbain du bas Moyen âge à l’époque moderne, eds. Jacques Bottin
and Donatella Calabi. Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1999; La Città
italiana e i luoghi degli stranieri: XIV–XVIII secolo, eds. Donatella Calabi and Paola Lanaro.
Rome: Laterza, 1998; Ennio Concina et al., La città degli ebrei: il ghetto di Venezia: architet-
tura e urbanistica. Venice: Albrizzi, 1991.
196 kim
This is not to say that Alberti does not acknowledge the migration of forms
or the mobility of objects themselves. He posits a linear narrative of architec-
tural progression plotted on the axes of time and place: its youthful develop-
ment in Asia, its flowering in Greece, and its full maturity in Italy.33 In addition,
he calls his Composite order the Italian order, which takes the best features
from the Corinthian and the Ionic, but is at the same time distinct from all
foreign imports.34 In his treatise, Alberti also periodically raises the issue of
transporting monumental building material and spolia.35 He cites Pliny, who
in his Natural History tells of an obelisk shipped along the Nile.36 From the
histories of Ammianus Marcellinus comes another story of an obelisk loaded
onto a 300 oar ship, conveyed along the Nile and across the sea, set up on roll-
ers, taken through the Ostian gate, and finally set up in the Circus Maximus.37
Drawing again from Marcellinus, Alberti recounts that in Seuleucia during the
time of Marc Anthony and Verus, soldiers plundered the temple and carried
off the statue of Apollo Conicus to Rome. Incidentally, avid to procure more
booty, they came upon a closed-up passage in the temple, which had been
magically sealed by Chaldean priests, and broke the seal, causing a noxious
vapor to be released and thus spreading disease from Persia far westward to
Gaul. This episode might well summarize Alberti’s stance toward mobility:
While trade and war can bring goods to the patria, unexpected and undesir-
able consequences—in this case, disease—can arise from contact with foreign
entities.38
Vasari
Although a view of Florence graces the title page of Vasari’s Lives, Vasari’s
frame of reference extends beyond that city to embrace the Mediterranean,
33 Alberti, On the Art of Building, p. 157. On the issue of “ethnic style” in architectural
discourse, see Alina A. Payne, “Vasari, Architecture and the Origins of Historicizing Art,”
RES 40 (2001): 51–76.
34 Alberti, On the Art of Building, p. 201.
35 For a historiographic overview of the concept of spolia, see Dale Kinney, “The Concept of
Spolia,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed.
Conrad Rudolph. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006, pp. 233–252.
36 Alberti, On the Art of Building, p. 164; and see Pliny, Natural History 36: 67–68.
37 Ibid., p. 164; and see Ammianus Marcellinus, The Histories 17: 14–15.
38 Alberti, On the Art of Building, p. 28. Cf. Ammianus Marcellinus, The Histories 23.6.24. On
Ammianus’ sources for this episode, see M. Kulikowski, “Marius Maximus in Ammianus
and the Historia Augusta,” Classical Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2007): 244–256.
Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 197
which constitutes part of his mental atlas; this is evident in various episodes of
the Lives, such as the arrival of Byzantine painters, Dello di Niccolò Delli’s
sojourn in Spain, Filippo Lippi’s shipwreck off the North African coast, or
Charles V’s Tunisian campaigns.39 Nonetheless, whereas for Alberti mobility
poses a threat to a city’s order, for Vasari it threatens the very inception of his
narrative—namely the birth, decline, and rebirth of the visual arts.
Indeed, Vasari portrays the travels of Florentine artists throughout Italy
and abroad to signal the upward progression of style. In doing so, he often
invokes the figure of Fame, who, by means of her trumpet, spreads Florentine
reputations across the globe.40 Moreover, in the opening lines of the Preface
to the Lives, Vasari confidently associates the origins of sculpture and paint-
ing with certain peoples: “I have no doubt that all writers hold the widespread
and most certain opinion that sculpture and painting were naturally and first
found by the people of Egypt, and that others attribute to the Chaldeans the
first sketches in marble and the first sculptural reliefs, just as they credit the
39 On these episodes, see David Young Kim, The Traveling Artist in the Italian Renaissance.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.
40 In the “Preface to the Entire Work,” Vasari states: “Solevano gli spiriti egregii in tutte le
azzioni loro, per uno acceso desiderio di gloria, non perdonare ad alcuna fatica, quan-
tunche gravissima, per condurre le opere loro a quella perfezzione che le rendesse stu-
pende e maravigliose a tutto il mondo; né la bassa fortuna di molti poteva ritardare i
loro sforzi del pervenire a’ sommi gradi, sì per vivere onorati e sì per lasciare ne’ tempi
avenire eterna fama d’ogni rara loro eccellenza.” Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti
architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri: nell’edizione per i
tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze 1550, 2 vols, eds. Luciano Bellosi and Aldo Rossi. Turin:
Einaudi, p. 8. (Henceforth, VBR.) Vasari himself illustrates the link between fame and
world-wide promulgation in his Chamber of Fame, a fresco cycle that he painted for his
house in Arezzo. There, the heavily foreshortened allegorical figure of Fame is seated
upon a globe while holding two trumpets, attributes indicative of her status as a dis-
seminator of reputation. In his autobiography Vasari described the Chamber of Fame:
“Nel mezzo è una Fama, che siede sopra la palla del mondo e suona una tromba d’oro,
gettandone via una di fuoco, finta per la Maledicenza; et intorno a lei sono con ordine
tutte le dette Arti con i loro strumenti in mano.” Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ piv eccellenti
pittori, scvltori, e architettori, vol. 2. Florence: Giunti, 1568, p. 991. (Henceforth, VG).
Vasari also depicted the allegorical figure of Fame in the Palazzo della Cancellaria, Sala
dei Cento Giorni, Rome (1546); Casa Vasari, Florence (1560); Museo del Palazzo
Vecchio, Florence (1560). For discussion on Vasari’s decorations for his homes in
Arezzo and Florence, see Liana Cheney, The Homes of Giorgio Vasari. New York:
P. Lang, 2006.
198 kim
Greeks with the invention of the brush and coloring.”41 However, in the rest
of the Preface, Vasari’s account of the origins of the visual arts is suffused with
doubt. Here, techniques, objects, and peoples wander back and forth in a diz-
zying fashion among Babylon, Chaldea, Egypt, Greece, and Rome.42 He ini-
tially identifies the origins of sculpture in Babylonian idols, but then
immediately contradicts this ascription in favor of Egyptian and Chaldean
statuary, only to backpedal once again and state that Ethiopians, in fact, cre-
ated the first sculptures. Next, he claims that sculpture was transferred to the
Egyptians, and from them to the Greeks; contradicting himself, due to a mis-
reading of Pliny, he also asserts that Greek artists brought sculpture to
Egypt.43 Furthermore, he frustrates any attempt to establish definite links
between Roman art and the region of what is now Italy, by stating that Rome,
ransacking the world for spolia, “became more ornate with foreign works of
art than with native ones.”44 Only Etruscan civilization provides firmer
ground, befitting Vasari’s promotion of Tuscany: in contrast to objects and
techniques that move frantically throughout the Mediterranean, Etruscan
41 VBR, p. 89: “Io non dubito punto che non sia quasi di tutti gli scrittori commune e certis-
sima opinione che la scultura insieme con la pittura fussero naturalmente dai populi
dello Egitto primieramente trovate, e ch’alcun’altri non siano che attribuischino a’ Caldei
le prime bozze de’ marmi et i primi rilievi delle statue, come dànno anco a’ Greci la inven-
zione del pennello e del colorire.”
42 VG, vol. 1, p. 69: “Ma con tutto che la nobilità di quest’arte fusse così in pregio, e’ non si sa
però ancora per certo chi le desse il primo principio, perché, come già si è di sopra ragion-
ato, ella si vede antichissima ne’ Caldei, certi la dànno all’Etiopi, et i Greci a se medesimi
l’attribuiscono. E puossi non senza ragione pensar ch’ella sia forse più antica appresso a’
Toscani.” Vasari’s discussion is reminiscent of Alberti’s exposition on painting’s origins in
De Pictura, Book II. See Leon Battista Alberti, “Della Pittura,” in Opere Volgari, ed. Cecil
Grayson. Bari: Laterza, 1973, p. 46: “Diceva Quintiliano ch’e’ pittori antichi soleano circon-
scrivere l’ombre al sole, e così indi poi si trovò questa arte cresciuta. Sono chi dicono un
certo Filocle egitto, e non so quale altro Cleante furono di questa arte tra i primi inventori.
Gli Egizi affermano fra loro bene anni se’ milia essere la pittura stata in uso prima che
fusse traslata in Grecia. Di Grecia dicono i nostri traslata la pittura dopo le vittorie di
Marcello avute di Sicilia. Ma qui non molto si richiede sapere quali prima fussero inven-
tori dell’arte o pittori, poi che non come Plinio recitiamo storie, ma di nuovo fabrichiamo
un’arte di pittura.”
43 G. Becatti, “Plinio e Vasari,” in Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Valerio Mariani. Naples:
Libreria scientifica editrice, 1971), pp. 173–182; Sarah Blake McHam, Pliny and the Artistic
Culture of the Italian Renaissance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
44 VBR, p. 92: “dove in spazio di tempo, avendo quasi spogliato il mondo, ridussero gli arte-
fici stessi e le egregie opere loro delle quali Roma poi si fece sì bella, che invero le diedero
grande ornamento le statue pellegrine più che le domestiche e particulari.”
Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 199
objects are extracted reassuringly from Tuscan soil, such as sarcophagi from
Chiusi or buccheri vase ware.45
Vasari cites two factors to account for the fraught paternity test of the arts:
time, which consumes all things; and the complete absence of written sources,
which, if they existed, might end any further debate over the question of ori-
gins.46 Here, Vasari is being disingenuous, for he makes ample use of written
sources, such as Pliny filtered through Ghiberti’s Commentarii and of visual
evidence, citing for example the Etruscan Chimera from Arezzo to reinforce
Tuscany’s antique origins.47 Vasari’s muddled account could be interpreted as
an attempt to question the validity of historical evidence, be it textual or visual;
however, his confusion lies not only in the discrepancy between these sources,
but in their very nature. Sporadic mobility from one region to the next compli-
cates and weakens the link between a specific art form and a specific geo-
graphic region. Broadly put, mobility threatens historical memory.
In this regard, it is important to consider that Medieval and Renaissance
thinkers inherited a highly locational notion of memory, as indicated by the
scores of treatises following the precepts of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, which
advised students to store information by associating it with a particular loca-
tion, a mnemonic device known as a memory palace.48 The genus of a lion, for
instance, might be recalled by mentally placing the image of that animal
within a house. As Albertus Magnus stated, “place is something the soul itself
makes for laying up images.”49 Magnus, among others, also declared that while
pastness was common to all things, it was only distinctions in place that
45 Ibid., p. 93: “E puossi non senza ragione pensare che ella sia forse più antica appresso a’
Toscani, come testifica el nostro Lion Batista Alberti e ne rende assai buona chiarezza la
maravigliosa sepoltura di Porsena a Chiusi…Come ancora ne può far medesimamente
fede il veder tutto il giorno molti pezzi di que’ vasi rossi e neri aretini fatti.” On the recep-
tion of Etruscan art in Vasari’s time, see Andrea Gáldy, The Chimera from Arezzo and
Renaissance Etruscology. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2006.
46 VBR, p. 94: “ma da che gli scrittori cominciorono a far memoria delle cose state inanzi a
loro, non potettono già parlare di quelli de’ quali non avevano potuto aver notizia, iùm-
modo che primi appo loro vengono a esser quelli de’ quali era stata ultima a perdersi la
memoria.”
47 VG, vol. 1, p. 70: “Ma che maggior chiarezza si può di ciò avere, essendosi a’ tempi nostri,
cioè l’anno 1554, trovata una figura di bronzo—fatta per la Chimera di Bellerofonte—nel
far fossi, fortificazione e muraglia d’Arezzo? nella quale figura si conosce la perfezzione di
quell’arte essere stata anticamente appresso i Toscani, come si vede alla maniera etrusca.”
48 On Cicero’s locational notion of memory, see Frances Yates, The Art of Memory. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1966, 6ff.
49 The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, eds. Mary Carruthers
and Jan M. Ziolkowski. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, p. 7.
200 kim
50 See Ibid., pp. 113, 103ff for further discussion and bibliography on Boncompagno da Signa’s
Rhetorica novissima (1235).
51 The text and woodcuts in Dolce’s treatise borrow heavily from Johannes Romberch’s
Congestorium artificiosae memoriae. Venice: Melchiorre Sessa, 1533. See Lodovico Dolce,
Dialogo del modo di accrescere e conserver la memoria (1562), ed. Andrea Torre. Pisa: Scuola
normale superiore, 2001, p. 73. Lina Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory. Literary and
Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press, trans. Jeremy Parzen. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2001, p. 254.
52 Cicero, Rhetorica Ad Herennium, trans. Harry Caplan. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1954, p. 213.
53 Carruthers and Ziolkowski, The Medieval Craft of Memory, p. 236.
54 Carruthers and Ziolkowski, The Medieval Craft of Memory, p. 199. In their comments on
meditative prayer, theologians such as Bernard of Clairvaux defined curiositas with a
wandering mental state, in contrast to being attentus with the mind fixed upon a parti
cular place.
55 In medieval memory treatises, the oft-cited arca referred to chests that stored and trans-
ported books. By extension, Hugh of St. Victor employs the phrase arca sapientiae, or ark
of wisdom to refer to the storehouse of knowledge. Carruthers also suggests that these
Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 201
how accidents such as plagues and especially floods could extinguish memo-
ries. In this vein, perhaps it is possible to read Leonardo’s flood drawings not
only as manifestations of his hydraulic interests but also as meditations on the
loss of memory.56
This is not to say that all types of mobility threaten the preservation of his-
torical memory. Francesc Eiximenis, a 14th-century Catalan writer, envisioned
his memory device as a pilgrimage route that proceeded from Rome to Santiago
via Florence, Genoa, Avignon, Barcelona, Saragossa, and Toledo. In each of
these cities, he places topics that are characteristic of that locale: ideas about
money in Florence, merchants in Genoa, on the famous bridge of Saint-Bénézet
in Avignon, and so on.57 Part of Hugh of St. Victor’s memory scheme consists of
places associated with the path of the biblical Exodus, such as Ramses in Egypt
and Jericho.58 Giulio Camillo’s famed memory theater guided the visitor in
an ordered progression through seven gates, gangways, and levels as he
approaches the secrets of the Sephiroth, the supercelestial world of divine
emanations.59 Thus, it is not mobility per se but rather people’s wandering
back and forth or vagrancy that pose a threat to memory, and by extension, to
historical writing. The migration of art forms from one place to another dis-
solves distinctions between places; and consequently, fixed locational mem-
ory and secure historical knowledge are lacking.60
concurrent meanings of arca were realized in medieval illuminations. For instance, the
representation Noah’s ark in the Ashburnham Pentateuch, dated to the late 6th or early
7th century, is depicted in the form of a wooden chest akin to that used for the storage of
books. See Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 51.
56 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. Rome: Antonio Blado, 1531,
p. 339: “Che la variazione delle sette e delle lingue, insieme con l’accidente de’ diluvii o
della peste, spegne le memorie delle cose.” Cf. Ibid., p. 343: “E questo viene o per peste, o
per fame, o per una inondazione d’acque: e la piú importante è questa ultima, sí perché la
è piú universale, sí perché quegli che si salvono sono uomini tutti montanari e rozzi, i
quali, non avendo notizia di alcuna antichità, non la possono lasciare a’ posteri.” On
Leonardo’s so-called deluge drawings, see Frank Fehrenbach, Licht und Wasser. Zur
Dynamik Naturphilosophischer Leitbilder im Werk Leonardo da Vincis. Tübingen: Tübinger
Studien zur Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte, 1997, pp. 291–332.
57 Medieval Craft, p. 199.
58 Carruthers, The Book of Memory, p. 302.
59 On Camillo’s memory theater, see Yates, The Art of Memory, pp. 129–159.
60 On the connection ex negativo between memory and historical writing, see Machiavelli,
Discorsi, p. 343: “E che queste inondazioni, peste e fami venghino, non credo sia da dubi-
tarne, sí perché ne sono piene tutte le istorie, sí perché si vede questo effetto della oblivi-
one delle cose, sí perché e’ pare ragionevole che e’ sia.”
202 kim
Lodovico Dolce
In contrast to the writings of Alberti and Vasari, Dolce’s Dialogo della pittura
does not deal explicitly with the mobility of artists and objects in the eastern
Mediterranean.61 Rather, mobility is only implied, suggested through his pass-
ing awareness of the Ottoman Empire—more specifically, Ottoman custom
and costume become counterparts to Dolce’s objects of praise, Venice and
Titian. For example, one speaker in Dolce’s dialogue, Aretino, praises Titian’s
work in Venice’s Great Council Hall as well as his collaboration with Giorgione
on the painted façade of Fondaco dei Tedeschi; but he abruptly ends his speech
with the following tirade: “In the present context I refrain from saying anything
else, only that, among the barbarous customs of the infidel races, the one
which is the worst is their refusal to allow the making in their country of any
painted or sculpted image. Furthermore, painting is necessary; for without its
assistance (as people have come to realize) we would not possess either a place
to live in or any of those things that are associated with civilized custom.”62
Aretino makes his point with a forceful turn of phrase. He emphatically
repeats the word che that introduces his damning observations (“che non
comportano, che in fra di loro”) and points to the cultural divide with the
glaring demonstrative pronoun loro (“them”).63 While it is true that this pas-
sage may allude to the contemporary debates at the Council of Trent on the
use of images, also in play is the widespread assumption concerning the
Islamic prohibition on images and Ottoman visual tradition.64 Dolce was
61 Dolce even decries or deemphasizes the journeys of Sebastiano del Piombo and Titian
within the Italian peninsula, namely both artists’ sojourns in Rome. On this issue, see
Kim, The Traveling Artist; Michel Hochmann, Venise et Rome 1500–1600.
62 Lodovico Dolce, Lodovico Dolce’s L’aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento,
trans. and ed. Mark W. Roskill. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000, pp. 116–117: “Ma
di questa parte non accade dire altro, se non che, fra’ costumi barbari degl’infede li,
questo è il peggiore, che non comportano che in fra di loro si faccia alcuna imagine di
pittura né di scoltura. È ancora la pittura necessaria per ciò, che senza il suo aiuto noi non
avressimo (come s’è potuto conoscere) né abitazione né cosa alcuna che appartenga al
l’uso civile.”
63 On the humanist rhetoric of barbarism directed against the Ottoman Turks, see James
Hankins, “Renaissance Crusaders: Humanist Crusade Literature in the Age of Mehmed
II,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995): 111–207; Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West.
Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2006.
64 For a brief discussion of this passage in relation to Protestant iconoclasm, see Gudrun
Rhein, Der Dialog über die Malerei: Lodovico Dolces Traktat und die Kunsttheorie des 16.
Jahrhunderts. Cologne: Böhlau, 2008, pp. 260n114, 263n124. On the “myth” of aniconism,
Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 203
hardly indifferent toward Ottoman culture, having published the Lettere del
gran Mahumeto imperadore de’ turchi, a translation of Laudivio Zacchia de
Vezzano’s compilation of epistles supposedly written by the Ottoman Sultan.65
For all the art-historical scholarly attention paid to the Dialogo, it is striking
that this preeminently “Venetian” work shares the same octavo format and
title-page layout as the volume of epistles compiled by the “Great Turk.”
Implied is a reading public whose interests spanned the gamut from Titian as
a painter to the personality, however fabricated, of Mehmed the Conqueror.66
However, within the dialogue itself, Dolce fashions a selective version of
Venetian painting—specifically one that remains silent on Gentile Bellini’s
diplomatic mission in 1479 to the Ottoman court to paint the portrait of Sultan
Mehmed II. Even Vasari, who usually shortchanges Venice in his Lives, men-
tions this event. It is true that Vasari declares that painting “was prohibited by
Islamic law”; but in the same sentence, he describes that the Sultan reacted to
Bellini’s naturalistic style with “great stupor.”67 What is more, 15th- and 16th-
century Venetian sources, many of which were known to Dolce, perpetuated
the story of Bellini’s travel.68 To give but one instance, Dolce’s friend Francesco
see David Freedberg, The Power of Images. Studies in the History and Theory of Response.
Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989, pp. 54–81. On Islamic injunctions against rep-
resentations of the Prophet, see the classic essay by Terry Allen, “Aniconism and Figural
Representation in Islamic Art,” In Five Essays on Islamic Art. Sebastopol, CA: Solipsist,
1988, pp. 17–37. On artistic relations between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, see
Gülru Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005; Bellini and the East, eds. Campbell and Chong; Eric
Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early
Modern Mediterranean. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006; Venice and
the Islamic world, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2007.
65 On Zacchia’s compilation, see Franz Babinger, Laudivius Zacchia, Erdichter der “Epitolae
Magni Turci” (Neapel 1473 U. O.). Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1960. On Dolce’s translation of this compilation, see Ronnie H. Terpening,
Lodovico Dolce, Renaissance Man of Letters. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997,
pp. 11, 265.
66 See Anselm Fremmer, Venezianische Buchkultur: Bücher, Buchhändler und Leser in der
Frührenaissance. Köln: Böhlau, 2001.
67 On Gentile Bellini’s portrait of Sultan Mehmed II, see Bellini and the East, pp. 78–79, with
further bibliography. Vasari, Le Vite, vol. 1, eds. Paolo Rossi and Luciano Bellosi, p. 435: “E se
ben tal cosa era proibita loro per la legge maumettana, ella fu pure di tanto stupore nel
presentarla, che non essendo usato il signore vederne, gli parve grandissimo magistero.”
68 For 15th-century sources documenting Bellini’s journey to the Ottoman court, see
Jürg Meyer zur Capellen, Gentile Bellini. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1985; still
204 kim
[The painter] should consider the qualities of his subjects; and he should
consider to the same degree questions of nationality, dress, setting, and
period. If, for instance he should be depicting a military action of Caesar
or Alexander the Great, it is inappropriate that he should arm the sol-
diers in the fashion of the present. And he should put one kind of armor
on the Macedonians and another kind on the Romans…if he wanted to
represent Caesar, it would be ridiculous if he placed on his head a Turkish
turban, or one of our caps, or indeed a Venetian one.71
pertinent as well is Louis Thausne, Gentile Bellini et Sultan Mohammed II: notes sur le
séjour du peintre vénitien à Constantinople (1478–1480). Paris: E. Leroux, 1888.
69 Francesco Sansovino, Venetia, Citta Nobilissima et Singolare. Venice: Domenico Farri, 1581,
fol. 127v: “Gentilis patriae dedit haec monumenta Belinus/Othomano accitus, munere
factus Eques.”
70 On portrait medals of Mehmed II, see Susan Spinale, “The Portraits Medals of Ottoman
Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451–81).” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2003 and Bellini and the
East, 66ff.
71 Dolce, Lodovico Dolce’s L’aretino, pp. 118–119: “Di qui terrà sempre riguardo alla qualità
delle persone, né meno alle nazioni, a’ costumi, a’ luoghi et a’tempi; talché, se depingerà
un fatto d’arme di Cesare o di Alessandro Magno, non conviene che armi i soldati nel
Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 205
modo che si costuma oggidì, et ad altra guisa farà le armature a Macedoni, ad altra a
Romani; e se gli verrà imposto carico di rappresentare una battaglia moderna, non si
ricerca che la divisi all’antica. Così, volendo raffigurar Cesare, saria cosa ridicola ch’ei gli
mettesse in testa uno involgio da Turco o una berretta delle nostre, o pure alla viniziana.”
72 On the Renaissance tension between license and decorum, see Alina A. Payne, The
Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999. On the reception of Horace’s precepts of decorum in Renaissance art theory, see
also David Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981, pp. 129–143. Dolce’s rendering of the passage in the vernacular,
with some variations, is found in at least two editions of Horace’s works, La poetica
d’Horatio tradotta per messer Lodovico Dolce. Venice, 1536 and I dilettevoli sermoni, altri-
menti satire, e le morali epistole di Horatio. Venice, 1559.
73 Dolce, Lodovico Dolce’s L’aretino, pp. 124–125: “Se collo di cavallo a capo umano/Alcun pit-
tor per suo capricc io aggiunga,/Quello di varie piume ricoprendo;/E porga a l corpo suo
forma sì strana,/Che fra diverse qual ità di membra/Abbia la coda di difforme pesce/E la
testa accompagni un dolce aspetto/Di vaga e leggiadrissima donzel la:/A veder cosa ta l
sendo chiamati,/Potreste, amici, ritener il riso?”
74 On Venetian depictions of Ottomans, see Julian Raby, Venice, Dürer, and the Oriental
Mode. Totowa, NJ: Islamic Art Publications, 1982; Bronwen Wilson, “Reflecting on the
Turk in Late Sixteenth-Century Venetian Portrait Books,” Word and Image 19, no. 1–2
(2003): 38–58; Ibid., “Reproducing the Contours of Venetian Identity in Sixteenth-Century
Costume Books,” Studies in iconography 25 (2004): 221–274.
206 kim
As Giulio Ballino stated in his De Disegni delle piu illustri città (1569), a compila-
tion of urban views, Venice was “inhabited by an infinite multitude of people
who come together for commerce from various nations, in fact from the entire
world… They use all languages and are dressed in different ways”;75 or, as inti-
mated by Alberti in his preface to De re aedificatoria, knowledge of the foreign
depends upon mobility. Yet in his Dialogo, Dolce calls for regulation of the
possible indecorous effects of such mobility. Later commentators would
reiterate the need to temper variety by evoking the costume of the Turk. One
of the speakers in Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano’s Dialogo nel quale
si ragiona degli errori e degli abusi de’ Pittori circa l’istorie (1564) declares,
“it would not be good if [the painter] gave the costume of a Turk to the Pope,
and to the Turk the Pope’s costume.”76 Another speaker in Gilio’s dialogue
criticizes those painters who “have confused costume, such that one does not
recognize any longer the Greek from the Latin, the Turk from the French, nor
the Spanish from the Arab.”77
Conclusion
Alberti, Vasari, and Dolce expressed ambivalence, and at times even hostility,
toward the mobility of persons, objects, and artistic knowledge throughout the
Mediterranean. They regarded mobility as a cause of contaminating urban
order, historical memory, and artistic style. As much as they pitted region
against region within Italy (Florence vs. Venice), this antagonism reached a
greater pitch with respect to the shores of the non-Italian Mediterranean. This
negative attitude often stands in contrast to the visual evidence offered by
works of art themselves. If theory is etymologically rooted in the act of seeing
or contemplating, then these sources demonstrate how selective vision can be.
75 n.p.: “[E] da infinita moltitudine di gente habitate, che vi concorre da varie nationi, anzi
di tutto il mondo, ad essercitarvi la mercatantia. Usanvisi tutti i linguaggi; & vestevisi in
diverse maniere”; quoted in Wilson (2004, p. 221).
76 Giovanni Andrea Gilio, “Dialogo nel quale si ragiona degli errori e degli abusi de’ Pittori
circa l’istorie…,” in Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento. Fra Manierismo e Controriforma, ed.
Paola Barocchi. Bari: Laterza, 1961, p. 20: “Però il prudente pittore deve sapere accomo-
dare le cose convenevoli a la persona, al tempo et al luogo: perché non sarebbe bene che
al Papa si desse l’abito del Turco, né al Turco l’abito del Papa.”
77 Gilio, “Dialogo,” p. 50: “Risero tutti a questo e, ripigliando M. Francesco il ragionamento,
disse”: “Io non veggo minor confugione negli abiti che negli sforzi; e molti, pensando dar
vaghezza a l’opere loro, hanno tanto confuso l’abito, che non si conosce più il Greco dal
Latino, né ‘l Turco dal Franzese né lo Spagnolo da l’Arabo.”
Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 207
Works of art and their geographic origins, their alleged ties to certain places,
and their displacement from locations have provoked and stimulated dis-
course and criticism. The negative view of mobility stands in contrast to an
underlying assumption of current approaches to global art history, which all
too often conceive mobility as a frame to understand productive and cele-
brated cross-cultural exchange. However, any new investigation of mobility as
a topic must grapple with disavowal and the fraught art theoretical legacy left
to us by our forebears.
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Sixteenth-Century Art Literary Sources 209
∵
Chapter �
Ioli Kalavrezou
The focus of this paper is a luxury textile produced in the second half of the
13th century and presented as a gift to an Italian embassy from the Republic of
Genoa, which had visited the Byzantine emperor in Nikaia (Nicaea) to negoti-
ate a diplomatic treaty.1 I chose to discuss this object here because it is one of
the few surviving portable objects that must have played an important role in
its historical context. The textile is unique in that it has a significant political
association with the site of the Byzantine imperial palace at Nymphaion, in the
eastern Mediterranean, where an event occurred that almost shifted the power
dynamics that existed at that time. This object moved from the East to the
West, to Genoa, to be displayed at the altar as an antependium in the cathedral
of the city (Fig. 1).
It is also one of those objects that through its images provides an example of
how a specific site or place can activate larger meanings. From the beginning,
this textile was intended for a non-Byzantine viewer with a different aesthetic
and cultural appreciation, and made with attention to that viewer; but at the
same time it displays the features most desired and sought after by
1 Much has been written about this historical event. Mostly it is associated with the history of
the Nicaean empire and thus features in a variety of analyses of this period. E.g., Deno J.
Geanakoplos, Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West, 1258–1282: A Study in Greco-Latin
Relations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959, pp. 47–74. Idem, “Greco-Latin Relations
on the Eve of the Byzantine Restoration: the Battle of Pelagonia, 1259,” Dumbarton Oaks
Papers 7 (1953): 99–141. Peter Schreiner, “Bisanzio e Genova: Tentativo di un’analisi delle
relazioni politiche, commerciali, e culturali,” in Studia Byzantino-Bulgarica (Miscellanea
Bulgarica 2). Vienna: Verein “Freunde des Hauses Wittgenstein,” 1986, pp. 135–136. Michael
Angold, A Byzantine Government in Exile: Government and Society under the Laskarids of
Nicaea, 1204–1261. London: Oxford University Press, 1975. Ruth Macrides, “The New
Constantine and the New Constantinople—1261?,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
6 (1980): 13–49. Eadem, trans., George Akropolites: The History. Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007. For further discussion and bibliography see Cecily J. Hilsdale, “The
Imperial Image at the End of Exile: The Byzantine Embroidered Sink in Genoa and the Treaty
of Nymphaion (1261),” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 64 (2012): 151–199.
Fig. � Embroidered silk peplos of Saint Lawrence and associated saints, 1261. Genoa,
Museo di Sant’Agostino (photo: c. hilsdale).
Westerners that are specifically Byzantine in all their innate forms and
materials.
The textile is a peplos, or, as it is referred to in the Italian sources, a pallio, a
large piece of porphyry silk, which measures 1.28 × 3.74 meters (4 feet
23/8 inches × 12 feet 4 inches).2 This textile is not one of the well-known
Byzantine woven silks with designs and motifs that create an overall repeated
pattern often presented by the Byzantines in gift exchanges.3 It is a silk textile
that has been embroidered with gold, silver, and silk thread to create detailed
2 Since this paper was presented on January 17, 2009 in Florence, a lengthy paper on this peplos
was submitted by Cecily Hilsdale to the editorial board of the Dumbarton Oaks Papers for
publication. Most of what I discuss here was already presented at the oral presentation of
this paper in Florence. Since I am however on the editorial board of Dumbarton Oaks I have
in the meantime read Hilsdale’s paper, which appeared in the DOP 64 issue of 2012 with the
title “The Imperial Image at the End of Exile: The Byzantine Embroidered Silk in Genoa and
the Treaty of Nymphaion (1261)” (n. 1). Our interests on this textile vary. My goal in this paper
was to discuss the peplos in the overall context of exchange and circulation of objects and the
creation of forms developed for the historical circumstances. It is not a study of the peplos as
such. In many places we mention very similar ideas however, something not avoidable since
we are discussing the same object. I will be referring to Hilsdale’s publication, since it is a
much more detailed study of this object with all the relevant bibliography, which I do not
need to repeat here.
3 The process of gift giving and gift-exchange has become in recent years a topic of art histori-
cal discourse and analysis. Numerous publications on this topic have appeared as for exam-
ple Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner and Bernhard Jussen, eds., Negotiating the Gift: Pre-modern
Figurations of Exchange. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003. For the Byzantine
field a few examples suffice: Telemachos C. Lounghis, “Die byzantinischen Gesandten als
Vermittler materieller Kultur vom 5. bis ins 11. Jahrhundert,” in Kommunikation zwischen
Orient und Okzident: Alltag und Sachkultur: Internationaler Kongress Krems an der Donau,
8 bis 9 Oktober 1992 (Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 215
narrative scenes of the life of Saint Lawrence, the patron saint of the city of
Genoa. The scenes closely follow Byzantine style and composition, but they
have been given Latin inscriptions identifying the events, specifically made for
the Genoese. What makes this object special beyond its luxurious quality and
preciousness, is the fact that it exemplifies the idea of portability and demon-
strates how an object could embody the shared cultural imagination, which
emerges between the giver and the recipient of a gift. As historian David Jacoby
has observed, textiles were the primary agents of artistic transfers, especially
in the field of imagery. Because they are easily transportable, their designs
have often inspired further artistic creations and through copying or emula-
tion they were applied onto artifacts of different media, such as ceramics, me-
talwork, wall paintings, and so on.4 This textile, however, falls in a different
category. It was not a textile for commercial use but was created for a specific
purpose and with a specific visual story to tell. The imagery had to be recogniz-
able to the recipient while also maintaining its identity as part of the culture
that produced it, which also gave it its desirability. The silk peplos is thus repre-
sentative of the hybridity or fusion often generated by the circulation of
objects and their dissemination from east to west and/or west to east in the
Mediterranean.5 This mobility gave rise to new creations in images and trans-
formations of forms, which were dependent on specific conditions and cul-
tural exchanges in this multicultural basin.
Since this object is unique, it is a rather rare example of the exceptional
attention that can be observed in the creation of its images and the meaning
they were intended to convey. It is an example of the role that portable objects
provided in cross-cultural exchanges in the Mediterranean world during the
late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Central to the discussion and analysis of
this textile is the aspect of mobility and circulation of the object, of its imagery
and its agency. Its inherent cultural context, its shape (or form), its images, and
its inscriptions all were elements that had the potential to affect their new
environment or, as in this case, to transfer an ideology to its new environment.
Through this process, the object, which plays a leading role in those exchanges,
becomes the carrier and agent in defining new cultural boundaries. In the
Mediterranean region by the 13th century, the circulation of goods, people,
works of art, and techniques was made easier by highly developed communi-
cation networks through maritime exchanges. Not only did exchanges and
trade take place by the presence of merchant marines, but also through the
navies of a number of different groups that roamed the Mediterranean. The
peplos was created after the Fourth Crusade, during a period when the West
had developed a greater presence and involvement in the Mediterranean
world, creating a complex trade network between the East and the West.6
Silk textiles were typical valuable gifts that the Byzantines presented to dis-
tinguished foreign individuals. They knew well how desirable these textiles
were so that the combination of value, cultural prestige, and portability gave
these silks a special place in the world of gift giving for the Byzantines.7 For
example, we hear that silk textiles were part of the provisions an imperial mili-
tary expedition would make sure to carry along, in case circumstances required
to present them to important foreigners in a diplomatic exchange. The knowl-
edge of how sought-after these textiles were made them valuable gifts in these
campaigns.8
At the time of production of this peplos, the capital of the Byzantine Empire,
Constantinople, was in the hands of the Latins—that is, Venetians and other
western Europeans. The Byzantine Empire in its reduced form, with the city of
Nikaia as its capital, was one of the Byzantine successor states that resulted
after the loss of Constantinople. Of the three successor states established after
1204—the other two being Trebizond and Epiros—the empire of Nikaia was
the strongest and closest to the Latin Empire of Constantinople and was even-
tually in the best position to attempt to regain the capital and reestablish the
Byzantine Empire.
In this period, Genoa, located on one of the western shores of the
Mediterranean, was a crucial naval force. However, it was only second to the
Venetians, who controlled most of the harbors and commercial enterprises in
6 Neither the object nor the historical circumstances are connected with Dalmatia, which
would have been desirable. Also in this later period there was not enough material evidence
and specific documentation that would had allowed to address the topic of “The Object as
Event” between Dalmatia and Byzantium.
7 Jacoby, “Silk Economics,” pp. 197–240.
8 John F. Haldon, ed. and trans., Constantine Porphyrogenitus: Three Treatises on Imperial
Military Expeditions. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1990, pp. 108–111.
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 217
the eastern Mediterranean. In addition in the year 1258 the Genoese were
severely defeated in Acre by the Venetians and expelled from that area and its
port. Their position in the eastern Mediterranean was thus rather weakened,
so that their ruler, Guglielmo Boccanegra, decided to seek an ally in the east,
and turned to the Byzantine emperor for assistance.9 That same year, the
Byzantine emperor Theodore II Laskaris died and was succeeded by his son
John IV Laskaris, who, as he was still a child, was under the regency of the
general Michael Palaiologos. In 1259, however, Michael usurped the throne
and had himself proclaimed co-emperor, as Michael VIII.10
Michael needed himself assistance to secure his position and gain legitimi-
zation, but also he needed help to realize his plans to undertake the restora-
tion of the Byzantine Empire by first re-capturing Constantinople. Thus, in
1260, Genoese ambassadors arrived at the court of Michael VIII to negotiate
an agreement between the two interested parties, resulting in the Treaty of
Nymphaion, a Byzantine-Genoese alliance with the goal of recovering
Constantinople from the hands of the Latins.11 The ambassadors stayed
through the winter as guests of the emperor at the Palace at Nymphaion (today
Kemalpasa), and on March 13, 1261, a first treaty was authorized with the final
ratification and signing to take place in Genoa on July 10. For the final conclu-
sion of the pact and the signing three Greek ambassadors were sent to Genoa
by the emperor.12 This treaty asked of the Genoese to contribute toward the
destruction of the Latin Empire of Constantinople—i.e., essentially their rival
the Venetians—with the assistance of naval support provided by a fleet of up
to 50 ships, and in exchange the Genoese would receive access to trade on the
9 Maximilianus Treu, ed., Manuelis Holoboli Orationes, 2 vols. Programm des königlichen
Victoria-Gymnasiums Potsdam: Krämer, 1906, pp. 51–77. Peter Schreiner, “Zwei Denkmäler
aus der frühen Paläologenzeit: Ein Bildnis Michaels VIII und der genueser Pallio,” in
Festschrift für Klaus Wessel zum 70. Geburtstag: in memoriam, ed. Marcell Restle. Munich:
Editio Maris, 1988, pp. 249–258.
10 For the details of these historical events see references in footnote 1.
11 This is not the first time that diplomatic relations of this type were negotiated between
the Byzantines and the Genoese. In the mid-12th century under Manuel Komnenos a
similar alliance was formed regarding also trade privileges resulting from the rivalries
between the Italian cities. However the stipulations of this agreement were not honored
by either side. Paul Magdalino, “The Maritime Neighborhoods of Constantinople:
Commercial and Residential Functions, Sixth to Twelfth Century,” Dumbarton Oaks
Papers 54 (2000): 209–226. See also: David Jacoby, “Italian Privileges and Trade in
Byzantium before the Fourth Crusade: A Reconsideration,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales
24 (1994): 349–369. Klaus-Peter Matschke, “Commerce, Trade, Markets and Money:
Thirteenth–Fifteenth Centuries,” in Economic History of Byzantium, vol. 2, ed. Angeliki
Laiou. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2002, pp. 771–806.
12 Geanakoplos, Emperor Michael Palaeologos, pp. 85–86.
218 kalavrezou
coastal cities of the Byzantine Empire as far north as the Black Sea, which at
that time was mainly in the hands of the Venetians. In addition, the Byzantine
emperor agreed to send 500 hyperpyra (gold coins) and two silk pallia to the
municipal government of the Commune of Genoa every year for 14 years, and
one silk pallium and 60 hyperpyra to the archbishop.13 What is surprising in
this agreement is the prominence of the silks in connection with the gold
coins, and the yearly demand of them, revealing how important silk textiles
had become as items of luxury and prestige.14
However none of the pallia mentioned in the treaty survives or can be iden-
tified. The pallio or peplos that served as an altar frontal for the main altar of
the cathedral of San Lorenzo in Genoa (now in the Museo di Sant’Agostino)
was formerly believed to have been one of those mentioned in the agreement,
but closer attention to the only surviving Greek text, which discusses this tex-
tile, makes it quite clear that it was the parting gift to the Genoese ambassa-
dors by the emperor Michael Palaeologos when they were leaving Nymphaion
to return to Genoa.15 It is also important to note here that this silk peplos is a
much more valuable textile than those mentioned in the treaty and an
extremely distinguished gift. It was embroidered with gold thread, and much
thought and study has gone into the preparation of the numerous scenes with
multiple figures, a kind of narrative in vignettes, related to the life of Saint
Lawrence, not the most familiar saint to the Byzantines.
However, shortly after the ratification of the treaty in Genoa, the Byzantines
led by general Strategopoulos reconquered Constantinople on July 25 before
any of these arrangements agreed upon in the Treaty could be implemented.
Of the 50 ships mentioned in the Treaty, only 16 were sent out, which never
reached the city.16 The official arrival in Constantinople of Michael VIII
Palaiologos, a much celebrated event, took place with a triumphal entry into
the city on August15, the feast day of the Virgin’s Koimesis, in which the icon
of the Virgin Mary, the defender and protector of Constantinople, also pre-
ceded the emperor in his processional entry into the capital.17
13 The whole discussion of the Treaty and the relevant bibliography can be found summa-
rized in Hilsdale, “Imperial Image,” pp. 157–160.
14 On the value of materials within a cultural context in Byzantium see: Ioli Kalavrezou,
“Light and the Precious Object, or Value in the Eyes of the Byzantines,” in The Construction
of Value in the Ancient World, eds. John Papadopoulos and Gary Urton. UCLA: The Cotsen
Institute for Archaeology Press, 2012, chapter 17, pp. 354–369 and 488–491. Jacoby, “Silk
Economics,” pp. 197–240.
15 Schreiner, “Zwei Denkmäler,” p. 253.
16 Geanakoplos, Emperor Michael Palaeologos, pp. 86–87.
17 Macrides, “New Constantine,” p. 13.
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 219
18 Treu, Orationes, 1:30–50, encomium begins on 46; idem on Holobolos “Manuel Holobolos,”
Byzantinische Zeitschrift 5 (1896): 538–559: Xenophon A. Siderides, “Μανουήλ Ὁλοβώλου,
Ἐγκώμιον εἰς τον αυτοκράτορα Μιχαὴλ Ηʹ τον Παλαιολόγον,” Ἐπετηρὶς Ἑταιρείας Βυζαντινῶν
Σπουδῶν 3 (1926): 168–191; Ruth Macrides, “Holobolos,” in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium,
vol. 2, ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan, p. 940.
19 Macrides, “New Constantine,” pp. 16–20.
20 Anca, “Ehrerweisung durch Geshenke,” pp. 185–193.
220 kalavrezou
21 Since the Genoese were the ones who approached the Byzantine emperor this was to be
expected.
22 Anca, “Ehrerweisung durch Geshenke,” pp. 197–188.
23 Treu, Orationes, 1:47.8–10. Siderides, “Μανουήλ Ὁλοβώλου,” p. 188. Most often these kinds
of textiles had only parts embroidered, mostly the section of the body with its garments.
The face and skin sections were painted.
24 David Jacoby, “Genoa, Silk Trade and Silk Manufacture in the Mediterranean Region
(ca. 1100–1300),” in Tessuti, oreficerie, miniature in Liguria, XIII–XV secolo, Atti dei Convegni
3, eds. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti, Clario Di Fabio and Mario Marcenaro. Bordighera:
Istituto internazionale di studi liguri, 1999, pp. 11–40, esp. 24; Jacoby, “Silk Economics,”
p. 220.
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 221
Byzantium was known for. At the same time it offered the aspect of portability
that helped disseminate such materials more easily.
Thus, this large, gold-embroidered textile was very rare, and from what we
now know is the largest and one of the few of this type that is still extant.25 It is
exceptional for its good condition, the high quality of its craftsmanship (in
terms of the silk and the embroidery), its large size, and, most important, the
theme that is represented by means of the figural embroidery: the life of Saint
Lawrence, rare in Byzantium and probably unique in this kind of portable
object. The embroidery is in gold and silver couched metal thread with only
the flesh parts worked in silk. This technique of embroidery is typical of
Byzantine workmanship and is known from a number of textiles that were
bestowed as gifts, especially from the 12th century, often described in dedica-
tory epigrams emphasizing the precious materials with which these embroi-
dered cloths were made and adorned.26
The embroidered scenes of this historiated textile are organized so as to cre-
ate two equal registers of 10 scenes both at the upper and at the lower registers
(see Figs. 2 and 3). The scenes depict the events from the life of Saint Lawrence
that brought about his martyrdom and death. Saint Lawrence, the principal
figure in this narrative, is the patron saint of the cathedral of the city of Genoa.
Two other figures, the saints Pope Sixtus II and Hippolytus, are also repre-
sented, since they participated in the events narrated, although their role here
is to add further glory to the deeds of Saint Lawrence. Although Saint Lawrence
has a place in the Synaxarion of the Orthodox church and a feast day in the
calendar on August 10, the day commemorating his martyrdom, he is not a
popular saint in Byzantine culture. The scene of his martyrdom, showing him
being roasted on the gridiron over hot coals, was rarely represented, and the
other episodes from his life are almost nonexistent in Byzantine art,27 making
this textile with the detailed embroidered narrative scenes a custom-made gift
rather than the usual “luxury object” chosen to impress the foreigner in a dip-
lomatic negotiation.
25 There are several very similarly embroidered pieces but they do not have the dimensions
of the Genoa peplos, for example, the epigonation in Athens in the Byzantine museum
and the famous Byzantine sakkos of the late 13th/early 14th century in the Vatican, Museo
del Tesoro.
26 Kalavrezou, “Light and Value,” pp. 357–359.
27 The one known from about 1000 is the illustration in the Menologion of Basil II in the
Vatican (Vat. gr. 1613, ca. 1000 ad). For further images see: Hilsdale, “Imperial Image,”
pp. 172–173. Most of the cases mentioned, however, are objects or monuments that are in
some way or another connected with the west or are in geographical areas that had
222 kalavrezou
Fig. � Embroidered silk peplos of Saint Lawrence, left half, scenes from the life of Saint
Lawrence, 1261. Genoa, Museo di Sant’Agostino (photo: c. hilsdale).
Fig. � Embroidered silk peplos of Saint Lawrence, right half, scenes of the lives and
martyrdom of pope Sixtus and Saint Hippolytus, 1261. Genoa, Museo di Sant’Agostino
(photo: c. hilsdale).
contact with the west. It is important to mention here that St. Lawrence in almost all is
depicted as a standing saint in his capacity as a deacon with a censer in his hand as, for
example, in the mosaic apse decoration of Hagia Sophia in Kiev where he is the pendant
figure to St. Stephen the first deacon of the church and the Protomartyr.
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 223
The scenes of the deeds and martyrdom of these three saints are arranged
one next to the other to create two registers with 10 scenes each, in what
appears to be the traditional form of medieval narration. Although 10 in num-
ber in the upper register, the scenes are set in such a way that one of them is
placed directly in the center. This central scene is immediately recognizable as
being different because of the image is larger in size and because the inscrip-
tion above the scene is longer and denser and occupies a larger area (Fig. 4).
It is the fifth compositional unit in the visual reading of the sequence, but is
Fig. � Embroidered silk peplos of Saint Lawrence, upper register, central scene, Michael
VIII Palaiologos, Archangel Michael, and Saint Lawrence, 1261. Genoa, Museo di
Sant’Agostino (photo c. hilsdale).
224 kalavrezou
actually not part of the story depicted on the silk. This unusual scene has been
inserted in this central and prominent position because it represents the
donor, the emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos himself. Michael, as the one con-
temporary figure on the silk, and the most important one, had to be placed at
the center, according to Byzantine hierarchical compositional rules. Michael’s
self-referential image of himself as the giver of the textile is included within
the narrative account in an anachronistic way, as was often done in imperial
art. However, it is not an official formal portrait of the type we know from
Byzantine imperial representations. Since the peplos was produced for a
specific location—the cathedral of Genoa—its imagery had to relate to its
function. The official portrait of the emperor, which cannot be missing from an
imperial present, in this instance was given to the Genoese separately in the
second peplos as part of the gift to the ambassadors when they left Nymphaion
to return to Genoa.
In the representation on the embroidered textile, Emperor Michael is asso-
ciating himself with Saint Lawrence and with Genoa and its cathedral. He is
shown being accompanied by the archangel Michael, his personal divine pro-
tector, who stands behind him with his wing framing the figure of the emperor
and with his right arm and hand resting on his shoulder, clearly a gesture of
protection and support. Saint Michael’s embracing and protective gesture was
already depicted on Emperor Michael’s hyperpyra minted in Magnesia in Asia
Minor, contemporaneous with the textile, an image that was well known to
the Genoese since these were the 500 hyperpyra they sought to receive annu-
ally from the emperor. On the reverse of these, the emperor is shown kneeling
before the enthroned Christ in a gesture of supplication; the archangel Michael
stands behind him while Christ blesses and legitimizes his rule by placing his
hand on the emperor’s crown (Fig. 5). The same theme is repeated on the gold
hyperpyra that Michel VIII issued after the restoration of Constantinople in
1261, where the protective and supportive embrace of the archangel is even
more pronounced, clearly stressing the success of the reconquest (Fig. 6).28
In the central scene on the peplos (Fig. 4), the emperor, shielded by the
archangel Michael, is shown being led by Saint Lawrence into an impressive
church building—a reference to Genoa and its cathedral dedicated to him.
Saint Lawrence, a tall, dark-haired, bearded figure, is leading the emperor by
the wrist toward his church while gesturing at it with his other hand. Michael
is dressed in the imperial loros, which helps to identify him easily as the
Byzantine emperor. I do not believe that this image should be regarded as an
Fig. � Hyperpyron of Michael VIII Palaiologos of Nikaia, before 1261. Dumbarton Oaks
Collection, Acc. no. BZC.69.54 (photo: dumbarton oaks).
Fig. � Hyperpyron of Michael VIII Palaiologos, after 1261. Dumbarton Oaks Collection,
Acc. no. BZC.1948.17.3590 (photo: dumbarton oaks).
29 Andrea Paribeni, “Il pallio di San Lorenzo a Genova,” in L’arte di Bisanzio e l’Italia al tempo
dei Paleologi 1261–1453, eds. Antonio Iakobini and Mauro Della Valle. Rome: Argos, 1999,
pp. 233–234; Pauline Johnstone, “The Byzantine ‘Pallio’ in the Palazzo Bianco at Genoa,”
226 kalavrezou
past with the present and the main purpose of this gift. This central image is
exceptional in many ways. Since it was made specifically for the occasion of
the future partnership and collaboration with the Genoese, it had an impor-
tant symbolic value. The inscription in Latin explains what we are looking at
and identifies the emperor: “Saint Lawrence leads the Most Elevated/High
Emperor of the Greeks Lord Michael Doukas Angelos Komnenos Palaiologos
into the Church of Genoa.”30 The theme and composition, as well as the text
that accompanies the scene, were chosen and designed by the Byzantines. It
suggests a welcoming on the part of the Genoese of the Byzantine emperor
into their city, testifying in a way to their mutual agreement and friendship.
Moreover, its prominent position as the central scene emphasizes the concord
and the contemporary political relationship established between the
Byzantines and the city of Genoa and its citizens.
This is also the theme in Holobolos’s encomium when he describes the
meeting and gift presentation by Michael to the Genoese ambassadors.
Holobolos makes even a stronger statement than the welcoming depiction in
the central scene of the peplos. He creates a fictitious speech that the Genoese
give before their departure, which he presents in his encomium before the
emperor on Christmas Day in 1265, reminiscing about the great deeds of this
emperor. He speaks of the Genoese being well versed in giving speeches with
great success. He also explains that after having expressed their great admira-
tion for him they conveyed the desire to receive a portrait of the emperor since
he could not himself come to Genoa. His portrait would express his love for
their city and serve as their protector. They said:
Offer yourself as much as possible to your and our city. Console her [the
city’s] piercing love [for you] through your image and texts [inscriptions]
rendered on the peplos. For the inscribed form [image] of the beloved is
a great remedy (φάρμακον) for lovers. Your image, if it is present, can
serve as a strong defense against our enemies, an averter (ἀποτρόπαιον)
against every plot, a powerful parapet for your and our city, a strong
defense tower and a hard resisting wall to aggressors.31
Gazette des Beaux Arts 87 (1976): 99–108, esp. 106 and Carla Falcone, “Il ‘Pallio’ bizan-
tino di San Lorenzo a Genova: Una riconsiderazione,” Arte Cristiana 84 (1996): 339.
30 For the Latin text and the discussion on the title, especially the identification as Greek see
Hilsdale, “Imperial Image,” 181, 195–197. The inscription reads: “S(anctus) LAUR(entius)
INDUCE(n)S ALTIS/SIMUM IMP(er)ATOREM GR/ECO(rum) D(omi)N(u)M DUCA(m)/
ANG(e)L(u)M CO(m)NENU(m) PALEOL/LOGU(m) IN ECC(les)IAM IAN(uensem).”
31 Treu, Orationes, 1:46.27–34; Siderides, “Μανουήλ Ὁλοβώλου,” p. 188.
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 227
He continues, saying that they also “swore oaths of allegiance to you, and hav-
ing received two beautiful peploi—the most honorable gift on the part of your
majesty, which was most appropriate for them32—they returned home, and
praised your kindness with a loud voice and proclaimed you everywhere a king
like no other.”33 However much these statements are exaggerated in the enco-
mium, they make clear how that image in the center of the composition should
be comprehended.
The antiquarian gesture of “taking someone by the wrist” can here be associ-
ated with the dextrarum iunctio, a gesture well known from antiquity, which
was probably chosen to make a reference to the arranged Treaty. As this ges-
ture is the physical agreement and conclusion of the marital union of a couple,
so this same gesture of union between Saint Lawrence and Michael can refer
in visual terms to the accord of the pact.34 Furthermore, it is no accident that
the church depicted in the center of the scene, intended to represent the
cathedral of Genoa, is domed.35 The emphasis on the dome is a reference to
the most famous architectural achievement of the Christian Mediterranean
world for the entire Middle ages, that of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople,
although here it is not architecturally correct. The building stands out as a
clearly byzantinizing structure with its large dome. In this period, a large dome
covering a church building was well known to the western eye and it would
have been immediately recognized as a Byzantine architectural element. It is
clearly not the cathedral of Genoa. The church of Hagia Sophia had also
32 See Anca “Ehrerweisung durch Geshenke,” pp. 197–188 on this specific expression in con-
nection with the presentation of the gift. These categorizations, especially taking into
account what was said in the fictitious speech about the Genoese just before, suggests
power dynamics at play at the moment of the presentation of the gift.
33 Siderides, “Μανουήλ Ὁλοβώλου,” p. 188.
34 Gestures of embrace and physical contacts, symbols of concord among political figures
has a long history, the embrace of the Tetrarchs is one of the most obvious examples, e.g.,
porphyry statue group embedded on the exterior of San Marco in Venice. Hilsdale,
“Imperial Image,” pp. 181–188 has a long discussion on this gesture, which she sees mainly
as that of intercession. I do not quite think that intercession is part of the meaning on the
textile, since I cannot believe that Michael would have accepted St. Lawrence for his
needs. He has his own protector in the archangel Michael, who is also very present in the
image. St. Lawrence a deacon of the early church and a caretaker of the library of the
archbishop of Rome is not the appropriate intercessor. The idea however, she also
expresses towards the end of her discussion, on the clasping by the wrist as the dextrarum
iunctio. I would agree is more appropriate. The hand of St. Lawrence is very awkwardly
placed in relation to his elbow since there seems not to be any forearm.
35 Also Hilsdale, “Imperial Image,” p. 183.
228 kalavrezou
become the symbol of the city Constantinople itself.36 Here it stands as the
focus and goal of the Treaty of Nymphaion that both parties have agreed to: to
reconquer and establish Constantinople again as the true capital of the
Byzantine world. However, the door of the church is shown still closed, rather
than half-open to receive the approaching figures, as commonly seen in such
scenes. This is also still the case with the Golden gate and all gates of the city of
Constantinople, that now needed to be opened and the city taken. In this
image, the domed building takes the role of the site that it symbolizes, which
after its conquest by the Crusaders had become part of the western experience
of a voyage in the Mediterranean basin as far as Byzantium. Recognizable as
such, it signaled to the Genoese their goal and their chance to be part of that
experience and the desire to attain it. This was going to be achieved with the
help of Saint Lawrence, their protective saint, with the assistance of the
Byzantine emperor, and with God’s protection through his messenger Michael.
The image of the domed church had become the agent of a political event and
the conveyer of a message. It also operated on many levels when through
imagination the site can undergo transformations, which can reveal a plurality
of symbols and meanings. With its fluidity, it breaks down distances by joining
symbolically major Mediterranean religious and other sites.
Beyond the general symbolic references to the Treaty and its implications to
the still-to-be-reconquered Constantinople, the image contains a rare and
most unusual representation of a Byzantine emperor. Michael, though dressed
in the loros, is shown without holding any symbols of rule. His right hand,
which appears to be empty, is gesturing toward the church as if indicating the
direction in which the procession of the triad is moving. Almost totally frontal,
this procession is reminiscent of the most famous 6th-century mosaic in
Ravenna, which depicts Justinian in the church of San Vitale. There, Justinian
together with the archbishop, the other clerics, and attendants are also shown
in a frontal position, though moving to the right toward the altar. In this case
however, Justinian is holding a paten, a liturgical vessel, making visibly clear
his participation in a liturgical procession, while Michael on the peplos is rep-
resented in a most humble attitude. Without his symbols of rule, emphasis is
placed on his humility, a quality esteemed by the Byzantines, and regarded as
a virtue especially desirable for people in power.37 It is therefore most notable
36 Ibid., 182, fig. 22 has a good example of comparison with the image on the textile from the
Ms. Vat. Gr. 1851, fol. 2r of the late 12th century.
37 The best Byzantine representation of the emperor’s humility is found in the Menologion
of Basil II in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vat. gr. 1613, fol. 350, ca. 1000 ad) in
the illustration commemorating the earthquake of January 26th 447. The emperor is
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 229
that in this historiated silk with the scenes of the martyrs, Michael chose to
depict himself in this humble manner. Humility is also clearly a virtue in dip-
lomatic negotiations. This representation of Michael is in great contrast to the
portrait he presented to the Genoese in the other peplos, no longer extant,
which most likely showed him with all his titles and in full regalia in his official
position as Byzantine emperor.
This central dominating scene sets the order of the sequence of scenes of
the life of Saint Lawrence and the other martyrs. The 19 remaining scenes
depict in a chronological sequence the major events of the three saints’ lives.
However, the unusual arrangement of these scenes has caused some puzzle-
ment among scholars. The narrative, instead of beginning at the top left of the
two registers with the first scene, as one would expect, starts directly to the
right of the central scene representing the figure of the emperor and Saint
Lawrence leading him into the church. As much as this seems peculiar and
disconcerting, it makes sense if we take into consideration the importance of
the central scene in relation to the gift as such and not to the lives of the saints
depicted on the peplos. Once Saint Lawrence has been identified in the center
of the composition together with the imperially dressed Byzantine emperor,
he can be easily followed and recognized in the scenes to the right of it. That
the sequence begins on the right of the church was not strange to the Byzantine
viewer, who was used to searching a composition or an inscription for a
marker, usually a cross, that would identify where to start, from which point
one would read to the right. In this case, the visual marker or optical focus of
the entire embroidered surface is the centrally placed scene featuring the
important three characters of past and present and the church.
It is most remarkable to observe how the visual connection with the narra-
tive to the right of this scene (Fig. 7) was established so that there is no confu-
sion in which direction to look to read the remaining pictorial program. As one
looks at the center of the peplos, one can see the triad of Emperor Michael,
archangel Michael, and Saint Lawrence, a tightly arranged group moving
toward the right, the church of the city’s patron saint. However, behind the
building so to speak, to the right and still visually but also physically attached
to it, is Sixtus the archbishop/pope of Rome who is holding a book and turning
himself to the right toward a figure a bit further away. The viewer now has to
depicted together with the patriarch in a procession through the city. He is shown
barefoot and with his hands crossed over his chest a gesture representing humility.
This gesture is testified as that of humility by the personification of Humility herself
(Η ΤΑΠΙΝΟCΙC sic) on one of the enamel plaques on the stemma of Zoe, Constantine
IX and Theodora in Budapest.
230 kalavrezou
Fig. 7 Detail of peplos Fig. 1: first scene to the right of the central scene, showing Sixtus
ordering Lawrence to sell church vessels (photo: c. hilsdale).
make a mental shift from the contemporary event to the narrative of the past,
recalling the life of their city’s patron saint. Most likely the stories would have
been well known to the citizens and, with the help of the Latin inscriptions,
easily recognizable. This is the first scene of the narrative to display events that
brought about the imprisonment of Sixtus, and later of Saint Lawrence, result-
ing in their martyrdom and death. One can easily identify Sixtus the arch-
bishop/pope with his physical attachment to the church building; in addition,
the book he holds as an attribute in his left hand identifies him as someone
having such a distinguished position. The figure he addresses is Saint Lawrence,
whom he commands to sell the church treasures and distribute the proceeds
to the suffering and the poor. The inscription above them makes all this very
clear.38 It is the only other long inscription placed to the right side of the image
of the church. The important names are easily recognizable, as are the words
38 The inscriptions are all given by Xenophon A. Siderides, “Ὁ ἐν Γενοὺη βυζαντινὸς Πέπλος,”
Ἐπετερὶς Ἑταιρείας Βυζαντινῶν Σπουδῶν 5 (1928): 376–378 and in: Elena Parma Amani,
“Nuove indagini sul ‘Pallio’ bizantino duecentesco di San Lorenzo in Palazzo Bianco a
Genoa,” Studi di storia delle arte 5 (1983–1985): 42 and Falcone, “Il ‘Pallio’ bizantino,”
p. 343. Here: S(anctus) XISTUS EP(i)S(copus) ROME/P(re)CIPIEN(s) S(anc)TO
LAUR(entio)ARCHID/IAC(ono) DISPENSARE VASA/ECCLE(sie).
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 231
Fig. 8 Detail of peplos Fig. 1: second scene to the right of the central scene: Saint Lawrence
selling church vessels; and third scene, showing Lawrence distributing money to the
poor (photo: c. hilsdale).
39 He is almost as tall in a second scene on the bottom register second scene from the left
where Lawrence is converting Tiburtius Callinicus his jailer.
232 kalavrezou
among them depicted with both arms and legs exposed, in contrast to the
wealthy merchants in the previous scene, who are shown wearing long
garments. Most of the poor are also beardless; and plain, light-colored, silk
thread has been used to indicate the tone of their skin. They are shown in a
tight group without any individual presence suggesting their miserable con
dition. The next three scenes are devoted to the demise of bishop Sixtus,
who ordered Lawrence to sell the church property. He is brought before
Emperor Decius and is shown arguing with him (Fig. 3).40 His punishment
follows (he is decapitated), and at the register just below is a scene of
him dead., Although the inscription in Latin refers to his burial what we
actually see is a representation of Sixtus on his deathbed.41 Sixtus is lying
on the bier with his head to the right, and with three figures attending him
and with gestures of grief. The one at the feet of the bier has the features
of Saint Paul, a figure often shown in this position in the scene of the Koimesis
of the Virgin Mary, the Dormition, which seems to be the source for this or
any representation of a deceased before burial. In the Byzantine tradition,
the scene of the Koimesis is always the last in the representations of the
Dodekaorton, the feast cycle, which concludes the series of scenes and closes
the narration.
Thus we see that the peplos follows the visual system of reading images
according to Byzantine tradition, with inscriptions that make this possibly
unfamiliar organization easier for the Western viewer. We must always
remember that it was produced with the Genoese viewer in mind, which is
apparent in the fact that, here, elements from one culture are brought together
with those known from the other, Western with those of Byzantium. An inten-
tional rather sophisticated hybridity is at play that respects both traditions,
visual as well as cultural. It becomes quite obvious how much attention and
thought has gone into the preparation of this gift. It is likely that the prepara-
tion of the scenes was a cooperative effort, at least for the choice of events to
be depicted from the lives of the saints, for which the Byzantines had no visual
tradition. A Byzantine viewer might have had some difficulty recognizing the
full narrative of the martyrdom of these three saints, but the fact that their
compositions and arrangement on the textile follow Byzantine visual language
and tradition, they probably would have understood the individual events
40 On the embroidery the emperor is identified in the inscriptions as Decius, however Sixtus
II and Lawrence both were martyred a few days apart in August of 258 under the emperor
Valerian, who had just issued a strict edict, which called for putting to death Christian
bishops, priests and deacons.
41 Inscription: S(anctus) XIST(us)/SEPULTUS.
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 233
even without knowing all the details of the stories. The established Byzantine
visual vocabulary includes the use of symmetry as the controlling method of a
composition, which is this case begins with the overall layout of the embroi-
dered scenes. Symmetry in the individual scenes is created either by balancing
the two sides or by placing the main character in the center. These patterns
facilitated the reading of each episode depicted.
The symmetry can also be observed in the overall arrangement of certain
scenes. For example, two scenes with more or less the same subject matter
have been placed at either end of the first register (see Figs. 1–3). These are the
two scenes where the saints are brought before the emperor Decius. In the
one at the beginning of the upper register (scene 1), Lawrence is brought
before Decius, where he argues with him about the church vessels having
been sold. In the other, Emperor Decius confronts Sixtus (scene 9, counting
from the left, or the fourth to the right of the church), who is then sentenced
to be decapitated. The composition of the scene to the right of the central
scene has been reversed in order to become a mirror image of the first on the
left and to create the visual symmetry. In both scenes, Decius, as a figure of
authority, is easily distinguishable,. He sits on a throne and is resting his feet
on a footstool, with two attendants at his side. Decius in each case wears an
impressive, exotic-looking hat that sets him apart from the other characters
by identifying him as a high official of the court—a headdress that is consid-
ered an Eastern extravagance but that also validated imperial authority. It is
one of the few contemporary elements that has been introduced into the nar-
rative scenes of the vitae of these early Christian saints. It is a visual device
that participates in the historical past, but also ensures the recognition of the
contemporary reason for the gift and the proposed treaty that needed to be
confirmed.
Another interesting aspect of the arrangement of the scenes is the place-
ment of the “burial” of Saint Lawrence. After his imprisonment, and his final
roasting to death on the gridiron he can be seen lying on the bier in the lower
register (see Figs. 1, 2 and 3). This scene is placed directly below the central
scene featuring the domed church in the upper register. There are several ways
the image of this church can be “read,” as I discussed above: as the cathedral in
Genoa dedicated to Saint Lawrence, into which the latter was leading the
Byzantine emperor; as a metaphor for Hagia Sophia, with its prominent dome;
and as the archbishop Sixtus’s church and see in Rome, in the second scene, in
which Sixtus orders his archdeacon Lawrence to sell the church vessels (see
Fig. 7). When the church is then seen in relation to the scene of the burial of
Saint Lawrence directly below, it becomes a direct reference to the church of
San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, the church in Rome built over Lawrence’s grave
234 kalavrezou
where he was buried after his martyrdom.42 I believe that the placement of this
scene cannot be coincidental; it creates a direct visual connection of the body
of Saint Lawrence to the cathedral in Genoa dedicated to him.
Another reference to Rome through an architectural component is found in
the representation of Lawrence converting Tiburtius Callinicus, his jailer,
whom he also baptizes in the following scene (see Figs. 1, 2, and 9: scenes 2 and
3 from the left, in the lower register).43 In the scene of the conversion, the jailer
is kneeling before the standing Lawrence, who is blessing him. Behind him is a
spiral column of the type of triumphal monument that Rome was famous for,
such as those of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. This prominent spiral column is
topped by a rather large but distinguished Corinthian capital. The Byzantines
were well aware of these spiral triumphant monuments, since there were also
two of this type in Constantinople. They all serve as symbols of victory, and in
this scene—the conversion of Callinicus—the introduction of a victory or tri-
umphal column has to be seen as signifying the victory of Christian teaching
over the pagan past, as the column is directly behind the jailer, who had just
Fig. 9 Detail of peplos Fig. 1: left side of lower register, showing Saint Lawrence converting
and baptizing Tiburtius Callinicus (photo: c. hilsdale).
42 The church is an Early Christian basilica built over the grave of St. Lawrence (d. 258).
San Lorenzo is one of the five patriarchal basilicas and one of the seven pilgrimage
churches of Rome.
43 Inscriptions: TIBURCIUS CALINICUS PRE(ce)PTOR/CARCERIS CREDENS IN CR(ist)O
and S(anctus) LAURENTIUS BAPTISANS/TIBURCIUN CALINICUS.
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 235
accepted Christianity. This is also the only other scene where Saint Lawrence
is much taller than all the other figures in the embroidered narrative.
Possibly this is the right place to explain the phenomenon of the cross roun-
dels that fill the spaces between and around the scenes, which have been
described as the “hallmark” of Byzantine embroideries for liturgical use. In the
literature on Byzantine textiles, they are discussed as the typical, traditional
Byzantine motif of the randomly scattered cross-in-circle.44 It is mentioned as
part of the aesthetics of Byzantine embroideries of this period, but presented
as a peculiarity, since these circles often seem to have been placed haphaz-
ardly between the scenes and sometimes overlapping them.45 What has not
been recognized is the fact that they have a very specific function. Gold-thread
embroidery creates tight, dense, and heavy patches or areas on the woven silk,
a delicate and fragile textile. Although the reverse side of these silks has a
firmer cloth backing, the spaces between the embroidered parts are still thin-
ner and the material could be pulled in uneven directions to the point where
it could tear more easily. Unless one has had actually held such an embroi-
dered material in one’s hands, it is difficult to appreciate the difference that
the cross-in-circle fillers make, securing and stabilizing the areas in between
the embroidered surfaces. The circular form with the cross is also not acciden-
tal, as the added circle gives the fragile cloth a more solid surface than plain
crosses do. Moreover, they seem not to detract from or disturb the composi-
tion, since crosses within circles, like stars, place the subject depicted in an
overall sacred space, and the organization of the two registers is not affected.
Originating as a practical countermeasure to the frailty of the cloth, these
crosses-in-circles have become a component of the aesthetic appearance of
these embroidered silks.46
Overall, the representations of the lives of these three saints have been well
organized by arranging the events of the martyrdoms of each saint in a sepa-
rate sequence or visual unit. The narrative is not confusing or strange, as has
44 E.g.: Johnstone, “The Byzantine ‘Pallio’,” p. 102; Hilsdale, “Imperial Image,” pp. 177–179.
45 There are a number of examples surviving as for instance the epigonation in the Byzantine
Museum in Athens (Helen C. Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557). New
York/New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2004, no. 186, pp.
310–311) as well as an epitaphios in the National Historical Museum in Sofia of a genera-
tion later with an inscription mentioning the Andronikos Palaeologos the son of Michael
VIII. Valentino Pace, ed., Treasures of Christian Art in Bulgaria. Sofia: Borina, 2001, p. 210;
and Evans, Byzantium: Faith and Power, no. 188, pp. 314–315.
46 It seems that in most cases the cross circles preceded the larger more elaborate scenes
which had their layout predetermined. However this was not always perfectly kept and
some of the cross circles had to be over-embroidered in part so that the two overlap.
236 kalavrezou
often been remarked. The events concerning Sixtus II are all shown on the
right side of the central scene (see Fig. 3). Since Lawrence was part of that
narrative, he has also been included, but the emphasis here is still on Sixtus—
his condemnation and decapitation, and the scene of his burial. Saint
Lawrence’s martyrdom begins at the top left of the embroidered narrative and
it continues in the second register up to the middle of the peplos (see Fig. 2).
The narrative begins with the moment when Lawrence is brought before the
emperor and ends with his death, where he is depicted lying on the bier. In this
way, his martyrdom is concentrated on one side, the left side of the textile,
with the sequence of scenes in two rows, forming one column to be read from
left to right. Holobolos himself in his encomium explains that “this great
peplos” with its Latin inscriptions was actually “not a peplos but a book, and a
book not of God’s prophetic commandments but of the trials of youthful
martyrs of Christ.”47
Hippolytus’s martyrdom is depicted in four scenes after Lawrence’s
deathbed scene—since Hippolytus is thought to have buried Saint Lawrence—
starting from the center in the lower register and moving to the right (see
Fig. 3). In the first of these four scenes, Hippolytus appears before Decius, after
which he is lacerated by hooks, then dragged by horses, and finally is shown in
his deathbed scene, just before the one of Sixtus II at the edge of the embroi-
dered area. Four scenes were also devoted to Sixtus, and 12 to Lawrence. In my
opinion, it is well planned, with the burial of Saint Lawrence falling in the cen-
ter of the cloth and in the other “Koimesis”-like scenes at the end of the whole
narrative, at the right, as is appropriate in Byzantine cycles.
Scenes of martyrdom are well known in Byzantium and have a long history,
especially from their depictions in the Byzantine Menologia, the most famous
being that made for Basil II of about 1000 ce (now in the Vatican Library), as
well in Menologia icons known from several examples at Saint Catherine’s
monastery at Mt. Sinai.48 In these, only one representation is devoted to the
saint, and in most cases it is his or her moment of martyrdom.
Vita cycles of saints are rare in Byzantium until the late 12th and 13th centu-
ries, especially of Saint Lawrence; there is no cycle of the events that led to his
martyrdom, except the representation of his roasting on the gridiron.49 The
vita cycles that are produced during this later period are restricted to a very
specific type of icon, where the scenes of the life are placed in the frames. They
are the so-called vita icons, which began to appear in several places at almost
the same time period. A number of these are found in Italy, but the Byzantine
ones were all produced in locations in the eastern Mediterranean, as Titos
Papamastorakis has pointed out.50 Some are at Saint Catherine’s monastery at
Mt. Sinai, or in the territory of what was then the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,
and several on Cyprus. There are about 15 known today. For nine of these,
Papamastorakis has identified the textual sources that inspired the depiction
of the individual events of the lives and, through this very precise correspon-
dence of text and image, has shown that the sequencing and reading of these
scenes follow a specifically Byzantine system of organization.51 In general,
saints’ lives were not illustrated in Byzantium, although texts are plentiful.
Illustrated vita cycles had a much longer tradition in western religious iconog-
raphy.52 I would suggest that in this period the Byzantines living in places
where western artistic and religious traditions were ever more present, began
to adopt certain elements and to incorporate them into their own system of
visual expression. For example, during the 13th century, these vita icons exem-
plified a new type of icon, which, however, was constructed on the traditional
form of the Byzantine portrait icon (see Fig. 10). The portrait of the saint, which
forms the central part of the icon—here, Saint Panteleimon—is now sur-
rounded by the events of his or her life. However, these icons do not look
Western; in fact, their compositions closely follow the Byzantine visual lan-
guage and style. They are products of what I referred to above as a hybridity,
which develops and flourishes in areas where contacts between two different
artistic traditions come together and where objects were being exchanged and
images, designs, or symbols were appropriated from one into the other culture
to the point of not being recognizable as having originated somewhere else.53
Thus, in the second half of the 13th century, when this silk peplos was produced,
50 There is a large body of articles on these icons; the most recent is that by Titos
Papamastorakis “Pictorial Lives. Narrative in Thirteenth-century Vita Icons,” Mouseio
Benaki 7 (2007): 33–65 with older bibliography.
51 Papamastorakis, “Pictorial Lives,” esp. 59–61.
52 Cynthia J. Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the
Tenth Through the Thirteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
53 On the concept of hybridity in a work of art see Ioli Kalavrezou, “The Cup of San Marco
and the ‘Classical’ in Byzantium,” in Studien zur mittelalterlichen Kunst 800–1250: Festschrift
für Florentine Mütheric zum 70. Geburtstag, eds. Katharina Bierbrauer et al. Munich:
Prestel Verlag, 1985, pp. 167–174. Repr. with new additions in Late Antique and Medieval
Art of the Mediterranean World, ed. Eva R. Hoffman. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007,
pp. 273–284 where also the other essays address the same topic.
238 kalavrezou
the Byzantines were familiar with the concept and tradition of Western saints’
life cycles. Although the life of Saint Lawrence and his companions and their
detailed stories were not illustrated in Byzantium, Holobolos, in his descrip-
tion of the textile and his embroidery, is well aware of the kind of imagery that
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 239
such a cycle of martyrdom would entail and gives a list of the terrible sufferings
the saints had to endure in the scenes depicted. He stated that “one could see
there the display of the wise martyrs in the face of tyranny, their noble resolu-
tion, the varied and inventive punishments inflicted upon them by their tor-
turers: the iron nails, the torturing wheels, torsion, fire, swords, chains, fetters,
prisons, and every other instrument of torture.”54
Byzantines were already familiar with Western interest in representations
of scenes from the life and martyrdom of saints since the 11th century, a period
when the Byzantines were exporting, for example, bronze doors for churches
mainly in Italy.55 A number of these were ordered from Byzantium by the
wealthy merchant Pantoleone from Amalfi. The doors were built in
Constantinople and were then sent to Italy. Well known are those of Amalfi,
Atrani, and Venice of the 1060s and 1070s.56 In Rome the church of San Paolo
fuori le mura also received doors from Pantoleone from Amalfi in 1070.
Dedicated to Saint Paul, it includes Paul’s teaching of Christ’s resurrection, and
other themes relating to the apostles who are also depicted on the door panels.
Particularly relevant are the 12 panels with scenes of the death and martyrdom
of the apostles. All these doors were obviously custom-made with very precise
measurements and iconographic details to suit local requirements. Some con-
tain short Greek inscriptions, such as Saint Paul’s with the life of Christ, but
also include Latin where it was important for the local population to recognize
the subject matter. Other kinds of works of art were also requested to be pro-
duced to order in Constantinople and then shipped to the West—for example,
an antependium produced for Desiderius of Montecassino. The chronicle of
Leo of Ostia records that “Desiderius [of Montecassino], sent one of the breth-
ren to the imperial city with a letter to the emperor and thirty-six pounds of
gold, and had made there a golden antependium [altar frontal] decorated
with beautiful gems and enamels. In these enamels he had represented some
stories from the New Testament and almost all of the miracles of Saint
Benedict.”57 Clearly the monk/ambassador had to come with specific sketches,
54 Treu, Orationes, 1:47.15–25; Siderides, “Μανουήλ Ὁλοβώλου,” p. 189. This translation has
been partially taken from Hilsdale, “Imperial Image,” p. 161.
55 Beyond bronze works other export art were mosaics and enamels.
56 There are at least seven doors that were produced in Constantinople in the 11th century:
Amalfi (1057), Montecassino (1066), Rome S. Paolo f.l.m. (1070), Monte S. Angelo (1076),
Atrani (1087), Salerno (1085–1090), Venezia (1112 and 1120). See an early discussion of the
Byzantine doors by Margaret Frazer, “Church Doors and the Gates of Paradise: Byzantine
Bronze Doors in Italy,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 27 (1973): 145–162.
57 Leo of Ostia, The chronicle of Montecassino, Schriftquellen zur Kunstgeschichte des 11. und
12. Jahrhunderts für Deutschland, Lothringen und Italien, vol. 50, trans. Herbert Bloch and
240 kalavrezou
ed. O. Lehman-Brockhaus. Berlin, 1938, Bk. III, p. 32. Also further Byzantine requests
discussed by Herbert Bloch, A Documentary History of Art: The Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, vol. 1. ed. Elizabeth Gilmore Holt. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor,
1957, pp. 9–18.
The Byzantine Peplos in Genoa 241
To be able to hold such a position, the individual had to be not only very
well educated but well versed in the political and diplomatic affairs and
administrative structure of the empire and to be aware of the immediate needs
and circumstances at the court. Holobolos seems to have had all these quali-
ties, and in addition he was well versed in Latin, having translated Boethius
already at a young age.58 In his 1265 encomium for Michael VIII Palaeologos,
Holobolos not only did he include an account of the presentation of the textile
gifts to the Genoese but also gave an unusually detailed description of the
peplos and the scenes of martyrdom. It is surprising that Holobolos was able to
describe so well the scenes on the peplos after so many years (1265), a fact that
might suggest his personal involvement with the production of the embroi-
dered scenes and the composition of the Latin inscriptions. However, the per-
son who embroidered the Latin letters seemed to have been a Westerner, since
they are done using a Western embroidering technique rather than a Byzantine
one.59 For an inscription to be clearly legible, the creator has to know the
alphabet well; otherwise, the letters become only approximations. The inscrip-
tions also seem to have been added in the spaces left available for them after
the scenes were completed. Thus, the letter size varies accordingly.
The circumstances that brought about the production of this gift were spe-
cial and unique. Holobolos, at the end of his description of the peplos in his
encomium, makes a comparison of this peplos to the one offered annually by
the Athenians to the goddess Pallas Athena, civic patron of Athens, as part of
the Panathenaia festival. This peplos was brightly dyed and embroidered with
scenes of the Gigantomachy with Zeus hurling thunderbolts and Athena assist-
ing him against the Giants. I propose that Holobolos, in comparing this peplos
to this famous one as a great gift to a patron of a city, was deliberately parallel-
ing its known imagery to the “fight” the Christian martyrs put up against the
evil emperor.
There is no doubt that the manufacture of this peplos was carefully thought
out. The political situation and Michael VIII’s status as emperor were still frag-
ile. The pictorial content of the peplos had to please on two fronts, since its
58 Elizabeth A. Fisher, “Planoudes, Holobolos and the Motivation for Translation,” Greek,
Roman and Byzantine Studies 43, no. 1 (2003): 77–104; eadem, “Manuel Holobolos, Alfred
of Sareshal and the Greek Translator of ps.-Aristotle’s De Plantis,” Classica et mediaevalia
57 (2006): 189–212.
59 Johnstone, “The Byzantine ‘Pallio’,” p. 102; Paribeni, “Il Pallio di San Lorenzo,” p. 235 and
Hilsdale, “Imperial Image,” p. 180. They also seem to have been added in the space left
available after the scenes were completed. The unfamiliar lives of these three saints and
there martyrdom even to Holobolos might have been the reason for the misidentification
of the emperor with Decius instead of Valerian.
242 kalavrezou
association with a successful alliance was its major goal: it was an artifact
of cultural prestige and material value, and it had to spell out the terms and
conditions agreed upon in the treaty. Cecily Hilsdale has suggested that the
aspect of Saint Lawrence taking care of his people, as narrated in this vita cycle,
can be viewed in light of Michael VIII’s own situation, preparing to help his
own people, as any Christian would try to do,60 in effect turning the pictorial
program into a symbolic narrative. It is clear that the choice of Saint Lawrence
and his actions as a subject for the gift was not a free choice since the cathedral
of Genoa is dedicated to him. However, one must be aware of the fact that
“changing places” of objects often means changing perceptions and meanings.
Although this particular reading may have been obvious to the Byzantines,
who read into the narrative of Saint Lawrence’s actions Michael’s largesse, phi-
lanthropy, and superiority, it was probably not so to the Genoese, who, more
than anything else, saw in the central scene their patron saint, Lawrence, lead-
ing the Byzantine emperor into their church. Nevertheless, in whatever way
the images were interpreted, there is no doubt that this gift carried a diplo-
matic agenda understandable to both sides.
That the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos chose to present to the
Genoese ambassadors a porphyry silk textile—indeed, the most precious of
the famous Byzantine silks, those with a gold embroidery—suggests the impor-
tance of the historical moment that the Treaty of Nymphaion represented. It is
apparent that the Genoese also recognized the preciousness and importance
of the gift they received, since, when the textile arrived in Genoa, it was placed
in their cathedral and remained there in the treasury for centuries. The circum-
stances of a long sea voyage required that the portability of the gift became a
necessity. Textiles are probably the most desirable agents for such cross-cul-
tural encounters. They are easily transportable, they do not break, they carry
images, and they are also luxurious objects of the highest quality. This peplos is
thus an example of the kind of cross-cultural imagery of buildings and sites
that with their symbolism are able to bridge cultural boundaries.
Bibliography
Algazi, Gadi, Valentin Groebner, and Bernhard Jussen, eds., Negotiating the Gift:
Pre-modern Figurations of Exchange. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003.
Anca, Alexandru S., “Ehrerweisung durch Geshenke in der Komnenezeit: Gewohnheiten
und Regeln des herrscherlichen Schenkens.” Mitteilungen zur Spätantiken
Archäologie und Byzanitinschen Kunstgeschichte 4 (2005): 185–193.
Angold, Michael, A Byzantine Government in Exile: Government and Society under the
Laskarids of Nicaea, 1204–1261. London: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Bellinger, Alfred R. and Philip Grierson, eds., Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the
Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection, vol. 5. Washington,
DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2006.
Belting, Hans, “Introduction.” In Il Medio Oriente e Occidente nell’arte del XIII secolo
(Atti del XXIV Congresso internazionale di storia del arte 2, Bologna 1979), ed. Hans
Belting. Bologna: CLUEB, 1982, pp. 1–10.
Bloch, Herbert, A Documentary History of Art: The Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, vol. 1, ed. Elizabeth Gilmore Holt. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor,
1957.
Cutler, Anthony, “Gifts and Gift Exchange as Aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and
Related Economies,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001): 247–278.
Evans, Helen C., ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557). New York/New Haven:
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2004.
Falcone, Carla, “Il ‘Pallio’ bizantino di San Lorenzo a Genova: Una riconsiderazione,”
Arte Cristiana 84 (1996): 337–352.
Fisher, Elizabeth A., “Planoudes, Holobolos and the Motivation for Translation,” Greek,
Roman and Byzantine Studies 43, no. 1 (2003): 77–104.
_____, “Manuel Holobolos, Alfred of Sareshal and the Greek Translator of ps.-Aristotle’s
De Plantis,” Classica et mediaevalia 57 (2006): 189–212.
Geanakoplos, Deno J., “Greco-Latin Relations on the Eve of the Byzantine Restoration:
the Battle of Pelagonia, 1259,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 7 (1953): 99–141.
_____, Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West, 1258–1282: A Study in Greco-Latin
Relations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959.
Hahn, Cynthia J., Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from
the Tenth Through the Thirteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press,
2001.
Haldon, John F., ed. and trans., Constantine Porphyrogenitus: Three Treatises on Imperial
Military Expeditions. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1990.
Hilsdale, Cecily J., “The Imperial Image at the End of Exile: The Byzantine Embroidered
Sink in Genoa and the Treaty of Nymphaion (1261),” Dumbarton Oaks Papers
64 (2012): 151–199.
Jacoby, David, “Italian Privileges and Trade in Byzantium before the Fourth
Crusade: A Reconsideration,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 24 (1994):
349–369.
_____, “Genoa, Silk Trade and Silk Manufacture in the Mediterranean Region (ca. 1100–
1300).” In Tessuti, oreficerie, miniature in Liguria, XIII–XV secolo, eds. Anna Rosa
Calderoni Masetti, Clario Di Fabio, and Mario Marcenaro. Bordighera: Istituto
internazionale di studi liguri, 1999, pp. 11–40.
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Paribeni, Andrea, “Il pallio di San Lorenzo a Genova.” In L’arte di Bisanzio e l’Italia al
tempo dei Paleologi 1261–1453, eds. Antonio Iakobini and Mauro Della Valle. Rome:
Argos, 1999, pp. 229–252.
Parma Amani Elena, “Nuove indagini sul ‘Pallio’ bizantino duecentesco di San Lorenzo
in Palazzo Bianco a Genoa,” Studi di storia delle arte 5 (1983–1985): 31–47.
Schreiner, Peter, “Bisanzio e Genova: Tentativo di un’analisi delle relazioni politiche,
commerciali, e culturali.” In Studia Byzantino-Bulgarica (Miscellanea Bulgarica 2).
Vienna, 1986, pp. 135–136.
_____, “Zwei Denkmäler aus der frühen Paläologenzeit: Ein Bildnis Michaels VIII und
der genueser Pallio.” In Festschrift für Klaus Wessel zum 70. Geburtstag: in memo-
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Siderides, Xenophon A., “Μανουήλ Ὁλοβώλου, Ἐγκώμιον εἰς τον αυτοκράτορα Μιχαὴλ
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_____, “Ὁ ἐν Γενοὺη βυζαντινὸς Πέπλος,” Ἐπετερὶς Ἑταιρείας Βυζαντινῶν Σπουδῶν 5 (1928):
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Treu, Maximilianus, “Manuel Holobolos,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 5 (1896): 538–559.
_____, ed., Manuelis Holoboli Orationes. Potsdam: Krämer, 1906.
Chapter 8
Avinoam Shalem
Much ink has been spilled over the last two decades on art and portability
(though not only by art historians)—namely, on the specific field of research
that concerns the movements and diffusions of art objects, artists, and arti-
sans, as well as artistic ideas, especially in transcultural contexts. Moreover,
numerous conferences and academic books have recently focused on issues
relating to the change of artistic behaviors and of the patterns of aesthetic
thinking as a result of excessive movements, be it the movement of artifacts
through trade; or of people and ideas through the human migration of geopo-
litical or religious impetus; and, in our own time, of tourism.1 Terms such as
“cultural mobility” and “transculturation” propel scholarly interests today and
give input to different academic fields, mainly those related to the social exam-
inations of this phenomenon.2 The colossal change in our “sense of time” is
clearly bound to the 19th-century Industrial Revolution and the mechanical
turn, and to the implications of both on our modern era. The invention of
mechanical, motorized devices such as cars, trains, and airplanes have been
especially significant in this regard, altering our perception of distance and the
construction of space, modifying our ideas of “remoteness” and “far,” and
reforming the notion of time by re-questioning terms—or rather concepts—
such as “ago” and “upcoming.” This change in the human perception of space
1 On tourism, see Alexandra Karentzos, Alma-Elisa Kittner, and Julia Reuter, eds., Topologies of
Travel. Trier: Universitätsbibliothek Trier, 2010, online publication of Trier University library,
http://ubt.opus.hbz-nrw.de/volltexte/2010/565/pdf/Topologien_des_Reisens.pdf. On cul-
tural mobility, see Stephen Greenblatt et al., Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2010. See also Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural
Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003.
2 I use this term as defined by Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and
Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992.
and time has accelerated during the so-called digital era of recent years. Now,
in addition to the aforementioned tendencies to shorten distances both in
space and time, another component has appeared: simultaneity. This new fac-
tor clearly modifies the entire system of our thinking of a “global” realm divided
into “near” and “far,” breaks the hierarchy between centers and peripheries,
and challenges our concepts of linearity and chronology in writing history.
In terms of art history, the routes of the transmission of artistic knowledge,
either factual or theoretical, were made the very focus of scholarly research,
and the investigations that concern the static centers of art productions were
shifted aside, at least for a while. In terms of architecture, complexes built at
major pilgrimage sites, accommodations designed for hosting traveling
merchants “en route,” and tourist hotels and shopping malls have become
the subject of the most recent studies in the history of architecture and anthro-
pology. Moreover, airports, train stations, and any building that was planned
to serve as a transitional space, a “non-place” (“non-lieu”) as Marc Augé calls
it,3 turned out to be objects that perfectly reflect our mobile society, our
zeitgeist.
Like the “non-place” architecture, the portable art object also becomes the
object of the scholar’s desire because it embodies, in its raison d’être, all
the features related to this specific phenomenon of transportability and “trans-
culturality.” Like a world-traveling tourist who carries in his backpack his
compressed home, the portable art objects also carry identities and narratives
of places, locales, and homes.
Among the luxurious portable objects, textiles were and still are the arti-
facts that traveled the most. Easy to carry, textiles are also less fragile than
most other luxurious objects, which are typically made of delicate and/or
breakable materials. Easily folded and packed, they can be reduced in size for
easy transportation. And, like any goods that serve as money in economic
transactions, in medieval times textiles were frequently traded as legal
currency similar to gold and silver and, in that sense, could have been used
for cash payments and exchange. In many instances they were even hoarded
at home as a form of investment and as monetary security in case of hardship.
As Shelomo Goitein and Yedida Stillman have written, the role that
textiles played in medieval trade could be compared to the corporate stock
shares of our day.4 As carriers of specific patterns and even inscriptions,
3 Marc Augé, Non-Lieux: Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité. Paris: Seuil, 1992.
4 See Shelomo D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. 4: The Home. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1983, and Yedida K. Stillman, “Textiles and Patterns Come to Life Through
the Cairo Geniza,” Riggisberger Berichte 5 (1997): 35–52.
248 shalem
Fig. 1 The “Casula di Tommaso Becket” in Fermo, probably Spain, circa mid 11th century.
Gold-embroidered silk.
Architecture for the Body 249
Transportable Pavilions
5 This textile is the subject of a monograph, supported by the Bruschettini Foundation, The
Chasuble of Thomas Becket in the Cathedral of Ferm, ed. Avinoam Shalem (forthcoming, 2013).
6 Neue Pinakothek, Munich, inv. no. WAF 403. The painting’s exact dimensions are
585 × 705 centimeters.
7 Neue Pinakothek, Munich, inv. no. WAF 771; 490 × 710 centimeters.
8 Neue Pinakothek, Munich, inv. no. WAF 770; 312 × 365 centimeters.
250 shalem
the sumptuous official audience at the royal court of Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick II (1194–1250), to which the viewer seems also to be invited. However,
there is a subtle narrative in both historical pictures, and they share a “hyper-
realism” and great attention to detail, suggesting analogous artistic languages.
Matching the highly realistic border of the oriental carpet, the open ivory-
inlaid ebony box on the table, and the painted astronomical globe in Piloty’s
depiction of the room containing the body of Duke Albrecht von Wallenstein
(1583–1634) are to be compared to the several oriental luxurious gifts such as a
metal incense burner, a mosque lamp and a wooden casket decorated with
carved ivory panels depicted in von Ramberg’s painting. Although both pic-
tures are in the grand European style of 19th-century historical paintings, they
seem to use similar strategies to those employed in many Orientalist paintings
of the period. However, even though these two pictures present to us imagi-
nary settings and incidents, their use of minute details in a realistic, almost
photographic manner suggests to us that what we are looking at are historical
documents.9
9 For this concept, see Linda Nochlin, “The Imaginary Orient,” Art in America 71, no. 5 (May
1983): 118–131, 187–191.
Architecture for the Body 251
The von Ramberg’s painting shows the reception of a North African delega-
tion at the 13th-century court of Frederick II in Palermo. The atmosphere cre-
ated by the juxtaposition of the Christian and the Muslim cultures—conveying
the superiority of Frederick II and his court’s entourage versus the submissive
character of the Muslim delegation—probably reflects (and compensates
for) the frustrated crypto-colonial ambitions of Germany in the 19th century
rather than the actual relationship between these cultures in the era of the
Hohenstaufens during that time. The expressions of suspicion, arrogance, and
self-importance on the faces of Frederick II, his court advisers, and the clergy
support this speculation. Indeed, we might consider the “gaze at the Other” in
the picture as paradigmatic of Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism.10 Exotic
yet biblical, adorned in colorful clothes and bearing luxurious gifts, submissive
(as their body language indicates), and erotic (note the slave girl with the
Alhambra vase), the “Other”—that is, this North-African delegation—appears
at the feet of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Von Ramberg has depicted several portable objects in this picture. For
example, in the foreground several objects are placed as if on display
brought by the Muslim delegation and offered to King Frederick II in the
same manner that gifts were presented by the three Magi to the newly
born Christ in Bethlehem: a Mamluk enameled glass lamp, an Ottoman
gilded silver (or gold) incense burner, and a rectangular box inlaid with
carved ivory panels. All these objects are painted with such accuracy that
one suspects von Ramberg might have had these artifacts in his studio, and
that they were arranged in front of him as models for compositional
purposes.11
One of the gifts, depicted at the extreme left side of the picture, is especially
significant with regard to the subject of the portability of art and, specifically,
textiles. It is carried, or held aloft, by one of the slaves in the Muslim delega-
tion. At first glance, this object appears to be a relatively large metal architec-
tural structure, an elaborate dome, recalling the highly coveted medieval
micro-architectural objects considered as suitable diplomatic gifts, such as the
famous reliquary in the form of a miniature building in the treasury of Aachen
or the one in the treasury of San Marco.12 In fact, close observation reveals that
there is an extra textile piece attached to the domed structure and that it hangs
down from the base of the dome, creating a sort of domed pavilion consisting
of a solid dome and soft walls. This is, in fact, a transportable architecture
piece, a baldachin.
Transportable, soft, architecture-like structures are well known in the
medieval Islamic world, the most famous one being the mahmal, the textile
pavilion carried on a camel’s back that typically accompanied the annual
transportation of the Kiswa (the covering of the Kaaba) to Mecca; the mahmal
symbolized the caliph’s authority in the parade of this pilgrimage caravan.
The earliest visual evidence for this ritual is the famous depiction of a Meccan
caravan in the early 13th-century Maqamat of Hariri kept in the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, Paris (Fig. 3).
But another example taken from Johann Lamm Burckhardt, The Manners
and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Fig. 4), suggests that tent-like pavilions,
in this case with a flat roof, were used for other purposes, such as wedding
processions. The bride and her female entourage appear beneath this pavilion,
which is carried by several people, most probably family members, holding the
corner bars of the tent. The variety of these pavilions is great and is often
dependent on region and function.13
In fact, medieval Arabic sources describe lavishly decorated royal tents
and also other decorated textiles used as curtains in royal palaces. For exam-
ple, the Arabic word maqārim is frequently used for royal canopies. These
textiles that functioned in architectural settings were sometimes even
defined in architectural terms. This is the case of the fine silk tent of Harun
al-Rashid, which was called Bayt al-Rashid (House of Rashid), in which, so
the tradition goes, he died in Tus.14 Howdahs were also called ‘ammāriyyāt,
12 For these objects, see Anton Legner, ed., Ornamenta Ecclesiae, exh. cat. Cologne, 1985,
vol. 3, cat. no. H12, and Der Schatz von San Marco in Venedig, exh. cat. Cologne: Olivetti,
1984, cat. no. 32. At the same time, the depicted object in von Ramberg’s painting
also recalls a typical Mamluk metal lamp, usually designed as a domed architectural
object, which, when this picture was made, was reproduced for the European market in
the so-called neo-Mamluk style. For the original Mamluk lamps, see M. Gaston Wiet,
Catalogue général du Musée arabe du Caire: Objets en cuivre. Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut
français d’archéologie orientale, 1932; repr. Cairo 1984, plates 9–11, 22, 24, and 42.
13 On soft architecture, see Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of
Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture, ed. John Cava. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1995.
14 Ghada al Hijjawi al-Qaddumi, Book of Gifts and Rarities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1996, p. 223 (paragraph 355).
Architecture for the Body 253
Fig. 3 Meccan Caravan. Maqamat of al-Hariri, 13th century, probably Syria or Baghdad,
circa 25 × 27 centimeters (Paris, BNP, Ms. arabe 5847 fol. 94v) (photo: after
ettingahausen, arab painting).
and palanquins (qibāb, the plural of qubbah, i.e., dome),15 the latter suggesting
that these were domed palanquins, perhaps similar to the one depicted in
von Ramberg’s painting. Litters, mainly used on camels, are called in Arabic
sources mahāmil, the plural form of mahmal. They are recorded as being
made of ivory, ebony, and sandalwood, encased in gold and silver and topped
with gold crescents. In addition, its splendid curtains (ajillah) were said to be
of red khusruwānī, velvet mukhammal, and linen voile (L. velum) called
dabīqī, all embroidered with gold threads and fabric threads of other
colors.16 Most important, these types of traveling structures are characterized
by their particular human-size dimensions, each one individually designed
Fig. 4 Wedding process with a textile pavilion with flat roof. Ernest Rhys (edited): Travel
and Topography. The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians by Edward
William Lane, 1908.
and tailor-made for the human body, for the one carried or sheltered
within it.
This is architecture for the body. Of course, one could argue that any
sarcophagus and even a specific building made to enshrine the bones of
a specific person could likewise be called an “architecture for the body.”17
However, what is different is the individual character of the transportable
architectural device, designed for one or, at most, two people, and the fact
that this personal architectural structure appears as an extra cloth or garb
over the body of the person placed within it. Perhaps the best examples
to illustrate this point are the medieval interpretations concerning one
of the very earliest thrones mentioned in the Old Testament. It concerns the
affiryon, most probably the portable throne that King Solomon made for him-
self, which was probably lifted and carried by utilizing long bars similar to
those used for a palanquin. This object is mentioned in the Song of Solomon
3:9–11. It reads:
17 The mosaic on the façade (Porta Sant’Alipio) of the church of San Marco in Venice illus-
trates this point well; see Otto Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice, vol. 2 (plates).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, fig. 351.
Architecture for the Body 255
The use of the specific word affiryon is interesting. This term appears in
Mishnaic Hebrew and in Jewish Aramaic. It has been suggested that this
specific term refers to a sedan, namely a transportable chair. In the Septuagint,
the Greek translation of the bible, this piece of furniture is defined as phoreion,
which hints at the Hebrew philological root of this term; phoreion derives from
the Greek verb phorein, meaning to carry, and clearly refers to the term affiryon
mentioned in the bible. Moreover, these verses were usually interpreted in an
allegorical manner to refer to Christ. Solomon appears then in his affiryon as a
prefiguration of the image of the Enthroned Christ. The Kebra Nagast, the
Ethiopian national epos, which made use of numerous Jewish and Islamic
traditions and explanations of biblical stories, adds that the name Solomon
means “Christ” and that the mentioning of Solomon’s making of the affiryon
should be compared to Christ who “dressed himself” with a body and made his
body a church (Beth ha-Nozrim, i.e., the house of the Christians).18 This com-
parison clearly suggests that the portable throne of Solomon was regarded as a
personal architectural device made for the royal body of the king and was even
compared, albeit metaphorically, to a cloth that one could be dressed with.19
18 See Kebra Nagast, translated and annotated from Ge’ez by Ran HaCohen. Tel Aviv: Tel
Aviv University Press, 2009, pp. 166–167 (in Hebrew).
19 This idea could be extended to other structures, such as a roofed portable throne
and even the pavilion-like structure, which appears on several transportable minbars.
One could even take this idea of the architecture for the body and examine it the other
way around—i.e., the body of architecture (see the most obvious example of the covered
Kaaba in Mecca, which, like a bride, is clothed every year with a lavish dress).
256 shalem
pp. 105–113; Cristina Partearroyo Lacaba, “Los tejidos medievales en el Alto Aragón,” in
Signos, arte y cultura en el Alto Aragón Medieval, exh. cat., eds. María Carmen Lacarra
Ducay and Carmen Morte García. Zaragoza: Diputación de Aragón, 1993, pp. 137–143;
Laura Ciampini, “Los dibujos del tejido de la ‘Capa de Fermo’: Una interpretacion sim-
bólica,” in Actas del XIII Congreso Nacional de Historia del Arte (CEHA): Ante el nuevo
milenio: raíces culturales, proyección y actualidad del arte español, vol. 1. Granada:
Universidad de Granada, 2000, pp. 75–81; Cristina Partearroyo Lacaba, “Tejidos andalu-
síes,” Artigrama 22 (2007): 371–419; and Laura Ciampini, “La Capa de Fermo: Un bor-
dado de Al-Andalus,” in Arte y cultura: Patrimonio hispanomusulmán en Al-Andalus, eds.
Antonio Fernández Puertas and Purificación Marinetto Sánchez. Granada: Universidad
de Granada, 2009, pp. 143–173.
27 I would like to thank Don Emilio, the priest in Fermo who helped locate this privilege in
the Archivio Storico Arcivescovile in Fermo. This document is part of the series of the
Visite Pastorali in the Archivio Storico Arcivescovile di Fermo (ASAFE), fondo Archivio
Diocesano di Fermo. See Visita pastorale eseguita dal Cardinale Giovan Francesco Ginetti
(1684–1691) nel 1686, II–X–12, cc. 16v.–17r.
28 Strom Rice, “The Fermo Chasuble,” pp. 356–358.
29 The literature on this piece is enormous; see Hermann Fillitz, Die Schatzkammer in
Wien, Symbole abendländischen Kaisertums. Salzburg and Vienna: Residenz, 1986, p. 171,
258 shalem
of this inscription raises several crucial questions and does not confirm Rice’s
translation. Moreover, no mention of a date can be detected, and several addi-
tional inscriptions, especially those running along the hem of the chasuble,
seem to have escaped his notice.30
From a stylistic and technical point of view, the rich, gold-embroidered
piece could well be a lavish royal example of Andalusian textiles datable
to mid-11th century. A similar textile is kept at present in the treasury of
the collegiate church of Oña in Burgos, Spain. This textile was studied by
Manuel Casamar and Juan Zozaya and is attributed by them to the Caliphate
period in al-Andalus.31 It resembles the piece from Fermo in technique as well
as in pattern, namely a pattern that consists of the combination of medallions,
cartouches, and of rectangular frames for large, monumental, Arabic Kufic
inscriptions. The specific style in which the images are rendered or rather
embroidered is also similar, though some modifications might suggest a later
date. Casamar and Zozaya argued that the figure depicted in one of the medal-
lions might be the image of Muawiyya, the first Umayyad ruler of al-Andalus,
the father, so to speak, of the Umayyad dynasty.32 They thus argued that this
piece was intended to memorialize the “zero hour” of the establishment of
Umayyad caliphal power in al-Andalus and to associate the great caliphal
moment in Spain in the 10th century with Umayyad genealogy. Whichever
cat. no. 8; Tarif al-Samman, “Arabische Inschriften auf den Krönungsgewändern des hei-
ligen römischen Reiches,” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 78 (1982):
31–34; Eredità dell’Islam: Arte islamica in Italia, ed. Giovanni Curatola. Milan: Silvana,
1993, cat. no. 95; Rotraud Bauer, “Il manto di Ruggero II,” in I Normanni: Popolo d’Europa
1030–1200, exh. cat., ed. Mario d’Onofrio. Venice: Marsilio, 1994, pp. 279–287; William
Tronzo, “The Mantle of Roger II of Sicily,” in Robes and Honor: The Medieval World
of Investiture, ed. Stewart Gordon. New York: Palgrave, 2001, pp. 241–253; and Eva
R. Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability,” Art History 24 (2001): esp. 27–33. See also several
articles dedicated to the study of this piece in S. Wilfried Seipel, Nobilis Officinae:
Die königlichen Hofwerkstätten zu Palermo zur Zeit der Normannen und Staufer im 12.
und 13. Jahrhundert, exh. cat. Milan: Skira, 2004, and also my article “Manipulations of
Seeing and Visual Strategies in the Audience Halls of the Early Islamic Period: Preliminary
Notes,” in Visualisierungen von Herrschaft, Byzas 5 (2006): 213–232, and Oleg Grabar,
“The Experience of Islamic Art,” in The Experience of Islamic Art on the Margins of
Islam, ed. Irene A. Bierman. Reading, PA and Los Angeles: Ithaca Press, 2005, pp. 11–59,
esp. 30–48.
30 The results of the rereading of this inscription will appear in my aforementioned mono-
graph (see note 5 above).
31 Manuel Casamar and Juan Zozaya, “Apuntes sobre la ŷuba funeraria de la colegiata de
Oña (Burgos),” Boletín de arqueología medieval 5 (1991): 39–60.
32 Ibid., p. 50, fig. 6a.
Architecture for the Body 259
date of production is accepted, the textile from Ońa evokes the grandeur of
caliphal style in Cordoba.
The ornamental vocabulary and the shape of several motifs depicted in the
big medallions and the small stars on the chasuble in Fermo strongly recall this
caliphal iconography and can be stylistically compared to images carved on
royal objects of ivory and incised on silverware of al-Andalus. It is likely that
this gold-embroidered silk was most probably manufactured after the fall of
the caliphate in Cordoba in 1031. But why and for what specific reason it recalls
the very style of the flourishing days of the Caliphate period cannot be easily
answered and is beyond the scope of this article. It is also impossible to trace
the specific route that this piece took before it reached the treasury of the
cathedral in Fermo.
Change of Function
The reconstruction of the numerous pieces of this textile to form a new object
in the treasury, namely a relic of Saint Thomas Becket, is fascinating. The piece
is made up of 38 fragments of varying sizes. The chasuble was fabricated or,
more accurately, a new Christian identity for this Islamic piece was fabricated.
Though sometimes defined as a cape, the vestment was indeed a bell-shaped
chasuble, which is donned by inserting the head through a relatively short slit;
the front seam was opened during the 1950s conservation to enable a spread-
out, flat presentation of the whole garment. It is possible that the textile was
heavily damaged when the decision was made to create a new Christian arti-
fact out of it. However, it should be noted that several fragments were stitched
together before the piece was embroidered. This suggests that in its former
(possibly original) function, the textile consisted, at least partially, of several
gold-embroidered silk fragments.
As Simon-Cahn already suggested, the Fermo textile may well have been
originally used as a tent. Her further suggestion of reading the textile iconogra-
phy as related to celestial presentation, similar to her reading of the ceiling of
the Palatine chapel in Palermo, is less convincing.33 But her argument that one
should set this textile in an architectural context is compelling. Moreover, the
monumentality of its pattern—i.e., the huge medallions and particularly
the huge rectangular frame that encloses the Kufic Arabic inscription—suggest
its use in an architectural context, possibly functioning as a curtain or canopy
33 See Simon-Cahn, “The Fermo Chasuble,” passim; see also Annabelle Simon-Cahn, “Some
Cosmological Imagery on the Ceiling of the Palatine Chapel in Palermo.” Ph.D. diss.,
Columbia University, 1978.
260 shalem
of a palanquin or tent. The best visual example of its possible use as a royal
tent is in a detail of the 12th-century painted ceiling of the Palatine Chapel of
Roger II in Palermo (Fig. 5). This image represents the entrance façade, so
to speak, of a richly decorated tent, most probably a royal one, with walls
and ceiling made of heavy cloth. The suggestion here of exceptionally heavy
drapes is accentuated by the depiction of the textile as falling in folds and
by the numerous creases that appear in each of them. The main entrance to
the tent is open, with the drapes of the two main pieces of fabric comprising
the walls of the tent’s façade folded, forming an arched gate that provides a
partial view into the tent’s interior. A sword held in its scabbard hangs diago-
nally and is probably affixed to the main, central pole of this tent. The tent’s
decoration strongly recalls the decorative scheme of the textile in Fermo.
It consists of two large medallions flanking the main entrance. A heraldic
eagle (or perhaps a falcon) that spreads its wings and turns its head in profile
appears in each of these medallions. A quadruped, most probably a cheetah,34
Fig. 5 Royal tent. Detail from the painted ceiling of the Palatine Chapel of Roger II in
Palermo, mid-12th century (photo: avinoam shalem).
34 On the depiction of a cheetah in the Norman paintings of Sicily, see the recently pub-
lished article by Maria Vittoria Fontana, “Hunting with Cheetahs on Painted Siculo-
Arabic Ivories,” in Siculo-Arabic Ivories and Islamic Painting 1100–1300, ed. David Knipp.
Munich: Hirmer, 2011, pp. 123–140.
Architecture for the Body 261
is depicted in profile and appears just below each of the medallions. A large
decorative band runs horizontally along the lower part of the tent’s canopy,
thus creating an accentuated zone, a frieze, which marks the space between
the tent’s walls and ceiling. Other decorative bands appear on the canopy
and just above the main entrance. The latter is intriguing: it is a medium-size,
elongated rectangular band that is placed vertically above the main entrance,
just between the two medallions. It strongly recalls the one depicted between
the large medallions on the chasuble. This particular painted band might
well refer to a typical monumentally framed inscription located above the
main opening of tents. Moreover, the fact that this particular band and
the other bands are painted with gold might indicate the artisan’s intention
to suggest that this textile is embroidered with gold. This speculation might
also explain the use of gold for decorating the background behind each of
the heraldic eagles in the large medallions and also for painting the cheetahs
in gold.35
Despite the great lacunae in the biography of the chasuble of Thomas Becket
in Fermo, the change in functions—namely, the possible original use of this
piece as a tent and its reuse as the displayed robe of one of Europe’s celebrated
saints—is remarkable. It is true that many objects of Islamic origin, especially
luxury artifacts that were used in royal contexts, were adapted for Christian
sacred use. This phenomenon was usually discussed in terms of a transforma-
tion from the secular to the sacred, therefore emphasizing questions concern-
ing the consequences of this transformation.36 Likewise, focus was also on the
35 On the painting of the ceiling of the Palatine Chapel in Palermo, see Dalu Jones,
“The Cappella Platina in Palermo: Problems of Attribution,” Art and Archaeology Research
Papers 2 (1972): 41–57; William Tronzo, “Byzantine Court Culture from the Point of View
of Norman Sicily: The Case of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo,” in Byzantine Court
Culture from 829 to 1204, ed. Henry Maquire. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1977,
pp. 101–114; William Tronzo, “The Medieval Object-Enigma and the Problem of the Cappella
Palatina in Palermo,” Word and Image 9, no. 3 (1993): 197–228; Beat Brenk, “La parete
occidentale della Cappella Palatina a Palermo,” Arte Medievale 4, no. 2 (1990): 135–150;
P.M. Costa, “Early Islamic Painting: from Samarra to Northern Sicily,” New Arabian Studies
3 (1993): 14–32; David Knipp, “Image, Presence, and Ambivalence: The Byzantine
Tradition of the Painted Ceiling in the Cappella Palatina, Palermo,” Visualisierungen von
Herrschaft, Byzas 5 (2006): 283–328; Lev Arie Kapitaikin, “The Painting of the Aisle
Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina, Palermo,” Roemisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana
35 (2003–2004): 115–148; and Ernst J. Grube and Jeremy Johns, The Painted Ceilings of the
Cappella Palatina. London: Saffron Books, 2005.
36 See my book Islam Christianized: Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Treasuries of the
Latin West, 2nd ed. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang, 1998; see also several
262 shalem
biography of such objects, their dual (or after-) lives and the shared cultures
they embody.37 However, the textile in Fermo seems to raise some other
questions concerning the transformation of the meanings of objects. It is
understandable that the art-historical debate be bound to the tangible aspects
of the object as physical material. In theory, one can try to separate meaning
from material; but this exercise is worth pursuing only because we can then
imagine that, alongside the migration and transfer of objects, ideas also travel,
and that these ideas have their own story of peregrination. Objects carry with
them not just tangible physical evidence but also ideas and memories, which
can be false, legendary, or semi-historical. Furthermore, objects also have the
capacity to provoke emotions, activate memory, and instigate associations.
Like the migrating objects, these cognitive notions connected with the object
also move from one culture to another. They are translated, manipulated,
articles that I have published on this topic: “L’origine de quelques objets fatimides dans
les trésors des églises d’Europe occidentale,” Dossiers d’Archéologie 233 (1998):
72–79; “Objects as Carriers of Real or Contrived Memories in a Cross-Cultural Context:
The Case of Medieval Diplomatic Presents,” in Migrating Images: Producing, Reading,
Transporting, Translating, eds. Petra Stegmann and Peter C. Seel. Berlin: Haus der
Kulturen der Welt, 2004, pp. 36–52; “Des objets en migration: Les itinéraires des objets
islamiques vers l’Occident Latin au Moyen Âge,” Les Cahiers de Saint-Michel de Cuxa
35 (2004): 81–93; and “Islamische Objekte in Kirchenschätzen der lateinischen
Christenheit. Ästhetische Stufen des Umgangs mit dem Anderen und dem Hybriden,”
in Das Bistum Bamberg in der Welt des Mittelalters, Bamberger interdisziplinäre
Mittelalterstudien, eds. Christine and Klaus van Eickels. Bamberg: University of Bamberg
Press, 2007, pp. 163–175. For a discussion of traveling objects in the medieval
Mediterranean context, see Eva R. Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and
Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century,” Art History 24 (2001):
17–50. See also Anna Contadini, “Artistic Contacts: Current Scholarship and Future
Tasks,” in Islam and the Italian Renaissance, ed. Charles Burnett and Anna Contadini.
London: Warburg Institute, 1999, pp. 1–60; and my article “The Otherness in the Focus of
Interest: or, If the Other Could Only Speak,” in Islamic Artefacts in the Mediterranean
World: Trade, Gift Exchange and Artistic Transfer, eds. Catarina Schmidt and Gerhard
Wolf. Venice: Marsilio, 2010, pp. 29–44.
37 Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986, in particular Igor Kopytoff, “The
Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” pp. 64–91. See also the excel-
lent discussion in Bill Brown, “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (2001): 1–22, and
Oleg Grabar, “The Shared Culture of Objects,” in Byzantine Court Culture, ed. Maquire,
pp. 115–130. The so-called Coronation Mantle of Roger II is a good example of an object
embodying “shared cultures.” See Oleg Grabar’s discussion of this textile in his article
“The Experience of Islamic Art,” pp. 11–59, esp. 30–48.
Architecture for the Body 263
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Contadini, Anna, “Artistic Contacts: Current Scholarship and Future Tasks.” In Islam
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Warburg Institute, 1999, pp. 1–60.
Costa, P.M., “Early Islamic Painting: From Samarra to Northern Sicily,” New Arabian
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Curatola, Giovanni, ed., Eredità dell’Islam. Arte islamica in Italia. Milan: Silvana,
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Demus, Otto, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice, vol. 2. Chicago and London: University
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Chapter 9
On June 17, 1513, Marin Sanudo, a Venetian senator, mentioned in his diary a
secret report on a mission that had lingered a day or two in Dubrovnik (Ragusa)
en route from Venice to Istanbul.1 Some of the members of the mission looked
around the harbor in Dubrovnik, and saw a 400-ton ship that had arrived from
England, laden with 9000 pieces of worsted worth 85,000 ducats and fine fab-
rics worth 13,000 ducats, all of it the property of the Dubrovnik people. At the
same time, sailing out of the port, bound for Ancona, was a 500-ton ship carry-
ing silks and zambelotti (camlet, a fabric of camel’s hair or angora wool) worth
100,000 ducats, as well as 12,000 ducats in coins—the property of Ragusans and
Florentines. The report concludes, wrote Sanudo, that the riches of the city
were incredibly large.2 Dubrovnik’s revenues in the Golden Age of the Ragusan
Republic must indeed have been very great, although the Ragusans incessantly
spoke of their poverty (“we are neither Turks nor Jews, but poor people from
Ragusa,”3 a Levantine saying). During the first half of the 15th century, 25 tons
of silver worth more than 500,000 ducats was shipped via Dubrovnik from the
mines of the Balkans to the west. The value of the exports of Ragusan fabrics to
the interior reached a value of 250,000 ducats a year.
Nothing speaks more eloquently of the real beginnings of modern Dubrovnik
(Fig. 1) than the efforts of organizing the textile industry at the dawn of the
15th century. Considering that when the Ragusans founded their first and only
great industry, they had neither serviceable raw materials (quality wool and
dyes) nor the most important factor in the manufacture of textiles (access to
large quantities of water), their enterprise seems indeed remarkable.
There exist a number of documents showing that from the end of 1415 or
the beginning of 1416 Dubrovnik had begun manufacturing textiles, under-
standing that profits would be much greater if, rather than trading other peo-
ple’s cloth, they sold cloth that was produced in the town itself. They also
began to adopt modern laws and institutions. That same year (1416), with a
touching declaration, the Senate abolished the slave trade.4 In 1432 a home for
4 A myth that has long been propagated in history writing. For another view, see Bariša
Krekić, “L’abolition de l’esclavage à Dubrovnik (Raguse) au XVe siècle: mythe ou réalité?”
Byzantinische Forschungen 12 (1987): 309–317. Repr. in Bariša Krekić, Dubrovnik: a
Mediterranean Urban Society, 1300–1600. London: Variorum Reprints, 1997; Zdenka Janeković-
Römer, “Nasilje zakona: Gradska vlast i privatni život u kasno srednjovjekovnom i ranosred-
njovjekovnom Dubrovniku.” Anali Zavoda za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Dubrovniku
41 (2003): 9–44.
270 Belamarić
foundlings opened; in 1435 a public school was founded; in 1435 and 1437 the
new palace, water supply, and public foundations were built. The develop-
ment of the city was also stimulated by consolidating its territory through the
purchase of Konavle, a small municipality southeast of Dubrovnik, from the
Bosnian dukes Hranić and Pavlović (1418–1427), thus expanding the Ragusan
Republic to the east, all the way to the gate of Herceg Novi at the entrance to
Boka Kotorska. Remarkably, all this activity took place when the region was
devastated by major outbreaks of the Black Death; in 1437, a majority of the
Major Council took refuge in Gruž as a protective measure, leaving 10 council
members to rule, nine of whom succumbed to the disease. On their return, on
October 14, 1437, the patricians sent a letter to King Sigismund saying, “On our
return in the first days of October, the city seemed to us—due to fire and
plague—not to be a city, but the simulacrum of a city.”5 The first decision after
the council was re-formed was that, no matter how serious the danger, the
city’s governing body should never again abandon the city.
During these months of turmoil and deep uncertainty, the company of
Onofrio della Cava built the aqueduct supplying the city with water. Such
determination in the face of adversity recalls the words of Dubrovnik notary
Giovanni Conversini of Ravenna, an acquaintance of Boccaccio and pupil of
Petrarch, who in one letter described the Dubrovnik government and people
in just two strong words (probably inspired by Ovid): “ferrea preacordia” (heart
of iron). According to historian Lujo Vojnović, these two words contain the
entire history of Dubrovnik during the 14th and 15th centuries.6 The focus here
is on an extraordinary organizational framework that the Dubrovnik govern-
ment created ex nihilo for the establishment of a genuinely modern economy
based on the textile industry, which would be capable of competing with any
other in the Mediterranean region during the 15th century. Remarkably, this
operation was set up at the same time when all around Dubrovnik and within
the brief period of 40 years, duchies, states, and kingdoms fell to the advancing
Ottomans.
As early as December 6, 1430, envoys of the ever-pragmatic Dubrovnik gov-
ernment achieved their first success. In Adrianopolis, Sultan Murat II issued a
decree (a hatti-sherif) that granted trading rights to Dubrovnik, placing the city
on the threshold of an enormous market: Dubrovnik merchants were now free
to trade with all the countries of the empire, to the east and west, by land and
5 The original Latin: “Non est nobis visa civitatis sed nec simulacrum quidem civitatis
apparuit.”
6 Lujo Vojnović, Kratka historija Dubrovačke republike. New York, 1962, p. 48.
Cloth and Geography 271
by sea. In effect, Dubrovnik had obtained a monopoly on trade with the Balkan
countries.
7 Ante Šoljić, Zdravko Šundrica and Ivo Veselić, ed. and trans., Statut grada Dubrovnika
sastavljen godine 1272 (The Statute of the City of Dubrovnik composed in 1272), introductory
study by Nella Lonza. Dubrovnik, 2002, pp. 395–397. For Dubrovnik’s commerce in the medi-
eval period fundamental remains Constantin Jireček, “Die Bedeutung von Ragusa in der
Handelsgeschichte des Mittelalters,” Almanach der der Wiener Kais. Akademie d. Wissensch
49 (1899) and Constantin Jireček, Staat und Gesellschaft im mittelalterlichen Serbien: Studien
zur. Kulturgeschichte des 13–15. Jahrhunderts (Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie
der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophisch-historische Klasse), Bd. 56, 1912. For new archival
supplementation, see Hidetoshi Hoshino, L’arte della lana in Firenze nel basso medioevo.
Il commercio della lana e il mercato dei panni fiorentini nei secoli XIII–XV. Firenze, 1980,
pp. 77–78, 189.
8 Florentine cloth had an important share in the imports into Zadar in the mid-14th century,
and bishop Balian of Split was to figure in the register of debtors of Bardi’s company
long after his death (in 1328) (Robert Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, IV/II. Firenze, 1965,
pp. 774–778). For the best introductions on the topic, see Mirjana Popodvić-Radenković,
“Le relazioni commerciali fra Dubrovnik (Ragusa) e la Puglia nel periodo angioino,
1266–1442.” Archivio storico per le provincie napoletane n.s. XXXVIII (1958): 73–104; 38 (1959):
272 Belamarić
Ordinary local cloth (or rash cloth, a twilled fabric made of either silk or
wool) had been produced earlier without any special technological proce-
dures. The first dyer’s shop did not open there until 1398; earlier, the better
kinds of rash cloth had been sent to Venice for dyeing.9 That year, the
Dubrovnik government brought Dominico di Filippo from Gubbio, provided
him with a completely equipped workshop, and exempted him from customs
duty on the import of raw materials and tools so that he could produce cloth
on a large scale, for export.10 At the end of 1415 the Republic started employing
an experienced dyer, Luca from Zadar, thus clearly preparing for a serious
expansion in textile manufacturing. In December of the same year, the govern-
ment selected special officiales artis pannorum (officers for the manufacturing
of wool cloth) or, as they were more often called, officiales artis lane, thereby
creating an official body to supervise this industry.11
The creation of integrated economic measures to foster the manufacture of
textiles was clearly aimed at shifting Dubrovnik away from its importance as a
entrepôt, and must be seen as one more endeavor on the government’s part to
influence the economy directly. The gradual and centuries-long development
of a system of renting real estate owned by the community must be seen in the
same light. Mixed-purpose rental buildings were built in town and around it,
153–206 and Bariša Krekić, “I mercanti e produttori toscani di panni di lana a Dubrovnik
(Ragusa) nella prima metà del Quattrocento.” In Produzione, commercio e consumo dei
panni di lana (nei secoli XII–XVIII). Firenze, 1976. Paper presented at the meeting Atti a
cura di Marco Spallanzani, Prato, April 10–16, 1970. Reprinted in Bariša Krekić,
Dubrovnik, Italy, and the Balkans in the late Middle Ages. London: Variorum Reprints, 1980.
9 For the impossibility of the technologically very complex ars lanae to be developed in
Dalmatian cities, see Tomislav Raukar, “Komunalna društva u Dalmaciji u XV. st. i u prvoj
polovini XVI. stoljeća.” Historijski zbornik 37 (1984). Now in: Tomislav Raukar, Studije o
Dalmaciji u srednjem vijeku. Split, 2007, pp. 202–203.
10 On the development of the woolen industry in 15th-century Dubrovnik, see especially
Kosta Vojnović, “Sudbeni ustroj Republike Dubrovačke (1272–1459),” Rad JAZU 108 (1892):
108, 114; Grga Novak, “Vunena industrija u Dubrovniku do sredine XVI. stoljeća.”
In Rešetarov zbornik. Dubrovnik, 1931, pp. 99–107; Dragan Roller, “Naša prva manufaktura
sukna u XV stoljeću u Dubrovniku.” Ekonomski pregled, god. I, br. 2 (1950): 192–202; Dragan
Roller, Dubrovački zanati u XV. i XVI. stoljeću. Zagreb, 1951; Dušanka Dinić-Knežević,
Tkanine u privredi srednjovjekovnog Dubrovnika. Beograd, 1982; Ivan Božić, “Ekonomski
i društveni razvitak Dubrovnika u XIV–XV veku.” Istorijski glasnik 1 (1949): 21–61; Krekić,
“I mercanti e produttori toscani”; Ignacij Voje, Kreditna trgovina u srednjovjekovnom
Dubrovniku. Sarajevo, 1976; Josip Lučić, “Prva Komora vunarskog obrta u Hrvatskoj.
Dubrovački ‘Ordines artis lanae’ od god. 1432.” Dubrovačke teme (1991): 183–207.
11 Roller, Dubrovački zanati, pp. 8, 31, 59; Knežević-Dinić, Tkanine u privredi srednjovjekovnog
Dubrovnika, pp. 87–88.
Cloth and Geography 273
such that by the end of the 13th century there were 180 plots belonging to the
commune on which there were (at first mainly wooden) houses within the city
walls (Fig. 2). Only in this way was it possible to structure the spaces to the
north of the Placa (the main town square), with double rows of houses
and with streets (ruge) 10 feet wide between them. During the 14th century,
the commune’s government managed to increase the stock of communal
real estate by constructing mixed-purpose blocks with shops on the ground
floor along the Placa, thus shaping a new main commercial axis for the city.
The inventory registers of commune-owned land, houses, and shops (periodi-
cally updated in 1286, 1382, 1417, 1481, and continuing as late as 1722 with records
of their users) indicate that every 5 years they had to hold auctions at which
the fees to the commune were fixed.12 As has been argued, this large-scale
ownership proved an exceptionally effective model of urban planning and
preservation of the urban fabric of Dubrovnik. For example, when in 1406 it
was decided that because of the danger of fire, the wooden houses on com-
mune land had to be replaced gradually with stone buildings, all 150 of them
were eventually rebuilt with stone. Such a form of ownership was also an
important instrument of social policy. In this way, the city government could
stimulate occupations and trades that were in decline, show social sensitivity
for those who could not meet the whole sum of the rental, and reward those
who had performed special services. Given the possession of such a stock of
mixed-use houses, the government felt comfortable enough to launch a new
textile industry. Thus, the initiator and organizer of textile production in the
early 15th century was the Ragusan government itself.
A witness to the birth of the first Dubrovnik textile industry, Filippo de
Diversis, described the events in the following terms in 1440:
Fig. 2 Diagram of the principal areas of commune-owned real estate in Dubrovnik in the
mid-15th century ( from Irena Benyovsky Latin and Danko Zelić, Knjige nekretnina
Dubrovačke općine, 2007).
Cloth and Geography 275
were well initiated into this skill, they found two brothers, lawfully born
of one mother and two fathers, that is, Paulo Busina and Pietro Pantella
of Piacenza, and called upon them to set up this trade in Dubrovnik….
They advanced them five thousand perpers from the city exchequer, for
them to operate with them for ten years, without any obligation to return
or any burden of interest. Thus they started the business and founded it
from [its] roots.13
Accordingly, the production of textiles on a large scale began in 1416 with the
arrival of Paolo Busina Cornelo from Piacenza. After his death in mid-1417, his
contractual obligations were assumed by his half-brother Pietro Pantella, with
the proviso that during 10 years of work he was to produce 200 pieces of cloth
in the first year and 650 in the last year of work.14
As early as January 1416, outside the city gates at Pile, a central workshop
was built, with rooms for washing and dyeing the cloth on the ground floor,
with rooms for dwelling and special departments for all the jobs of the trade
on the first floor, as well as devices for stretching and drying the cloth in the
attic. Domus magna at Pile, 75 ells long (125 feet [38 meters]), 18–20 ells wide,
had 87 windows and 10 doors. In the first part of the ground floor, 7–8 ells high
(more than 12 feet), was a dyeing shop with two cauldrons and four barrels and
a house fountain. In the second part was a deep cistern caulked with lime
inside and covered with a wooden lid or a brick vault, and above it on a
large shelf were dyes and other supplies. In the third part of the ground floor
were cloth-washing shops with a cauldron and a place for the production
of black soap. On the first floor was a room made of wood for the woolen
workshop; and on the second, devices for stretching and fulling the cloth.
A large cistern was built—for the “guild of wool manufacturers outside the
upper city wall in the cemetery”15—that was as long as the entire house, and
two steps wide. There were a number of smaller workshops in the town itself
and in Rijeka Dubrovačka. Some of the production went on in converted
13 Filip de Diversis, Opis slavnoga grada Dubrovnika. [Description of the Famous City of
Dubrovnik]. Preface, transcription and translation from Latin by Zdenka Janeković
Römer. Zagreb, 2004, p. 110. The original Latin title of Diversis’s treatise is De situ aedificio-
rum, politiae et laudabilium consuetudinum inclytae civitatis Ragusii. See also Igor Fisković,
“Djelo Filipa de Diversisa kao izvor poznavanja umjetnosti i kulture Dubrovnika.”
In Reljef renesansnog Dubrovnika. Dubrovnik, 1993, pp. 19–53.
14 Roller, Dubrovački zanati, pp. 7, 29, 44–50; Dušanka Dinić-Knežević, “Petar Pantella—
trgovac i suknar u Dubrovniku,” Godišnjak Filozofskog fakulteta u Novom Sadu 13, no. 1
(1970): 87–89.
15 “Artis lane extra murum superiorem in cimiterio sepulcrorum.”
276 Belamarić
cellars and ground floors of buildings in the center, which caused a fair amount
of consternation because of the unsavory smells associated with it. Thus on
August 16, 1428 (but only temporarily), on threat of a fine of 50 perpers, the
processing and production of cloth was banned in “houses of the municipality
within the city walls of Ragusa.”16 Clearly, this provision was passed before the
aqueduct and fountain were built in the city, at a time when textile production
was developed wherever it could, spurred by the government’s ambitions; but
even after the water and the sewage systems were regulated, textile manufac-
turing continued to thrive within the city.
At the beginning of the 15th century, dozens of cloth makers and clothiers
were attracted to Dubrovnik; they came from Prato, Siena, Florence, and
Bergamo, from Aix-la-Chapelle and Brittany, from Catalonia, Savoy, and
Brabant, and with them came Flemish and German musicians and painters, all
encouraged by the rumors of the privileges that the Dubrovnik government
was handing out all around to aid the burgeoning industry. The effect of the
news that Dubrovnik was becoming a textile center is borne out by the num-
bers; for example, in 1417 eight clothiers (tailors) arrived from Cologne alone.
Due to the competition from rival English and Dutch woolen manufacturers,
the northern cities on the Rhine had turned to the processing of cotton
and silk, and, as a result, many of the cloth makers immigrated to Spain, Italy,
and, especially, Dubrovnik. Accordingly, the Dubrovnik archival documents
from the first half of the 15th century show more than 80 names of Tuscans
involved in the business. Because of their continuing activity in the city, of
particular note are Giuliano di Marco and Michele di Giovannino, whose
account books are in archives in their native Prato.17 Although foreign cloth
makers in Dubrovnik started the textile industry there, it was taken over
by local men and, by the 1430s, was owned and run by them—men such
as Alegretto-Rade Mihajlov and Mile Radonich (known as Gizdavi), who
employed many workers.
The government offered premiums for every piece of cloth, loans were
provided, banking developed, the right “credit lines” were provided, business
associations were formed, and dwellings and workshops made available.
The Dubrovnik landowners all entered the textile business. For example,
16 The original Latin: “domibus comunis intra muros Ragusii”; Dinić-Knežević, Tkanine u
privredi srednjovjekovnog Dubrovnika, p. 89.
17 Popović-Radenković, “Le relazioni commerciali,” pp. 517–520. In this pioneering study of
the Dubrovnik cloth industry, the author even hypothesized that in the 1420s and 1430s
there was a colony of merchants from Prato settled in the city. However, see also Krekić,
“I mercanti e produttori toscani,” p. 713.
Cloth and Geography 277
Andrea, the oldest son of Iuan Volcio (Volčić), started producing cloth begin-
ning in July 1418; in 1422 he built a workshop in Rijeka Dubrovačka, and then a
larger one in Šumet (approximately 90 × 70 ells) with Jacob Cotrullis (Kotrulj)
and Galganus de Gataldis. Andrija hired a large number of weavers, and pro-
vided looms for them to work on.18
A couple of years later, a series of new workshops were built at Pile, Kolorina,
Rijeka Dubrovačka, and Ombla—in fact, everywhere where the fresh water
necessary for the processing of wool and the production of woolen cloth was
available in abundance.19 Also involved in textile production were the gentry
from the Menze (Menčetić) line (two of them had a fulling mill for cloth in
Župa); the Gozze (Gučetić), who in the mid-15th century were probably the
most important clan in terms of economic wealth and very much so in terms
of numbers (they had 50 adult male members); and the Bona (Bunić), Cerva
(Crijević), Sorgo (Sorkočević), Gondola (Gundulić), and Giorgi (Đurđević).
Earnings were neither spectacular nor quick, but were secure considering the
initial relatively modest investment.20 As historian Ignacij Voje has shown, the
development of textile manufacturing in Dubrovnik had a significant impact
on the scope of the credit trade, and vice versa: the use of credit in the produc-
tion of and commerce in cloth accelerated the expansion of this profitable
component of the economy and enabled the sudden accumulation of capital.
Already in 1430, panni Ragusii (textiles made in Dubrovnik) were being men-
tioned as an important export to the Levant; and in 1440, production in the
50 weaving shops (compared with the 200 in Florence) reached the level of
4000 pieces annually.21
in the textile trade in one way or another. Of course, this business was more
profitable for the men with capital than for the spinners, weavers, washers,
dyers, fullers, tenterers, carders, and shearmen.
However, in little Dubrovnik, everyone benefited from the 50 weavers’
shops—the citizens, the gentry and the commoners, rich and poor, men and
women. This was a process that required a lot of people, much time, and the
mastery of the whole of the technological process. In the 15th century, one
person doing all the jobs (washing and drying the wool, combing and carding,
spinning, spinning, winding, weaving, dyeing, rinsing, fulling, drying, stretch-
ing, teaseling, shearing, and baling) would have been able to produce at most
two pieces of cloth; and for the approximately 4000 pieces that were produced
in Dubrovnik (at mid-century) it would have been necessary to employ at least
2000 people.27 In addition, there were shepherds and all the people engaged in
transport by land and sea, creditors, entrepreneurs, merchants, and those who
looked after the infrastructure of the whole production chain.28
Founders of manufactories were made citizens of Dubrovnik and were
included in the Confraternity of Antunini (Saint Anthony). The corporation of
tailors, whose patron was Saint Thomas, was founded in 1408; in the early 16th
century it had 170 members, who were supposed to dance in front of the rector
on the Thursday before the last day of carnival. The guild of wool manufactur-
ers and merchants (Arte della Lana), a secular corporation, also had its own
history: in the 15th century it was divided into weavers, bonnet makers, and
wool shearers (cimatores) who were organized into separate confraternities,
with 476 members in the city of Dubrovnik.29
In the credit contracts, there are often clauses regarding the kind and quality
of the wool from which cloth was to be woven. Wool merchants were encour-
aged to import raw wool, and they were given the same rights as were
Dubrovnik citizens—that is, until the 1450s they could import wool without
paying a customs duty. Taking into account that the weight of one piece of
27 This is confirmed by the reference of De Diversis about the many men and women
engaged in the whole business. Filip de Diversis, Opis slavnoga grada Dubrovnika,
pp. 109–112.
28 According to oral tradition, on the nearby island of Lopud there were still up to 90 hand-
looms at the beginning of the 20th century.
29 On the statutes of these confraternities, see Roller, Dubrovački zanati, pp. 173–260.
280 Belamarić
cloth came to about 75 pounds (a pound was about 350 grams), it is likely
that about 300,000 pounds of wool were processed in Dubrovnik around 1440,
and much more in the 1450s and 1460s.30 Since wool from Bosnia and Raška
(lana di Bosna or morlachesca, similar to Dalmatian wool) was not of very
high quality, it could be used only for the production of rash. The Florentines
had the same problem: Tuscan wool could be used only for the production
of coarse cloth (villaneschi or bigelli) appropriate for the garments of the poor
or the peasants. Therefore, the Dubrovnik cloth manufacturers imported
merino wool from Castille and Aragon, from Abruzzo and Apulia, France
and England—mostly through traders from Catalonia (Tortosa, Valencia,
Barcelona) and Florence. Along with the English golden fleece sheep, Spanish
merinos have remained to this day the aristocracy of sheep, but the breed was
created only after 1340, by crossing north African Berber sheep and Spanish
sheep, which separately yielded wool of extremely poor quality. An important
factor might have been the particular form of Spanish transhumant sheep
rearing, which included an annual migration of up to 500 miles (800 kilome-
ters) lasting 8 months, from the high northern plateau of Leon and Segovia to
the southern plateaus of Extremadura and Andalusia.31
The Cotrullis family, particularly Benedictus (son of Jacob), was involved in
the trade in Catalonian wool. In April 1452 alone he had 374 tovars (tovar—
onus lanae, about 265–285 pounds, or 120–130 kilograms) and in December
he agreed to pay a merchant in Barcelona 961 and one-third ducats for wool.32
(In the same period the annual remuneration of George of Dalmatia as
master builder of Šibenik Cathedral was 150 ducats, and the most expensive
palace in Zadar was sold for 750 ducats.) He also supplied Pietro Pantella and
Aniel Cichapesse with wool; from 1439 they had operated together the large
dyeing workshop at Pile. Stimulated by the new textile industry, during the
15th century several Catalonian traders were constantly in Dubrovnik—from
Barcelona, Valencia, Taragona, Tortosa and Saragossa—whose ships, until
Dubrovnik’s owns vessels were capable of making the direct crossing, brought
excellent Spanish wool, wheat, and salt. Indeed, in 1422 an Aragonese consul is
mentioned in Dubrovnik. The trans-shipment of Spanish wool to the Adriatic
and Levant, on a great scale, was carried out during the 15th and in the first
quarter of the 16th century, mostly through Messina.
After the Aragonese had won the throne of Naples, the Ragusans started to
rear merino sheep in southern Italy on their own account, and wool from
Apulia and Abruzzo arrived in the city. The quality of wool affected the price.
The best was Spanish San Mattheo, much poorer was “lana curta” or “lana fina
curta”; prohibitions on their mixing were periodically renewed. Still, the
import of this wool increased, particularly from 1472—when it became harder
to reach Spain—and on the whole it remained extensive to the very end of the
rule of the Aragonese in Naples. It is believed that from the time of Alphonso
I some 1.2 million merino sheep were raised on the royal pastures in Abruzzo
and Apulia—just on the other side of the Adriatic from Dubrovnik—from
whose wool the state exchequer drew considerable profit. (At the end of the
16th century there were almost 3 million of these sheep.) In addition, in the last
decades of the 15th century Dubrovnik bought woolen angora cloth to use for
trading at fairs in southern Italy.33
However, even more geographies were drawn into the Dubrovnik wool
trade. In credit contracts, the term garbo is often mentioned, denoting an
excellent grade of wool, a special kind of cloth (panni di Garbo), and its specific
color;34 the wool was procured from north Africa (from the Sultanate of Garbo,
which was seized from Moorish control in 1253). However, the term also sug-
gests a different region—Algarbia di Portogallo—and later it was also used to
signify wool from the kingdom of Valencia and southern Catalonia. In the end,
it seems that wool from Abruzzo—a type called lana matricina, sheared from
infertile sheep (and often mentioned in Dubrovnik documents)—comprised
almost three-quarters of the total amount from which the Florentine wool
33 Spremić, Dubrovnik i Aragonci 1442–1495, pp. 125–127; Voje, Kreditna trgovina, p. 337.
34 On some bills a specific quality of garbo cloth was indicated, like “unum pannum
Raguseum de garbo de LX.” And actually often we find that the cloth has to be made “ad
usum Raguseum,” “ad usum camere artis lane,” “secundum ordines Ragusii” and similar.
See Roller, Dubrovački zanati, p. 34; Voje, Kreditna trgovina, pp. 279, 290.
282 Belamarić
35 M. Spremić (Dubrovnik i Aragonci 1442–1495, pp. 147–154) says that from Abruzzo also
imported were lane matricine (the best), maiorine and aguine (the poorest). R. Davidsohn
(Storia di Firenze, pp. 117–118) includes a citation from the account book of Florentine
trader Giovanni Uzzano “Da Valencia a Barcellona si esportano le lane di San Matteo, cioè
le lane di Garbo; le buone sono quelle di Piano, vale a dire di Cervera e Salsodella.” Closer
to Salsadella is San Matteo, today a place of no significance, but in the Trecento it was so
important that the banking and trading house of Franceso di Marco Datini had a branch
here. Analyzing the numerous archival documents, Hoshino argued that the garbizzazi-
one of the market after the fall of Constantinople became an exclusively Florentine
phenomenon. However, the Dubrovnik cloth industry also took part in this process to a
large degree. During the first half of the 15th century the Florentine wool industry was
divided into the production of expensive fabrics of the best English wool (San Martino)
and the making of cheap cloth of medium and poor quality (Garbo) from San Matteo, or
from Spanish merino wool from Majorca, Minorca, from Provence or from Italy itself.
See Hoshino, L’arte della lana in Firenze, p. 299, T. LVII.
36 The regulation was passed on February 22, 1462. Voje, Kreditna trgovina, pp. 279–280.
37 On the Ionian coast, the Ragusans visited Turkish Ephesus, famed market of wool and
wheat, and Balat, which sprang up on the ruins of Miletus, an export center for saffron,
wax, alum and eastern textile products. Josip Konstantin Jireček, Važnost Dubrovnika u
trgovačkoj povijesti srednjeg vijeka (transl. from German). Dubrovnik, 1915, pp. 48, 101, 103;
Ivan Božić, Dubrovnik i Turska u XIV i XV veku. Beograd, 1952, pp. 4, 303.
38 Spremić, Dubrovnik i Aragonci 1442–1495, p. 149; Ignacij Voje, Kreditna trgovina, p. 311.
Cloth and Geography 283
39 In 1481 the Grand Council adopted orders about the revival of weaving and limiting the
sale of foreign fabrics. The needs of the lively commercial links with the vast Turkish
market in which fabrics were a basic export product were imperatives. Božić, Dubrovnik i
Turska, pp. 297–299, 303–304, 312–313.
40 Roller, Dubrovački zanati, pp. 44–49. It is worth adding that the capital of the Medici
wool manufactories in Florence on the whole did not exceed 4000–5000 florins.
See Goldthwaite, Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence, p. 47.
41 Roller, Dubrovački zanati, pp. 49–50; Voje, Kreditna trgovina, p. 291 who quotes Alfred
Doren on the contemporaneous 200 Florentine cloth workshops with an annual produc-
tion of 70–80,000 pieces of cloth, which would make the Dubrovnik production of 4000
pieces (or perhaps one third more) seem poor competition. Alfred Doren, Italienische
Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vol. I, Jena, 1934, pp. 501–502. More recent analyses however
show that the Dubrovnik cloth industry shared the fate of this industry on the other side
of the Adriatic. According to Hoshino, for example, the Florentine annual production in
1425–1430 oscillated between 11,000 and 12,000 pieces, while Chorley argues with good
reasons shows that only 9000–10,000 were made. When Florentine exports in the 1470s
found the wide Levantine and Turkish markets open to them, they would export there
7000–8000 of the 17,000 pieces, of which two thirds were panni di Garbo. See Hoshino,
L’arte della lana in Firenze, pp. 204–205, 239–244; Patrick Chorley, “Rascie and the
284 Belamarić
It was not wool alone but also dye that the Dubrovnik cloth makers had to
import.42 In 1418 Marco Iuanou from Senj, was already registered as a “master
of the art of guado (woad) and indigo, and of the major art—that is, of grana
and of the dyeing of silk in all colors.”43 The term ars maior implies dyeing
with expensive dyes, particular with the red “grana” (imported into Dubrovnik
primarily from Greece) and the purple red “bllata,” while ars minor referred to
the use of cheaper dyes. The contracts mention many pigments. Most com-
mon were shades of blue, as was the case all over medieval Europe: light blue
(blavo, blava, biava), sky blue (azzuro, azzurino, cellestro), and turquoise blue
(turchino). But he also used reds (rubeo, scarlatino, vermileo, the latter mean-
ing “skin color”), greens (viridis and viridis clari, viridis scurri and viride medie
coloris), and blacks (morello—the color of a raven—and nigro). In designating
the colors of cloth, the term balle or balio was used, in connection with the
concept of guado.
Blue was usually obtained from guado, in the form of erba gualda (woad),
an Asian plant domesticated in Europe since the Neolithic, which came to
Dubrovnik from Italy, where it was intensively cultivated, particularly in
southern Italy. From one contract we learn that 500 pounds of woad could
dye 12 bales of Dubrovnik cloth azure or turquoise.44 Indigo was imported
mainly from Baghdad, with some coming from Cyprus, and the species were
mixed.45 Azure blue came from Italy and Germany.46 From the 1440s onward
Florentine Cloth Industry during the Sixteenth Century,” The Journal of European
Economic History 32, no. 3 (2003): 487–526, spec. p. 488. On Dubrovnik exports to the
Turkish market, see Božić, Dubrovnik i Turska, p. 274. On exports of cloth to the Levantine
market, see Bariša Krekić, Dubrovnik i Levant (1280–1460). Beograd, 1956, pp. 85–90.
42 On the use of dyes in Dubrovnik, see Novak, “Vunena industrija u Dubrovniku,” pp. 103–
105; Roller, Dubrovački zanati, p. 58; Dinić-Knežević, Tkanine u privredi srednjovjekovne
Dalmacije, pp. 190–193; Voje, Kreditna trgovina, p. 275.
43 The original Latin: “magister artis guadi, endege et artis maioris, scilicet grane et tingendi
siricum omnibus coloribus”; Dinić-Knežević, Tkanine u privredi srednjovjekovne Dalmacije,
p. 191.
44 Woad is a plant (Isatis tinctoria) the dried leaves of which are dark blue, almost black.
The dye is obtained by the fermentation of the plants in water. Dinić-Knežević, Tkanine u
privredi srednjovjekovne Dalmacije, 193. In endeavors to improve the technology of the
dyeing trade there were attempts, with modest results, to produce woad in the area of
Zadar, and thus be free of imports from Italy. See Tomislav Raukar, Zadar u XV. stoljeću.
Ekonomski razvoj i društveni odnosi. Zagreb, 1977, pp. 241–243.
45 At that time there was only natural indigo, obtained from the plant Indigofera tinctoria,
imported from Baghdad in the form of compressed cubes or paste.
46 In Dubrovnik documents “ultramarine or German azure” is first mentioned in 1345 and
1369 (Jorjo Tadić, Građa o slikarskoj školi u Dubrovniku XIII–XIV veka, vol. I (1284–1499).
Cloth and Geography 285
there is mention of fine azure from Bosnia (“Dubrovnik blue”), which was
a by-product of silver extraction, at about the same time as the first reports
of Bosnian vermiculus. Thus, on October 30, 1440, Paskoje Orlačić, Ljubiša, son
of Ostoja Tvrdečević and Natalin Mrkaljević formed a company (for 2 years)
“ad trafficum azuri”: the first two partners contracted to buy azure and send
it to Natalin; and he, as master of making azure, would clean, separate, and
refine it.47
The expensive purple-violet dye oricello—the Italian word for orchil (and
the origin of the name of the Florentine Rucellai clan)—is made from a species
of lichen also called orchil, which came from Greece and Majorca, and it could
be used to dye only cloth made of Spanish or French wool. Less common were
violet, morello (raven black), and nigro, dyes obtained from various plants,
insects, metals, and animal blood.48
In the case of the sale of undyed cloth without bound-off or self-finished
edges (selvage), it is specified that it is raw wool (lana incimosata or grezia).
Undyed cloth of poorer quality made of natural black wool (panno beretino)
was used for the habits of the Franciscans (panni fratreschi); this color is also
Beograd, 1952, p. 708, Nr. 18 and p. 16, Nr. 48). It was used to paint fabrics, silk flags,
paintings on wood, furniture, and the numbers on the city clock (1449). Hrabak notes
that they would sometimes find a substitute for dyeing fabric azure. A contract of
November 6, 1459, between Mattheo Bona and Christofano Tomazi della Salza of Rimini
said that for the 500 liters of saca that della Salza offered Bona (Bunić) in Dubrovnik it
would be possible to dye “panni dedeci, zoe panni sei azuro, sei turchini,” for azure and
turchino were just two tones of blue—the first was sky color, the second light blue.
The third, perso, marked dark blue; celestro, sky blue—like azure on fabrics. In his
dictionary Stulli gives “piu pieno del cilestro, turchino, modar, na nebo, blakitan” for
azzuriccio. See Bogumil Hrabak, “Dubrovački ili bosanski azur,” Glasnik Zemaljskog
muzeja IX (1954): 37.
47 “Qui tamen magister illius azuri dictum azurum teneatur et debeat preparare, dividere,
aptare, raffinare, quam melius scit et potuit.” This news is confirmed by a contract of 1479
in which Stjepan Ugrinović and Matko Alegretović bound themselves to make and paint
an altarpiece for the Church of San Severino in San Sever in the Marche, with pictures
“…picte de azuro fino de Bosna.” Indeed, one Dubrovnik document of 1459 states: “Vocha
Miletich vendidit nobili viro ser Zufredo Pilligrino libras trecentas minere lazuli id est
lapidum lazuli que invenitur et foditur in partibus Bosne pulchre et nitide ab alia specie
minere…” See Hrabak, “Dubrovački ili bosanski azur,” pp. 33–42.
48 Dinić-Knežević, Tkanine u privredi srednjovjekovnog Dubrovnika, p. 192, n. 11. On November
9, 1446, the dyer Mapheus, son of the dyer Filip of Verona, contracted with a butcher that
he should give him blood from the slaughter of his cattle (“totam sanguinem vel cruorem
quem faciet ad becariam, inteligendo sanguinem bovum qui placeat ipsi Mapheo”).
A separate chapter could be written on the folk ways of dyeing wool.
286 Belamarić
called ash-gray (cinereus). Alum was used for removing grease from the cloth
and for the stability and shine of the colors: eight ells of cloth required a pound
of alum. It was imported from Istanbul, Smyrna, Aleppo, and Alexandria.
For dyeing wool, red Brazil redwood was used (called varzino, in the
sources); from the Orient and Italy came violet,49 sumach (scotanum), and
Flemish madder. Most in demand was crimson from cochineal (grana fina)
imported from Spain, Provence, and the Peloponnese.50 From the 1440s, the
red dye known as kermes was obtained from Raška and Bosnia to produce
the color crimson (cremisi or chremosi), derived from the bodies of an insect of
the genus Kermes, called kirmiz in Arabic and kermes in English, an insect
collected in June around St. John’s Day. Bosnian and Serbian vermiculum
(Latin for vermilion) dye from the species Kermes vermilio was sold to Venice,
Florence, and other textile centers in Italy.51 Collecting these insects was labo-
rious but paid off handsomely, and Croatians who got involved in the business
included some of the biggest feudal magnates, such as Duke Stjepan Vukčić
Kosača, who ruled over a region that, according to historical records, exported
2000 pounds of vermiculum at one time.
It is not surprising that Dubrovnik had a competitor in textile manufactur-
ing from 1448 on in Novi, where Duke (Herceg) Stjepan established a weaving
workshop, bringing in foreign craftsmen to produce the same things as in
Dubrovnik and endeavoring “to make a city out of a fortress.” The organizer of
the operation in Novi was a certain Roberto of Rimini. They believed that the
big risk in starting textile production there would pay off, since fabrics, after
salt, were the most sought-after goods in the entire Balkan market. Most for-
eign merchants dealt in fabrics, for the business was profitable and stable; and
it was even more so for the manufacturer. Stjepan tried to attract a qualified
49 An extract obtained from a tree of the family Caesalpina, among which the best known is
Caesalpina braziliensis, Brazil wood. Brazilein is the ingredient that gives the pigment,
and the dye that is obtained from it is called lacca colombina or verzino colombino, prob-
ably from the name of Colombo, export port of Ceylon. Cenino Cennini and the Dubrovnik
sources call it simply verzino.
50 Grana or grana de tingere scarlatti comes from the cochineal egg of black violet color
(coccus illicis and Coccinella tinctorum, in Pliny Kermes vermilio), a parasite that lives on
the oak Quercus coccifera, widespread in Spain, southern France and Italy and some of the
Greek islands (particularly Crete) and the Near East. The pigment obtained from these
insects is today known as kermes carmine.
51 Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, vol. II, pp. 64–65. It was exported in hundreds of liters
particularly from Trgovište to Dubrovnik, to Italy and even Alexandria in the period 1440–
1446. (Jireček, Važnost Dubrovnika, pp. 68, 91; Božić, Dubrovnik i Turska, pp. 306–307.)
Cloth and Geography 287
52 Sima M. Ćirković, Herceg Stefan Vukčić-Kosača i njegovo doba. Beograd, 1964. Ignacij Voje,
“Sukno iz Hercegnovega,” Zgodovinski časopis 19–20 (1965–1966), 181–185. The weaving
shop in Novi, founded when Stjepan may have hoped to occupy the space of the
Dubrovnik production (particularly after the hold-up caused by the destruction of the
workshops outside the city in 1463). But it could not dye its cloths well, and the Dubrovnik
government, as an exception, allowed the fabrics of Novi to be dyed in the Dubrovnik
shop. Probably this concession was made so that the Turkish authorities would cancel the
multiple bans on export and import of cochineal, lead, silk and wax via Dubrovnik.
Bayezid II attempted to redirect this trade to Novi. The same prohibition was instituted
by the sultan’s firman of 1484. (Vinko Foretić, Povijest Dubrovnika do godine 1808, 1st part.
Zagreb, 1980, pp. 219, 226, 238.)
53 Božić, Dubrovnik i Turska, p. 39. On the efforts of the Grand Council to prevent
the downfall of this very highly valued branch of production in the 1480s, see ibid.,
p. 49, and Roller, Dubrovački zanati, pp. 82–83. Giuseppe Gelcich, Dello sviluppo
civile di Ragusa cosiderato ne’suoi monumenti storici ed artistici. Dubrovnik, 1884,
pp. 81–82.
54 Irma Čremošnik, “Srednjevjekovna kapa (XV. st.) iz Bile kod Travnika,” Glasnik Zemaljskog
muzeja, n.s. VII (1952): 118.
288 Belamarić
Water
Plenty of water was needed for the production of cloth: first the wool
was washed, then the cloth was washed before and after dyeing, and the
fulling mills were powered by water. Hence the workshops for dyeing and
rinsing cloth were at Dubrovnik’s Pile gate, close to the springs in Šumet and
in Rijeka Dubrovačka, while the Dubrovnik itself was short of drinking
water, particularly in the summer. True enough, Dubrovnik had always had
a developed hydrological strategy, maintaining cisterns, wells, and the
smallest springs of fresh water.55 Indeed, the city did much to solve the water
problem, as it was also necessary for extinguishing fires—a lasting cause
of concern for the people of Dubrovnik, particularly after the terrible fire
of 1272, after which the city even considered relocating. In 1304, a state
cistern was built next to the custom house, with a collection area comprising
the site of today’s western wing of the Sponza (a name derived from spongia,
sponge). In 1388 it was decided that the “sponge” of the cistern by the monas-
tery of the Franciscans should be the entire Placa. A year later, Nicola Menze
pledged to build a large cistern across from the Franciscans, along the eastern
wall of the convent of Saint Clare (which exists to this day in the convent
courtyard); its water was held to be the coldest in the city, and it was used
until 1919.56
One of the central chapters of the laudatory treatise on Dubrovnik by
Filippo de Diversis (1440) describes in detail the construction of the aqueduct
that brought a “torrent of the sweetest fluid” to “quench and ornament the
city” from neighboring Šumet (approximately 5 miles [8 kilometers] away).
55 Filippo de Diversis is the most eloquent witness here: “Wanting to draw attention to the
abundance of water in Dubrovnik, I carefully noted down that water came into it in three
ways: in springs, cisterns and the commune fountain, which I must now discuss. Since
almost every year it happens that because of drought and meagre rainfall in the Dubrovnik
cisterns drinking water does not collect, and spring water can be not very good tasting, for
it is a little brackish, the Dubrovnik Senate has taken care that everyday fresh water is
brought in by boats from Mlini, about six miles from the city. This water was bought by
the rich and the poor and by incomers for money and then drunk. In addition, the com-
mune gave a certain compensation per boat, on which every year plenty of communal
ducats were spent, and yet the people were not fully and amply supplied. Indeed,
quite often it was impossible to get water for one’s money, because of tempests at sea
or because of the surliness or idleness of the suppliers. And for this reason all felt faint.”
De Diversis, Opis slavnoga grada Dubrovnika, p. 59.
56 Lukša Beritić, “Dubrovački vodovod,” Anali Historijskog instituta JAZU u Dubrovniku 8–9
(1962): 99–100.
Cloth and Geography 289
The construction of the Dubrovnik aqueduct was one of the greatest undertak-
ings of the time. The great public source of water that Onofrio della Cava con-
ceived and produced at the western end of the Placa in 1438 included a fountain
as the crowning component of his project. According to Diversis, “This foun-
tain and aqueduct embellishes the city more than all the communal and pri-
vate buildings, miraculously, exciting admiration in many; it was the most
touching work from the involvement of the people, the most magnanimous
from the spending of state moneys, and now is magnificent for the beauty and
excellence of the building.”
There is only one short but very valuable study on the Dubrovnik aqueduct,
significantly supplemented with a very detailed technical description and new
archival data by a recently published article.57 According to these studies, in
mid-1436, two builders, Andriuzi de Bulbito and Onofrio della Cava, were
invited from Naples, and in June of that year they were under contract to build
an aqueduct, accepted by the Grand Council with 124 of the 129 votes present.
The two men came to Dubrovnik on the recommendation of Jacob Cotrullis,
Benedictus Cotrullis’s father, who was directly involved in the wool-making
enterprise. The two of them guaranteed that by the end of August 1437 they
would build an aqueduct that would bring water from the main spring (Vrelo)
and two smaller springs in Šumet (Vrijesna glavica and Marčevo) to inside the
city walls (Figs. 3 and 4), without any loss of water, at a cost of 8250 Venetian
gold ducats, to be paid in installments. They signed an agreement, to repair
any possible faults free of charge for a full year after completing it, and at the
same time to train two local builders to do the same job.58 They met the dead-
lines that were set, working in several locations at once (completing more than
98 feet [30 meters] of the aqueduct channel each day)59 and managed to finish
the work in about 400 working days, by the end of October 1437, despite the
cold and the outbreak of plague that was decimating the city. They brought a
considerable number of craftsmen from southern Italy: judging by the con-
tract’s requirement that the workers be given 150 quinqua of wine a month
(two quinqua for each worker per month, equivalent to more than a liter a
day), there must have been 75 workers.60
57 Beritić, “Dubrovački vodovod,” pp. 99–116; Relja Seferović and Mara Stojan, “Čudo vode:
prolegomena za ranorenesansni vodovod u Dubrovniku,” Anali Zavoda za povijesne
znanosti Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti u Dubrovniku 44 (2006): 95–137.
58 The wording of the contract were published in Risto Jeremić and Jorjo Tadić, Prilozi za
istoriju zdravstvene kulture starog Dubrovnika, sv. III. Beograd, 1940, pp. 11–14.
59 Seferović and Stojan, “Čudo vode,” p. 108.
60 De Diversis states that the government, on top of those 8250 golden ducats, gave them “for
the rent of a house in the city 30 or 40 perpers” (three perpers then came to one
290 Belamarić
Fig. 3 Sketch of the course of the Dubrovnik aqueduct with springs drawn in.
The aquaeductus magnus was 714 miles (11,700 meters) long from the source
to the Mlini reservoir and was wide enough to let through about 70 liters per
second, less than one-twentieth the capacity of the Roman aqueduct in Split
that fed the Palace of Diocletian. The triangular cross-sectioned Dubrovnik
aqueduct had to be as wide and as tall as the length of one large brick that is
now still commonly used in Dubrovnik, and be built with high-quality hydrau-
lic mortar. The angle of declination was very slight: only 0.6 percent for the first
5 miles (8 kilometers), and the entire fall from the source to the reservoir
amounted to about 6512 feet (20 meters), which shows that the surveying prior
to construction had to have been nearly perfect. That same year, 1436, the
Grand Council also passed provisions for new regulations regarding the sew-
age system in the city, apparently in connection with the plan for the construc-
tion of the aqueduct.61
As early as October 1439, the superintendents of the aqueduct were
authorized to divert some more water from Šumet into it, and to build
mills that would be driven by water from the aqueduct. These were built in
Mill Street, which dropped in a straight line from Mlini reservoir (castellum
aquae) toward Minčeta tower.62 The municipality signed its contract with
Onofrio on December 7, 1442, to build, by mid-July 1444, an aqueduct at
Posat (above Pile), then 14 mills for wheat (counting the existing four) and
14 fulling mills for rinsing wool and fulling and rinsing the cloth—at a cost of
8000 perpers.63 After the job was completed (August 1, 1444), Onofrio was
supposed to get a lease on the mills and fulling mills, and on the channels
and the aqueducts of both fountains, for 8 years, with a rent of 1200 perpers
a year. In other words, he would pay off the loan in advance by means of
his work.
Venetian gold ducat) and the permission to important banned wines, 200 measures a
month, which was called a quinqum (a large quinqum was 21 liters, a small quinqum
about 18.5 liters). The project, which calls to mind Roman engineering exploits, was met
with disbelief, and probably Gelcich is not mistaken when he conveys local tradition
according to which the people thought it not feasible, and the word went round that
Onofrio was a mountebank. De Diversis, Opis slavnoga grada Dubrovnika, p. 60; Gelcich,
Dello sviluppo civile di Ragusa, p. 53.
61 On the development of Dubrovnik city sewage and system of drainage of rainfall, from
the first provisions in the updated Statues of 1296 (V. Liv., cap. 43), see Lukša Beritić,
Urbanistički razvitak Dubrovnika. Zagreb, 1958, p. 23. For archeological confirmation of
the various phases of construction, see Ivica Žile, “Srednjovjekovna kanalizacija grada
Dubrovnika,” Starohrvatska prosvjeta III/34 (2007): 437–449.
62 Seferović and Stojan, “Čudo vode,” pp. 118, 128.
63 Beritić, “Dubrovački vodovod,” p. 99.
292 Belamarić
In March 1437 it had been decided that a large fountain should be built in
the city; but the contract with Onofrio ended on February 7, 1438.64 Onofrio
was employed at the same time on the major reconstruction of the Rector’s
Palace, and he agreed on October 29 of that year with his fellow citizen Bellus
della Cava (builder of the aqueduct of the convent of Saint Mary on Rožat) to
finish the fountain, bring the water through to the city loggia, and there build
a second fountain.65 In October 1440 a contract was signed between Onofrio
della Cava and Pietro da Milano and the superintendent of the construction of
the aqueduct for the building of this second fountain near the Arsenal (Figs. 5
and 6).66 However, soon there was a dispute about the use of the water from
the fountain. This revolved around the workshops and dyers’ shops active not
only at Pile but on the ground floors of the city’s center, and was clearly related
to the recent regulation of the city’s sewage system.67 In January 1441, four
lessees of the communal dyers’ shops (including Vladislav Gozze and Pietro
Pantella) asked the government to allow them to divide the water that came to
the workshops into six parts.68 The problem of supplying these workshops
64 At the end of 1438 the two Apulian building contractors, Andreuzzi and Onofrio, were in
a dispute with each other adjudicated on by Pietro Pantella and Aniel Cichapessi, two
well known clothiers and merchants in the city. Andreuzzi’s obligations to build the
large fountain were taken over by Jacopo de Venusio Correr from Trani (a few years later
the master builder of the cathedral in Korčula). See Beritić, “Dubrovački vodovod,” p. 101.
On the contract, see Jeremić and Tadić, Prilozi za istoriju, App. III, pp. 15–18; Renata Novak
Klemenčić, “Dubrovniška velika fontana,” Zbornik za umetnosno zgodovino 39 (2003): 80;
Seferović and Stojan, “Čudo vode,” pp. 118, 124. Most recently, on the original appearance
of the great fountain, see Tine Germ, “Dubrovniški Veliki vodnjak in vprašanje njegove
prvotne podobe,” Acta historiae artis Slovenica 9 (2004): 21–30. On the inscription,
see Stanko Kokole, “Ciriaco d’Ancona v Dubrovniku,” Arheološki vestnik 41/Šašlov zbornik
(1990): 663–697; Stanko Kokole, “Cyriacus of Ancona,” Renaissance Quarterly 49 (1996):
225–267; Antun Šoljić, “O ranoj renesansi u Dubrovniku,” Anali Zavoda za povijesne
znanosti Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti u Dubrovniku 40 (2002): 127–146.
65 Novak Klemenčić, “Dubrovniška velika fontana,” pp. 81–82. On works that according to
the Onofrio plan were carried out in the Rector’s Palace from 1438, see the study of Nada
Grujić, with radically new understandings and evaluations. The author has shown that
the work of Onofrio della Cava marks the appearance of the Renaissance in Dubrovnik
architecture. Nada Grujić, “Onofrio di Giordano della Cava i Knežev dvor u Dubrovniku.”
In Renesansa i renesanse u umjetnosti Hrvatske: zbornik radova sa znanstvenih skupova
“Dani Cvita Fiskovića,” eds. Predrag Marković and Jasenka Gudelj. Zagreb, 2008,
pp. 9–50.
66 Jeremić and Tadić, Prilozi za istoriju, App. III, p. 18.
67 In the year 1296 the Dubrovnik Republic started to build one of the first medieval sewage
systems.
68 Dinić-Knežević, Tkanine u privredi srednjovjekovnog Dubrovnika, p. 207.
Cloth and Geography 293
with water remained unresolved until February 25, 1445, when the Minor
Council decided to divide the water from the fountain into seven parts; some
had the right to 12 hours and some to 24 hours a week. The schedule of use was
marked down on slips; the dyers’ shops at Pile and in the city were listed, and
it can be seen who worked in them.69 A sense of how the system worked at the
end of the century can be gleaned from a book written by a Bohemian diplo-
mat and pilgrim, Duke Jan Hasištejnský z Lobkovic, who passed through
Dubrovnik in 1493. In his very detailed account of Dubrovnik, he wrote that all
around the city there were forts and good walls with deep, wide fosses. Over
the city there was an elongated and very high, steep hill from which water
flowed from a major spring: “On it and on this hill there are many mills, one
after another, so that the water flows from one mill to another; some of them
are also in the city.”70 Ten years earlier, a Swiss Dominican, Felix Fabri (Schmid),
had passed through the town, and given a similar account of the city, noting
that “there are mills, whether windmills or watermills using water that falls
from the heights and turns the wheels.”71 Pietro Casola, canon of Milan, who
on his way from Venice to Jerusalem also passed through Dubrovnik a year
after Lobkovic, adds more detail:
They have an aqueduct for fresh water that comes from a distance.
With this aqueduct they drive eight mills, and after, entering into the
city, it serves several places, particularly two, where two public fountains
have been made, one at the gate of Saint Francis is done with many
openings, the other at Placa, also with many openings; here the common
people gather to collect water. The aqueduct is also used by the friars of
St Francis.72
69 Ibid., 207.
70 Jorjo Tadić, Promet putnika u starom Dubrovniku. Dubrovnik, 1939, p. 191.
71 Stjepan Krasić, “Opis hrvatske jadranske obale u putopisima švicarskog dominikanca
Feliksa Fabrija (Schmida) iz 1480. i 1483/84. godine,” Anali Zavoda za povijesne znanosti
Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti u Dubrovniku 39 (2001): 186. Quoted in ibid.,
p. 196.
72 Quoted in ibid., p. 196.
73 Ibid.
Cloth and Geography 295
Before and after the dyeing process, the fabrics were washed in what was called
black soap, and alongside the dyers were located a washing and a dryer’s shop.
The same people both dyed and rinsed out the cloth until September 25, 1455,
when the government ordered that all cloth should be rinsed out in the dyers’
shop below Lovrijenac (which became the central laundry) and these occupa-
tions became separate and independent.74 Clearly there was an attempt to
get the smells out of the city. The smells related to the woolen industry were
omnipresent. In 1443, Leon Battista Alberti complained that Siena literally
stank, and he would certainly have said the same thing about Dubrovnik at
that time.75
Dyeing and rinsing were important in making high-quality cloth; longstand-
ing disputes would arise if the wrong hues of dye were created. Samples of dye
brought from Venice were held in the commune chancellery, and by an order
of 1421 they had to be placed on tables of the officers for the manufacturing of
wool cloth, as well as in every dyeing shop and in the Chamber for controlling
the extent to which they were supplied with dyes. Neither vitriol nor lime was
allowed in dyeing, and the washers who made the soap for washing the cloth
were forbidden to make it from the grease that dripped from the cloth after
weaving; cloth that had no stamp from an official could not be received for
dyeing and washing, nor for fulling, stretching, and drying.76 By February 7,
1419, the Major Council had assigned one dyer, Luca of Zadar, a workshop for
5 years (in the space where they had until then made cannons known as bom-
bards), with the condition that it would provide him with stoves for cauldrons
and a channel to the sea and, in addition, repair the outlet to the sea in the
workshop he had previously occupied.
From 1435 half the cloth had to be dyed in the municipal dyeing shops, and
it was forbidden to build any new shops. In the city itself, all the dyers except
those belonging to the commune were closed down. In 1442 (when De Diversis
wrote his encomium on Dubrovnik) the Grand Council forbade private
dyers. Henceforth, cloth was to be dyed only in two municipal dyers’ shops in
Pile (on the land of Georgius Gozze) and in the city in which Magister Jacomo
worked.77 Those in Rijeka and Gruž were exempted from the ban, which sug-
gests that before the construction of the aqueduct and sewage system these
decisions were in large part motivated by considerations of town planning and
hygiene (Figs. 7 and 8).
Fig. 7 Graphic view of the extent of the medieval sewage system of the city of Dubrovnik
(photo by marina oreb, from i. žile, starohrvatska prosvjeta 34 (2007): 449).
Fig. 8 Profile of the late medieval city sewage system below Držićevo poljane
(photo by Miljenko Mojaš, from I. Žile, Starohrvatska prosvjeta 34 (2007):
447–448).
After dyeing and washing, the cloth was first taken for fulling to the four full-
ing mills outside the city, in Župa and Rijeka Dubrovačka, until Onofrio built
the new fulling mills. Because of the shortage of water in summer they had to
be driven by hand, which then doubled the price of fulling. Immediately after
it arrived at the fuller’s, the cloth, still wet from dying, was put into the hammer
mills and washed in hot water with constant fulling so as to avoid damage,
which would occur if it were left to stand wet. The cloth was not allowed to stay
in the fulling mill longer than 8 days. To reduce shrinking, some workers
stamped on the cloth with their feet instead of beating it in the hammer
mill, and in stretching it they would increase the length by an ell or two.
Concerned with preserving the good name of Dubrovnik cloth, on October 12,
1444, the Grand Council forbade such practices and introduced high penalties
298 Belamarić
to prevent it.78 As for the technological procedures that had to be carried out
by the carders (schartezendori, schartissieri), combers (pettenatori), spinners
(filatori), weavers (textores), washers and dyers (purgatores et tinctores), those
who dried, fulled and stretched the cloth (chioldaroli, follatori and tiratori), tea-
selers (garzoti), tailors (sartores), and shearmen (cimatores), a whole set of
regulations developed through practice and usurpation, step by step, with
great attention.79
After fulling, and sometimes after stretching and drying, some of the cloth
would be taken to be napped (both wet and dry); this job was done by the mas-
ter nappers/teaselers. The final part of the job on the cloth was done by the
shearmen, who cut all the threads, made the edges, gave the cloth its final
form, and formed it into bales (there were always 10 master shearmen in the
town); they also handled sewing and commerce.
After fulling, the cloth would be stretched and dried in the drying shops
located close to the drying shop. The workers who stretched the cloth were the
tenterers (tiratori)—four of them catching hold of it and pulling it at the ends
so that it would stretch out equally. Bizarre forms of wood construction with a
forest of tenters, on which tens of thousands of meters of cloth were stretched
out and dried were once a distinctive feature of the city. In Florence, in earlier
times, tenterers used the city walls and towers for the same purpose (this was
later expressly forbidden).80 According to many accounts, even famous towers
such as those in San Gimigniano (the medieval equivalent of Manhattan’s sky-
scrapers) were used for drying cloth. In Dubrovnik, as well as elsewhere in
Dalmatia, other solutions had to be found when such constructions could
not be built outside the cities, particularly because of security issues. In a
cramped and populous city such as late medieval Dubrovnik, at least some of
the long cloth pieces (in standard lengths of 10–30 or so meters) had to be hung
outside for stretching and drying on the perforated decorative brackets (con-
soles) called auriculi above or next to the windows on the upper stories of
houses.
These stone brackets with their lugs have received a fair amount of scholarly
attention. The standard opinion of their original function has been stated by
Cvito Fisković, who argued that the windows were “surrounded, as in Floral
Gothic, with perforated brackets, lugs and notches for drying and spreading
out washing and cloths, curtains and fruit, a marked sign of Dalmatian house
from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.”81 An exchange of letters from the
1930s that I found recently in the archive of the Split Conservation Department
sheds more light on the topic. Their descriptions of certain conditions and
practices, rather than being anachronistic (that is, known to the authors of the
letters either through hearsay or direct experience in the late 19th century),
indicate survivals of practices among populations that are a common feature
in closed communities and a phenomenon well known to anthropologists. The
earliest of these letters was written on March 10, 1934 by geographer Lucijan
Marčić, then curator of Dubrovnik Museum, to Ljubo Karaman, the conserva-
tor there, and accompanied the letter of a Ragusan, the well-known goldsmith
Antun Linardović. Marčić wrote:
I notice from my part that I heard the same thing in the city of Rab, and
that in the same way they washed and hung out everything, and I recall
that in a book about Spain or some other Mediterranean country, I saw a
picture that shows this. If I am not wrong, it was published by Treves in
Turin, and the picture was by Gustav Doré.82
The little stone brackets placed at the sides of the windows are very
familiar to me from my childhood, which I spent in the area of Dubrovnik
just below Minčeta fort; to this day I have a house in this place among the
oldest in the area and on the windows they have these stone brackets.
I recall that when some older women had spun or woven wool and when
they finished it, then they would wash it, a long piece of about 10 metres
and about 70 cm wide. They would put the two ends temporarily together
and then put a wooden pole on the two brackets and fix onto it and hang
81 Cvito Fisković, “Graditeljstvo grada Hvara u XVI stoljeću,” Radovi Instituta za hrvatsku
povijest 10/Matij Ivanić i njegovo doba (1977): 455–470. But, same author is citing a
Dubrovnik document of 1372 mentioning “4 auriculos pro fenestris pro expandendo
pannos.” Cvito Fisković, Naši graditelji i kipari XV. I XVI. Stoljeća u Dubrovniku, Zagreb,
1947, p. 66. Although we can find them everywhere in Dalmatia, such auriculi were
particularly characteristic of the Dubrovnik area—in one Renaissance street in Orebić
every house has them—and Ambroz Tudor hypothesized that their appearance on Hvar
houses suggested that there were Dubrovnik builders and carvers there. Ambroz Tudor,
“Stambena arhitektura grada Hvara u 17. i 18. stoljeću.” M.A. thesis, Zagreb, 1995, p. 145.
82 Archive of the Conservation Department Split: Kons. 56/1934.
83 Ljubo Karaman, Umjetnost u Dalmaciji: XV. i XVI. vijek, Zagreb, 1933, p. 124.
300 Belamarić
out below the window the whole length divided in two; then at the bot-
tom they would place a piece of plank, as wide as the finished wool, and
on this plank they would place a few pieces of stone, so it would stay
nicely stretched, and as the wool dried, every now and then would sprin-
kle water on this stretched wool, and then after a couple of days it would
come out as straight as if you had ironed it, and then they would fold it
into a slab and it was ready for sale… Here I shall give you still more proof
that this fits the purpose. My mother was a real Dubrovnik woman, born
in 1830 in the Miletić family. She had two sisters, I recall very well that she
would tell us that all three in their youth had their looms and wove this
wool. For this one can see that this branch of household industry was
very well at home in almost every family in Dubrovnik, and so you can see
these stone brackets in all the streets of the city on all the older houses.
I had heard earlier that in some places still today or until recently they
dried dyed cloth. But I was of the opinion that this was not the original
primary purpose for these brackets being placed on our buildings. I think
it just a consequence of the changed social conditions of the inhabitants
of the old palaces and the old parts of our cities. It is a fact that in the old
pictures and views of Venice one sees on the windows sun-blinds, and
carpets on festive days, and not cloth or washing that is being dried. This
can be seen only in the picturesque views of the past age, when a new
and socially more impoverished class of people came into these old parts
of town. It is hard to believe that the patricians and rich citizens as
long ago as the ancient days had out on the grand facades of their house
stuff that was dried, dyed and so on. More likely this was in courtyards or
less prominent parts of their palaces. Particularly I would not know why
they built perforated consoles at the level of the top edge of the window.
So I am of the opinion that originally these brackets could only have
seldom served such purposes, for which they were used in a later period.
But certainly this is a matter on which it is impossible to give the last
word at the moment.84
It is a fact, however, that the appearance of these auriculi (Latin for “ears”)
on the late Gothic houses in Dalmatia (see Figs. 9 and 10) coincides with the
84 Kons. 57/1934.
Cloth and Geography 301
Fig. 9 Perforated auriculi (decorative brackets) flanking the windows of a house in one of
the streets below Minčeta.
Fig. 10 Perforated auriculi (decorative brackets) flanking the windows of a house in Dubrovnik.
This was to do with the heavy cloths, unlike those of Perpignan and Saie. (Hoshino, L’arte
della lana in Firenze, pp. 236–237.)
90 Joško Belamarić, “Nikola Božidarević.” In Croatia: Aspects of Art, Architecture and Cultural
Heritage, ed. John Julius Norwich. London, 2009, pp. 110–112. On clothing as a means of
identification and signs of social position and the related Ragusan sumptuary laws and
regulations about the introduction of foreign fashions, see the chapter “Clothing, jewel-
lery and accoutrements” in Zdenka Janeković Römer, Okvir slobode. Zagreb–Dubrovnik,
1999, pp. 344–352.
Cloth and Geography 305
Africa, Egypt, Persia, Greece, the Balkans, and southern, central and northern
Italy)—and if on this map were also marked the places where the Dubrovnik
traders went with these and other textiles, we would see that the connections
among them must have been as complex as in the most lively periods of the
Roman age. Like the materials that were imported, expertise and craftsman-
ship were portable “goods” and drew Dubrovnik into a tight network of rela-
tionships that profoundly affected its entire culture.
Acknowledgments
I am most grateful for the patience and friendship of Igor Fisković, Nada Grujić,
Zdenka Janeković-Römer, Goran Nikšić, Danko Zelić and Ivica Žile, specialists
on Renaissance Dubrovnik, who read drafts of this work, improving it with
many invaluable suggestions.
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PART 4
Portability and Networks
∵
Chapter 10
Considering the mobility of persons and stones is one way to reflect upon how
movable or portable seemingly stationary archaeological sites might be.
Dalmatia, here viewed as a center of gravity between East and West, was cen-
tral for the global vision of Ottoman imperial ambitions, which peaked during
the 16th century. Constituting a fluid “border zone” caught between the fluctu-
ating boundaries of three early modern empires—Ottoman, Venetian, and
Austrian Habsburg—the Dalmatian coast of today’s Croatia and its hinterland
occupied a vital position in the geopolitical imagination of the sultans. The
Ottoman aspiration to reunite the fragmented former territories of the Roman
Empire once again brought the eastern Adriatic littoral within the orbit of a
tri-continental empire, comprising the interconnected arena of the Balkans,
Crimea, Anatolia, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa.
It is important to pay particular attention to how sites can “travel” through
texts, drawings, prints, objects, travelogues, and oral descriptions. To that list
should be added “traveling” stones (spolia) and the subjective medium of
memory, with its transformative powers, as vehicles for the transmission of
architectural knowledge and visual culture. I refer to the memories of travelers,
merchants, architects, and ambassadors who crossed borders, as well as
to Ottoman pashas originating from Dalmatia and its hinterland, with
their extraordinary mobility within the promotion system of a vast eastern
Mediterranean empire. To these pashas, circulating from one provincial post
to another was a prerequisite for eventually rising to the highest ranks of vizier
and grand vizier at the Imperial Council in the capital Istanbul, also called
Ḳosṭanṭiniyye (Constantinople).
Archaeological sites can migrate and become influential through the evoca-
tive yet elusive medium of personal and collective memories; creatively trans-
lated into familiar architectural idioms, they are sometimes transformed to the
point of no longer being recognizable. Such a process of cross-cultural visual
translation through the transformative prism of memory has been posited by
Deborah Howard with respect to Venetian officials, who spent long periods in
the Levant before being elevated to higher posts in Venice. She attributes the
uniqueness of Venetian visual culture, with its orientalizing flavor, to a process
of translation in which remembrance, nostalgia, and oral communication
played a fundamental role.1 I believe that a comparable phenomenon contrib-
uted to the emergence in the 15th and 16th centuries of a distinctive Ottoman
visual culture, which is neither Eastern nor Western but a conscious fusion of
both. Besides the agency of particular individuals, it was infrastructural net-
works of geo-spatial connectivity within the Ottoman transnational space that
facilitated the circulation and reuse of much-coveted stones boasting a Greco-
Roman or late antique Byzantine pedigree, which thereby transcended limita-
tions imposed by the fixity of architectural monuments resistant to mobility.
Pashas
During the late 15th and 16th centuries, most pashas were recruited as slave-
servants (ḳul) in their youth from the empire’s indigenous Christian subjects in
the Balkans (and to a lesser degree Anatolia), thus becoming integrated into
the multiethnic Ottoman ruling elite (see image from Moeurs et Fachons des
Turcs, Fig. 1). The childhood memories of these upwardly mobile “tribute” chil-
dren (devşirme), generally chosen according to their distinguished physiog-
nomy, no doubt conditioned their new identities and their profiles of cultural
patronage. The selected youths, some of them already in their late teens, were
required to convert to Islam and received a rigorous education in the royal
court or other households before being appointed to military and administra-
tive services. The most talented among them were destined for the highest
vizierial posts as pashas (a privilege less likely to be enjoyed by those born as
Muslims), after having served as sanjak (sub-province) governors and gover-
nor-generals in the provinces, where they would have encountered various
ancient archaeological sites.2
1 Deborah Howard also considers the role of travelogues, images, drawings, and portable
objects in processes of transmission. See her Venice & the East: The Impact of the Islamic
World on Venetian Architecture 1100–1500. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000,
esp. xi–xv, pp. 50–53, and Deborah Howard, “Venice between East and West: Marc’Antonio
Barbaro and Palladio’s Church of the Redentore,” Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians 62, no. 3 (2003): 306–325.
2 On the prominence of imperial office holders from a devşirme origin in the so-called classical
period of the Ottoman Empire during the 15th and 16th centuries, see Gülru Necipoğlu,
The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire. London and Princeton, NJ:
Reaktion Books, 2005; London and Chicago: Reaktion Books, 2011, pp. 27–46.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 315
Fig. 1 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Friday prayer procession of Sultan Süleyman through the
Hippodrome of Istanbul in 1533. Woodcut from Moeurs et Fachons des Turcs
(Antwerp, 1553) (after Stirling Maxwell, The Turks in 1533. London and Edinburgh,
1873).
3 Esin Atıl, Süleymanname: The Illustrated History of Süleyman the Magnificent. Washington,
DC: National Gallery of Art; New York: H.N. Abrams, 1986, pp. 94–95.
316 necipoğlu
Fig. 2 Recruitment of tribute children from a Balkan village, c. 1558. Watercolor from Arifi’s
Persian Sulaymānnāma. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, H. 1517, fol. 31v
(photo courtesy the topkapı palace museum library).
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 317
Observing that no vizier failed to “fully incline towards his own people,” Āli
wrote, “And whenever a grand vizier or vizier is Bosnian, it is for certain
that the prestige of imperial council members belonging to that group will
daily increase through advancement and promotion to higher posts. If he is
Albanian, his own group becomes fortunate, for he is likely to promote his rela-
tives and siblings, appointing to reputable positions those from his own city
and hometown.”4
The same author observed that members of the Imperial Council had
increasingly been integrated into the royal family through marriage to Sultan
Süleyman’s sisters, granddaughters, and daughter. Most of them were products
of the royal palace: “Making the viziers his sons-in-law and selecting the major-
ity of the grandees among the fortunate ones exiting from his inner palace was
his innovation; in his reign no other type of accomplished and judicious per-
son was given the vizierate.” Indeed, of the 23 viziers and grand viziers of this
sultan’s reign, only four were born as Muslims, the rest being converts who had
personally served him as loyal palace pages or eunuchs.5
The artistic implications of the hybrid identities of the Ottoman ruling elite
for the subject of this essay have not been much explored.6 Here, in this essay,
the focus is on the cultural agency of three influential pashas from the mid-
16th century who came from the Dalmatian coast and its hinterland, encom-
passing the sanjaks of Bosnia (Bosna) and Herzegovina (Hersek), with their
seats based in Sarajevo and Mostar respectively. It was in the age of Sultan
Süleyman that most of present-day Croatia came under Ottoman control after
the Battle of Mohács in Hungary in 1526 and the 1537 campaign against Apulia
and Corfu. Bosnia would subsequently become a province (vilāyet), compris-
ing several sanjaks, in its own right in 1580, when its administrative center was
moved to Banjaluka. During the second and third quarters of the 16th century
this region assumed a rising prominence in East–West trade as a nodal point
for dynamic networks of mobility and cultural translation across the Ottoman
territories and beyond. Three Slavic grand viziers of Sultan Süleyman domi-
nated the later part of his reign, with the last one continuing to hold onto his
post under the next two sultans (Selim II [r. 1566–1574] and Murad III [r. 1574–
1595]); they are Rüstem Pasha (g.v. 1544–1553, 1555–1561), Semiz Ali Pasha (g.v.
1561–1565), and Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (g.v. 1565–1579).
Rüstem Pasha
Rüstem Pasha married the only daughter of Sultan Süleyman and his beloved
wife from the Ukraine, Hürrem Sultan, known in the West as “Roxolana” or “La
Rossa.” A 1558 report in a travelogue written by Nicolò Michiel, who accompa-
nied the Constantinople bailo Antonio Barbarigo (a representative of the
Venetian Republic and head of the Venetian community in Istanbul), charac-
terizes this powerful pasha as a “second Süleyman.”7 [Originating from “the
Bosnian nation/people from a most ignoble background, he had been placed
in his childhood in the seraglio.”] The Venetian nobleman noted that the
57-year-old grand vizier, who commissioned numerous public buildings, had
accumulated a great treasure from gifts, and speculated that this might soon
become the cause of his ruin. Rüstem Pasha seems to have been fluent in
the “Croatian” (“Croatice”) language (proto Serbo-Croatian, frequently referred
to in this period’s sources as “Slavic” or “Slavonic”). Ambassadors from the
Dubrovnik Republic (Ragusa)—a tribute-paying vassal of the Ottoman state—
often conversed with and wrote to the pasha in their common “Slavic lan-
guage” (“lingua schiava”). A Ragusan document dated 1550 referred to him as
“our protector and kinsman, and as a man who speaks our language.” The
grand vizier preferred to negotiate in his native tongue, rather than through
the intervention of a translator into Turkish, during an audience he gave in
1553 to two Austrian Habsburg ambassadors: the Dalmatian Catholic bishop of
Pecs in Hungary, Antun Vrančić and the Hungarian Franz Zay. Luigi Bassano
da Zara, a Venetian subject from Dalmatia who was in Istanbul during the
early part of Sultan Süleyman’s reign (ca. 1532–1540), affirmed the prevalence
of “Slavonic” (“Schiavona”) as a vehicle for communication, not only within the
Ottoman lands but also between the empire and its neighbors in Christendom.
This informant from Zadar (Zara) reported that the sultan, whose role model
was Alexander the Great, knew only Turkish and “Slavonic” a language he
“greatly esteem[ed],” given its widespread currency in many areas, including
Dalmatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, Bulgaria, Thessaly, Thrace, the Peloponnese,
Wallachia, the German borderlands, Poland, Bohemia, and Russia. According
to Luigi Bassano, among the languages known to him there was none more
useful than “Slavonic” for whoever wanted to “see the world,” especially the
East and the North. He added that this language was “customarily esteemed in
Turkey because the Grand Turk has always had pashas from that nation—now
he has Rüstem Pasha, who is the son-in-law of this Grand Turk—as well as
sanjak governors, governor-generals, janissaries, aghas, messengers (çavuş),
and most of the cavalry soldiers (sipahi).”8
Many Muslim converts living on the Ottoman Empire’s Dalmatian frontier
were Slavs. For instance, the sanjak governor of Klis, Mehmed Beg, was the
descendant of a famous line of pro-Venetian viziers from the Hersekzade
8 Rüstem Pasha’s origin is mentioned in ibid. (p. 109): “He is of the nation of Bosnia, of most
ignoble origin, and was from his childhood placed in the seraglio” (“Egli è di natione della
Bosna, d’ignobilissima condizione, e fu da fanciullo posto nel seraglio”). For the oral and writ-
ten communications between Dubrovnik ambassadors and the pasha, see James D. Tracy,
“The Grand Vezir and the Small Republic: Dubrovnik and Rüstem Paşa, 1544–1561,” Turkish
Historical Review 1 (2010): 196–214, especially the quotation on 203 (n. 43). The grand vizier’s
1553 audience is described in the diplomatic report of Antun Vrančić (a.k.a. Anton Wranczy
or Antonius Verantius). During the initial ceremonial greetings the two envoys had with
Rüstem Pasha, the conversation held in Turkish with an official interpreter was suddenly
interrupted when the pasha asked if Zay and Vrančić spoke “Croatian” (Croatice). The inter-
preter was then dismissed, and they proceeded in Croatian throughout their negotiations.
See Antun Vrančić, “Putovanje iz Budima u Drinopolje,” in Alberto Fortis, Put po Dalmaciji,
ed. Josip Bratulić. Zagreb: Globus, 1984, pp. 115–145. The fluidity of pre-modern terms denot-
ing languages and ethnic identities in the western Balkans is analyzed in John Van Antwerp
Fine, When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans: A Study of Identity in Pre-Nationalist
Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early-Modern Periods. Ann Arbor:
University of Michgan Press, 2006. Luigi Bassano da Zara, I Costumi et i modi particolari della
vita de’ Turchi. Rome: Antonio Blando Asolano, 1545, rept., ed. Franz Babinger. Munich:
M. Hueber, 1963, pp. 110–111. On Sultan Süleyman’s emulation of Alexander the Great as a role
model, see Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism and Creative Translation,” pp. 48–52.
320 necipoğlu
9 Mehmed Beg’s Ottoman Turkish letter to the doge is published in M. Tayyib Gökbilgin,
“Venedik Devlet Arşivindeki Türkçe Belgeler Kolleksiyonu ve Bizimle İlgili Belgeler,”
Belgeler 5–8 (1968–1971): 126 (n. 196). On the Hersekzade family, see Hazim Šabanovic,
“Hersek-zāde, Ahmed Pasha,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition (henceforth cited as
E.I.2), vol. 3. Leiden: Brill, 1954–2004, pp. 340b–342a, and Erdmute Heller, Venedische
Quellen zur Lebengeschichte des Ahmed Paša Hersek-oghlu. Munich, 1961.
10 Quoted in Catherine Wendy Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry, and Holy War
in the Sixteenth-Century Adriatic. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992, p. 34;
Fine, When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans, p. 256.
11 Hans Dernschwam, Hans Dernschwam’s Tagebuch einer Reise nach Konstantinopel und
Kleinasien (1553/55), ed. Franz Babinger. Munich and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1923,
pp. 32, 41, 58. For the two brothers and their architectural patronage, see Necipoğlu, Age of
Sinan, pp. 296–231, 416–421.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 321
Sarajevo.” Characterizing him as the “absolute ruler of this empire,” the bailo
reports that the grand vizier had personally told him how his former master
(padrone) voluntarily gave him away, being unable to pay the head tax (haraç).
Rüstem was thereupon taken to the palace of pages in the Pera (Galata) district
of Istanbul, eventually entering the service of Sultan Süleyman in his privy
chamber at the Topkapı Palace. Navagero added that Rüstem first attracted
the sultan’s attention by gallantly jumping from a window to retrieve an object
that fell from his royal master’s hand, thereby outshining the other royal pages,
who merely ran down the stairs to fetch it.12
According to Mustafa Āli, the sultan was thoroughly impressed by the
intelligence, alacrity, and service of his “Croatian” (ḫırvādīyü’l-aṣl) page Rüstem,
regarding his loyalty, politeness, sobriety, and religiosity as ideal qualities for a
son-in-law earmarked for the grand vizierate, even though his physiognomy
was “mediocre.”13 In a letter dated 1555, the Austrian Habsburg envoy Ogier
Ghiselin de Busbecq observed that, of all the pashas, Rüstem “enjoyed [the]
most influence and authority with the Sultan.” He wrote:
A man of keen and far-seeing mind, he [Rüstem] had largely been instru-
mental in promoting Soleiman’s fame. If you wish to know his origin, he
was a swineherd; yet he was not unworthy of his high office but for the
taint of mean avarice… Yet even this vice of his was employed in his mas-
ter’s interest, since he was entrusted with the privy purse and the man-
agement of his finances, which were a cause of considerable difficulty to
Soleiman. In his administration he neglected no source of revenue, how-
ever small…. The result was that he amassed large sums of money and
filled Soleiman’s treasury.14
It is unclear from which Catholic village near Sarajevo Rüstem Pasha was
brought to Istanbul. An alternative claim in modern scholarship is that he
was born either within the present borders of Croatia, near the Dalmatian
coast, in Skradin (Scardona), ruled by the Ottomans between 1522 and 1684,
or in the port city of Makarska, which came under Ottoman control in 1499
(see Fig. 3a–c).15 More research is necessary to confirm whether this grand
vizier came from the vicinity of Sarajevo or closer to the eastern Adriatic
coastal belt. In 1544, Rüstem Pasha did endow some properties in Skradin
and Vrana—the towns had only recently been incorporated into the newly cre-
ated sanjak of Klis (Fig. 3b) just northeast of Split, which the Ottomans had
15 Rüstem Pasha was from the region of Makarska in Dalmatia, according to Darko Zubrinić,
who does not cite a source; see his “Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina” (1995; online at
www.croatianhistory.net/etf/et02.html). This pasha originated from Skradin in Dalmatia,
according to Lovre Katić, “Granice izmedju Klisa i Splita kroz vjekove,” Starohrvatska pros-
vjeta ser. III, 6 (1958): 208, quoted in Fine, When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans,
215. Rüstem Pasha came from the neigborhood of Klis, according to Nenad Moačanin,
“Klis,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 26, p. 128 (http://openlibrary.org/
books/OL18859269M/T%C3%BCrkiye_Diyanet_Vakf%C4%B1_%C4%B0sl%C3%A2m
_ansiklopedisi). The encyclopedia entries mentioned in n. 12 above generally agree that
Rüstem Pasha was from Bosnia, near Sarajevo. They refer to a register from the kadi court
at Sarajevo, dated 974 (1557), which records the sale of a house by the waqf administrator
(mütevelli) of Rüstem Pasha’s covered bazaar (bedesten) in that city, on behalf of “Nefisa
Khanum, daughter of Mustafa and sister of Rüstem Pasha.” While this register entry shows
that the pasha’s Muslim sister had a property in Sarajevo and their father Mustafa had
also converted to Islam, it does not prove their origin from near Sarajevo. These encyclo-
pedia entries often cite Ciro Truhelka (Bosnische Post. Sarajevo, 1912, n. 80), who proposed
that Rüstem Pasha came from Butomir or a village to the west of Sarajevsko Polje, adding
that his family name was Opuković or Čigalić. I believe the latter name can be ruled out:
it is the family name of the husband of Rüstem Pasha’s two granddaughters, who succes-
sively married Cigalazade Yusuf Sinan Pasha (ca. 1545–1605), a member of the noble
Genoese family of Cigala, whose descendants are buried in the Üsküdar mosque complex
of Rüstem Pasha’s royal wife, Mihrümah Sultan. Hence, the progeny of Rüstem Pasha and
his wife came to be known as Čigalić, which has little to do with his own origin. It has also
been claimed that Rüstem Pasha was the brother of Karagöz Mehmed Beg (a large-scale
fiefholder [zaim]), who commissioned a mosque from the architect Sinan in Mostar, and
is thought to have been born near Mostar. This claim is based on a misinterpretation of
the mosque’s inscription. Rüstem Pasha’s only known brother is Sinan Pasha, and the
claim that the grand vizier was born near Mostar, like his alleged brother Karagöz
Mehmed, remains unsubstantiated. In fact, the Arabic inscription of the mosque in
Mostar refers to the founder’s father as Abu al-Saʿadat, whereas both Rüstem Pasha’s and
his brother Sinan Pasha’s waqfiyyas (endowment deeds) identify their converted father’s
name as Mustafa . See Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 317, 419, 440–442.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 323
Fig. 3a (A) Modern map of the Dalmatian Coast (courtesy scott walker).
conquered from the Habsburg garrison during the 1537 Apulia–Corfu war.
These income-producing properties, consisting of 23 mills and an arable field,
were complemented by public monuments that the pasha endowed in and
near Sarajevo. It is noteworthy that the pious endowments (waqf) of the grand
vizier’s brother, Sinan Pasha, included public monuments in the sanjak of
Herzegovina (where he had been posted as governor between 1547 and 1550),
as well as in Sarajevo.16
16 On Rüstem Pasha’s waqfs in the sanjak of Klis—at İskradin (Skradin, Scardona) and
İvranya (Vrana)—and in Sarajevo, see Aydın Yüksel, “Sadrazam Rüstem Paşanın Vakıfları,”
in Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi Hatıra Kitabı. Istanbul: İstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1995, pp. 226, 229,
251–252, 274. His brother Sinan Pasha endowed real-estate properties and mills in
Herzegovina, which supported, among other monuments, his mosque at Hisn-i Nova
(Nova Castrum) and his mosque with an elementary school near Foça. He also built
an elementary school in Sarajevo: see Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 418–419. On the map
illustrated in Fig. 3b of this essay, see James P. Krokar, “New Means to an Old End: Early
Modern Maps in the Service of an Anti-Ottoman Crusade,” Imago Mundi 60, pt. 1 (2008):
23–38, and, by the same author, The Ottoman Presence in Southeastern Europe, 16th–19th
Centuries: A View in Maps. Chicago: Hermon Smith Center for the History of Cartography,
Newberry Library, 1997, pp. 18–25.
324 necipoğlu
Figs 3b–c (B) Christof Tarnowsky, view of Klis with Split and surrounding region, titled “Clissa,
chief fortress of the Turk in Dalmatia and key to the Kingdom of Bosnia, 5 miles
away from Split” (Clissa principal fortezza del Turcho nella Dalmatia, et chiaue
del regno. di Bosna lontano da Spallato miglia 5/fatta da Xhofo. Tarnowskij). Pen
and ink drawing, 1605. Newberry Library, Chicago, Franco Novacco Map Collection,
Novacco 2 F 208 sheet 3 of 3 (PrCt) (photo courtesy the newberry library).
(C) G.F. Camocio, view of the fortress of Makarska and the island of Brazza (Brač)
across from it during the Battle of Lepanto. Woodcut from Isole famose, porti,
fortezze, terre marittime della Repubblica di Venetia et altri principi cristiani
(Venice, 1571).
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 325
17 Caterino Zeno, “Descrizione del viazo di Costantinopoli [1550] de ser Catharina Zen,
ambassador straordinario a Sultan Soliman e suo ritorno,” in Dva Talijanska Putopisa po
Balkanskom Poluotoku iz XVI. Vieka, ed. Petar Matković. Zagreb: Tiskom Dioničke tiskare,
1878, p. 4. The report (“Relazione”) of the bailo Alvise Renier (1550) is published in Pedani-
Fabris, Relazioni di ambasciatori Veneti, pp. 52–55.
18 The report (“Relazione”) of Giacomo Soranzo (1576), in Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni di ambas-
ciatori Veneti, p. 223.
326 necipoğlu
19 Dernschwam, Tagebuch, p. 215; Āli, Künhü’l-ahḫbār, fols. 124v–125v. Semiz Ali Pasha’s waq-
fiyya, dated 1565, gives his Muslim father’s name as Hüseyin but the date of his father’s
conversion is unknown: Ankara Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü, Defter 1961, no. 441, 444–462,
discussed in Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 384–389. For this pasha’s biography, see Robert
Mantran, “Ali Pasha, Semiz,” in E.I.2; vol. 1, p. 398. Erhan Afyoncu, “Semiz Ali Paşa,” in
Türkiye Diyanet Vakfi İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 36, pp. 495–496; and Tayyip Gökbilgin,
“Ali Paşa, Semiz,” in İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 1, pp. 341–342.
20 See the encyclopedia entries cited in the preceding note. On a small mosque in Praća
hypothetically attributed to Semiz Ali Pasha without concrete evidence, see Ekrem Hakkı
Ayverdi, Avrupa’da Osmanlı Mimari Eserleri: Yugoslavya, vol. 2, bk. 3. Istanbul: Istanbul
Fetih Cemiyeti, 1981, pp. 283–284. No such mosque is mentioned in Semiz Ali Pasha’s waq-
fiyya, cited in the preceding note.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 327
kindliness made the time pass pleasantly. Meanwhile the Turks who had
come to pay their respects or to consult him would fret and fume because
my presence prevented the Pasha from giving them an audience. I myself
used to suffer the pangs of hunger, for I was generally summoned to him
after midday, and I almost always went without having taken a meal, in
order that I might have as clear a brain as possible for conversation with
a man of such keen intellect.21
The peace treaty negotiated by these two prudent statesmen was signed shortly
thereafter. The parting gifts the grand vizier gave to Busbecq consisted of three
well-bred horses, a “really beautiful” robe interwoven with gold thread, a box
containing an antidote from Alexandria for poison, and a glass vessel filled
with balm worthy of an “allied prince,” which he had acquired as governor-
general of Egypt (1549–1553). The pasha personally requested the following
rarities from the Austrian Habsburg envoy: “a coat of mail of a size to fit his tall
and stout frame, a sturdy charger to which he could trust himself without fear
of a fall (for he has difficulty in finding a horse which is equal to his great
weight), and lastly, some bird’s-eye maple, or similar wood, such as we use for
inlaying tables.”22 In light of Busbecq’s account, which testified to his excep-
tionally close rapport with Semiz Ali Pasha, the grand vizier must have indeed
been from Dalmatia. If so, perhaps he came from the island of Brač (Brazza,
Turkish Bırāç or Bırāsa), as is proposed in some modern publications.23 Located
not far from Split, this Venetian-ruled island just across from the Ottoman port
of Makarska, along the eastern Adriatic coast, was the site of the celebrated
quarries that provided the calcareous white stone used in the nearby Palace of
Diocletian and in Solin (Fig. 3a–c).
The bailo Daniele Barbarigo, who had previously befriended Semiz Ali Pasha
when he was governor-general of Egypt while he himself was serving as
21 Edward S. Forster, trans., Busbecq, Turkish Letters, pp. 183, 190–191, 193.
22 Ibid., pp. 229–231.
23 On the spelling “Bırāç,” in reference to this “island across from the landing station of
Makarska,” see an Ottoman Turkish document dated 1566, published in Gökbilgin,
“Venedik Devlet Arşivindeki Türkçe Belgeler Kolleksiyonu,” pp. 127–128 (n. 198) (note that
Gökbilgin has misread this word as Dıraç/Durazzo in n. 6). The alternative spelling
“Bırāsa” is found in Pīrī Reis, Kitab-ı Bahriye, 2 vols. Ankara: Ministry of Culture and
Tourism of the Turkish Republic, 1988, pp. 774–775. The pasha was “the son of a Dalmatian
from Brazza,” according to the entry “Ali Pasha,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, 1st ed. On the
speculation that Semiz Ali Pasha was a Slav recruited as a devşirme from the island of
Brazza/Brač along the Dalmatian coast, see also İsmail Hami Danişmend, İzahlı Osmanlı
Tarihi Kronolojisi, vol. 2. Istanbul: Türkiye Yayınevi, 1971, p. 322.
328 necipoğlu
Venetian consul in Cairo, noted how much the aged Sultan Süleyman was
attached to this grand vizier: the ruler conferred on him more favor and author-
ity than any of his predecessors, with the exception of İbrahim Pasha. When
Ali Pasha fell ill in 1564, the forlorn sultan refused to go hunting without him as
an escort.24 When Süleyman’s beloved grand vizier died the next year, he was
succeeded by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha. Nicknamed “the Tall” (“Ṭavīl”), the latter
is perhaps the most famous of all Ottoman grand viziers, having managed to
hold this office uninterruptedly under three successive sultans. He was born
into a semi-noble Serbian Orthodox family that derived its name from the vil-
lage of Sokolovići (close to modern-day Rudo, near Višegrad in Bosnia), where
he built a now-lost mosque and the famous Drina Bridge nearby, accompanied
by a caravansaray for travelers.25
The bailos Marcantonio Tiepolo (1576) and Giovanni Correr (1578) reported
that Sokollu Mehmed Pasha had been recruited for the sultan’s service when
he was 18, while attending mass at the monastery of St. Sava (Mileševa), where
his uncle was a monk.26 Promoted to the grand vizierate at the very end of
Süleyman’s reign, the pasha maintained that post as “virtual emperor” under
his father-in-law, Selim II, and with diminished authority under Murad III,
until he was stabbed to death in 1579. Tiepolo remarked that conversing with
the imposing 70-year-old grand vizier was more like “negotiating with a
Christian prince than with a Turk.”27
While Rüstem Pasha had been tainted by his proclivity for bribery, Sokollu
attracted criticism for bolstering a nepotistic regime through his network of
protégés, dominated by converted kinsmen from Bosnia whom he appointed
to governorships spread over a large geographical area extending from Hungary
to Syria. His relatives occupied governorship positions in Bosnia and
Herzegovina for decades. Family members who remained Orthodox Christian,
however, held major ecclesiastical posts, serving as patriarchs after the
Ottomans restored the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate of Peć (İpek) in 1557, as
a counterweight to the Catholic Church. One of the grand vizier’s favored rela-
tives was his paternal cousin, Sokollu Mustafa Pasha (d. 1578), who served as
sanjak governor of Bosnia and, subsequently, governor-general of Buda (Budin,
today’s Budapest) in Ottoman Hungary. In these provinces he improved com-
munications and urban networks by building numerous bridges, paved roads,
caravansarays, marketplaces, and thermal baths. Marcantonio Pigafetta, a
traveler from Vicenza, attended an audience at this pasha’s riverfront palace in
Buda, overlooking the Danube, while accompanying an Austrian Habsburg
embassy sent to congratulate the newly enthroned ruler Selim II in 1567.
Pigafetta noted in his Itinerario that Mustafa Pasha’s interpreter was a Paduan
Jew, who translated the oral negotiations held in Turkish and Italian, even
though both parties could have easily communicated in “Croatian” (“crovato”).
Pigafetta provides further testimony about the prevalence of “Croatian” among
Ottoman officials in Istanbul when he observed that this language was “famil-
iar to nearly all Turks and especially men of war,” even though they preferred
to conduct major official negotiations in Turkish for the sake of ceremonial
decorum. Mustafa Pasha’s palace in Buda was located next to his mosque (and
tomb), the only “prestige” monument he commissioned from the chief archi-
tect Sinan. These no longer extant edifices were complemented by other
mosques and endowed public works created by the same pasha in order to
Ottomanize Buda, the seat of the province of Hungary, which was newly estab-
lished in 1541.28
Sinan
The three grand viziers considered thus far were among the leading patrons of
Sinan, who served as chief royal architect for half a century (1539–1588) under
three sultans, and was himself a devşirme from Ağırnas, a Christian village in
Kayseri, in central Anatolia. The pious foundations (sing. waqf) that supported
Rüstem Pasha’s and Sokollu Mehmed Pasha’s architectural monuments
included privately sponsored paved roads, bridges, aqueducts, and fountains,
which were linked to an enormous empire-wide network of income-producing
commercial structures built for these pashas, such as mills, baths, rental rooms,
shops, bazaars, and caravansarays (see Fig. 4a and b). The unprecedented
scope of these building projects not only promoted urban development but
also contributed to the integration of Ottoman imperial geographies through
networks of trade, exchange, and communication. Rather than monolithically
unifying the empire, these global networks dynamically linked different
regions while allowing them to coexist by retaining their indigenous individu-
ality and diversity.29
Rüstem Pasha, who endowed some income-producing properties in the
sanjak of Klis near Split (as mentioned above), also commissioned five stone
bridges in the sanjak of Bosnia that were accompanied by paved roads, a cara-
vansaray, a thermal bath, a public fountain, and a bedesten. Built in Sarajevo in
1551, the latter is an extant covered bazaar with six hemispherical domes,
which was known as the Bedesten of Bursa because it specialized in the sale of
Ottoman silk brocades made in that Anatolian city.30 I have argued elsewhere
that Rüstem Pasha, as part of his fiscal policy, fostered the consumption of
domestic fabrics by restricting the former large-scale importation of Italian
See also Burcu Özgüven, “A ‘Beylerbeyi’ from Budin: Sokollu Mustafa,” in Essays in Honour
of Aptullah Kuran, eds. Çiğdem Kafescioğlu and Lucienne Thys-Şenocak. Istanbul: Yapı
Kredi Yayınları, 1999, pp. 253–263.
29 The waqfs of these two grand viziers are compared in Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 314–
368, 578–579 (maps 4, 5). For a comparison of imperial geopolitical policies in Sokollu’s
grand vizierate with those of his predecessors Rüstem and Semiz Ali, see Giancarlo
Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
30 Rüstem Pasha’s waqfs were entrusted to revenue collectors based in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (Sarajevo) as well as in Dalmatia (Skradin/Scardona, Vrana). See Yüksel,
“Sadrazam Rüstem Paşanın Vakıfları,” pp. 226, 229, 251–252, 274. The waqfs in the sanjak of
Klis are cited in n. 16 above. Only one bridge on the Zelinje river (Ilıca village) and the
Sarajevo bedesten seem to be extant: see Yüksel, “Sadrazam Rüstem Paşanın Vakıfları,”
p. 229 (n. 25), and Ayverdi, Avrupa’da Osmanlı Mimari Eserleri: Yugoslavya, vol. 2, bk. 3,
pp. 195, 395–397, 401–402.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 331
Fig. 4a (A) Map of Rüstem Pasha’s pious foundations and income-producing structures, not
including landed properties, mills, and shops (based on map in Necipoğlu, Age of
Sinan).
luxury textiles for use in the Ottoman court. In his report, the bailo Bernardo
Navagero stated that this pasha, who was “born as a man of business,” did
everything to promote “those silk and gold Bursa textiles of his, sometimes
even wearing vests made of these” (instead of the customary European luxury
fabrics). His bedesten in Sarajevo was complemented by four others endowed
in eastern Anatolia (Afyon, Van, Erzurum, and Erzincan) that, I suggest, may
have been built to compete with Safavid silk textiles imported from Iran for
332 necipoğlu
Fig. 4b (B) Map of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha’s pious foundations and income-producing
structures, not including landed properties, mills, and shops (based on map in
Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan).
31 Gülru Necipoğlu, “Süleyman the Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the
Context of Ottoman–Habsburg–Papal Rivalry,” Art Bulletin 71, no. 3 (September 1989):
401–427; Gülru Necipoğlu, “A Kanun for the State, a Canon for the Arts: Conceptualizing
the Classical Synthesis of Ottoman Art and Architecture,” in Soliman le Magnifique et son
temps, ed. Gilles Veinstein. Paris: La Documentation française, 1992, pp. 198–201; and
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 333
mosques designed by Sinan for the business-minded Rüstem Pasha, which fea-
ture extensive commercial dependencies, are sited in lucrative ports: Tahtakale
in Istanbul and Rodoscuk (Rodosto) in eastern Thrace (Fig. 5a and b, and see
map, Fig. 4a). The latter town is situated on an extension of the Via Egnatia, the
ancient Roman route across the southern coast of the Balkans that linked the
Adriatic littoral to the Marmara and Aegean seas.32
Each of the three grand viziers discussed here commissioned impressive
mosque complexes from the chief architect Sinan on major imperial highways
connecting Istanbul to Europe and Asia. The caravansarays and hospices
located within such complexes housed ambassadors as well as merchants,
travelers, and pilgrims, who were given free lodging and food for up to 3 days.
In these spaces of encounter, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish travelers intermin-
gled. The complexes of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, in particular, span the empire’s
diagonal central artery, connecting Ottoman Hungary all the to way to Syria,
Mecca, and Medina (see map, Fig. 4b). The grand vizier commissioned com-
plexes from Sinan on that route, both for himself and his late son, Sokollu
Kasım Pasha (d. 1572), the former governor of Aleppo who died while he was
the sanjak governor of Herzegovina. Those roadside complexes aimed to culti-
vate commercial relations with the port of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). This semi-
autonomous city-state on the eastern Adriatic shore constituted the starting
point of many embassies from Italy to Istanbul, following an inland route par-
allel to the coastal trajectory of the Via Egnatia (see map, Fig. 3a). Only 31 kilo-
meters east of Ragusa, along that inland route, was the town of Trebinje in
Herzegovina, where Sokollu Mehmed Pasha improved travel conditions by
commissioning a bridge and caravansaray complex commemorating his late
son, so that travelers would “pray for his soul.” These structures were built
between 1572 and 1574 by local stonemasons imported from Dubrovnik.33
Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 314–315. The four other waqf bedestens are listed in Yüksel,
“Sadrazam Rüstem Paşanın Vakıfları,” pp. 226, 223, 265–266.
32 Both monuments are analyzed in Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 314–331. On Rodoscuk, see
İlber Ortaylı, “Rodosto (extension en Marmara de la Via Egnatia au XVIe siècle),” in The
Via Egnatia Under Ottoman Rule, 1380–1699, ed. Elizabeth Zachariadou. Rethymnon: Crete
University Press, 1996, pp. 193–202.
33 On the constructions in Trebinje, see Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 444–447. The caravan-
sary is no longer extant. The bridge endowed by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was subsequently
named after Arslan Ağa (Arslanagić), perhaps an agent of the grand vizier. This extant
bridge has been moved to another location in Trebinje. See Ayverdi, Avrupa’da Osmanlı
Mimari Eserleri: Yugoslavya, vol. 2, bk. 3, pp. 469–470, and Samardžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch,
pp. 308–312. On Dubrovnik, see Barisa Krekić, Dubrovnik in the 14th and 15th Centuries:
A City between East and West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972; Antonio di
334 necipoğlu
Fig. 5A–B (A) Rüstem Pasha’s mosque complex at Tahtakale in Istanbul. Ink drawing, ca.
1566–1582. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cabinet des Estampes, Res. B. 10
(photo courtesy the bibliothèque nationale de france). (B) Le Corbusier, sketch of
Rüstem Pasha’s mosque complex in Rodosto, 1911 (from le corbusier, journey to the
east, ed. ivan žaknić. cambridge, ma, 1989).
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 335
While traversing the road from Dubrovnik to Istanbul in 1575, the Venetian
ambassador Jacopo Soranzo particularly admired the artistic design of two
mosque complexes with ample facilities for travelers, located near Adrianople
(Edirne). The architect Sinan had recently built these complexes for Sokollu
Mehmed Pasha and his late son in Lüleburgaz and Havsa, respectively (Fig. 6a–d).
By comparison, Soranzo was less enamored of the now-destroyed caravansa-
ray of Semiz Ali Pasha’s mosque complex in Babaeski, which was along the same
route and had also been commissioned from Sinan: it was “neither large nor
commodious, [featuring] small rooms where we lodged, though tightly.”34
The innovative rectilinear layout of three roadside mosque complexes (in
Havsa, Lüleburgaz, and Payas), designed by Sinan for the grand vizier Sokollu
Mehmed Pasha on the main diagonal highway of the empire, feature shop-
lined avenues, each with a central domed baldachin (see Figs. 6a–d and 7a, b).
The highway complex next to the Payas fortress near Aleppo has a vaulted
avenue of shops, translated into local Syrian-Mamluk forms and once again
featuring an Ottoman-style hemispherical domed baldachin that acts as a tri-
umphal arch, or the linchpin of two intersecting axes. I propose that these
unprecedented, orthogonally arranged complexes could have been inspired by
the archaeological remains of Roman towns, with their straight avenues, the
intersecting axes of which were sometimes punctuated by a domed tetrapylon
(as in Ottoman Thessaloniki), and bordered with shops.35 This conjecture is
not too farfetched, given that the widely traveled Sinan (an architect-engineer
and expert in hydraulics) was intent on studying antique ruins. Among these,
his autobiography mentions a collapsed Roman bridge and aqueducts in the
vicinity of Istanbul, which he rebuilt and prided himself on having improved.36
Vittorio, “Un grande nodo postale fra Oriente e Occidente in età moderna: La Repubblica
di Ragusa,” in Ragusa (Dubrovnik), una repubblica Adriatica: Saggi di storia economica e
finanziaria, eds. Sergio Anselmi, Paola Pierucci, and Antonio di Vittorio. Bologna:
Cisalpino, Istituto Editoriale Universitario, 1994, pp. 57–83; and Boško I. Bojović, Raguse et
l’Empire Ottoman (1430–1520). Paris: Association Pierre Belon, Diffusion, De Boccard, 1998.
34 Jacopo Soranzo, quoted in Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 387–388, 444–445.
35 On the domed tetrapylon in Thessaloniki, and domeless tetrapylons in Split,
Constantinople, and Antioch, see Curčic, Architecture in the Balkans, pp. 22–32, 42. The
domed “vestibule” preceding the palace block in Split, which marks the intersection of
two axes and is lined up with the tetrapylon (ibid., pp. 32–37), is also reminiscent of the
baldachins in complexes that Sinan designed for Sokollu.
36 Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 132–133, 140–142, and Necipoğlu, “Sources, Themes,
and Cultural Implications of Sinan’s Autobiographies,” in Sinan’s Autobiographies: Five
Sixteenth-Century Texts, ed. and trans. Howard Crane and Esra Akın. Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2006, pp. vii–xvi.
336 necipoğlu
Figs 6a–b (A) Plan of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha’s mosque complex in Lüleburgaz (drawn by
arben n. arapi, after plan in necipoğlu, age of sinan). (B) Plan of Sokollu Kasım
Pasha’s mosque complex in Hafsa, posthumously built by his father (drawn by arben
n. arapi, after plan in necipoğlu, age of sinan).
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 337
Figs 6c–d (C) Luigi Mayer, view of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha’s mosque complex in Lüleburgaz,
including its domed baldachin; the shop-lined artery is also shown. Print from Views
in Turkey in Europe and Asia. London, 1801.
(photo courtesy the Houghton Library, Harvard University).
(D) Luigi Mayer, view of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha’s mosque complex in Lüleburgaz,
showing central courtyard of the double-caravansaray. Print from Views in Turkey
in Europe and Asia. London, 1801.
(photo courtesy the houghton library, harvard university).
Fig. 7A–B (A) Axonometric plan of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha’s mosque complex in Payas (drawn
by arben n. arapi, after plan in necipoğlu, age of sinan). (B) Sokollu Mehmed
Pasha’s mosque complex in Payas, vaulted shopping artery (photo: reha günay).
cross-axial layout, only used in his own highway complexes as a special kind of
“signature.” One might speculate that the combined agency of patron and
architect was responsible for this innovation. The mosque complex in Payas
formed the nucleus of this city, which became the new commercial port of
Aleppo. Payas was provided with a landing station (iskele, from the Italian
scala) of its own, where customs duties were collected for the grand vizier’s
waqf. As part of that project, Sinan designed for Sokollu the most magnificent
caravansaray of Aleppo.37 Built in 1574 and known as Khan al-Gumruk
(Customs Khan), it functioned as Aleppo’s customhouse, providing residential
37 On the Payas complex, the Khan al-Gumruk in Aleppo, and Sokollu’s other waqfs in
Aleppo, see Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 355–362. The khan is described in Heghnar
Zeitlian Watenpaugh, The Image of an Ottoman City: Imperial Architecture and Urban
Experience in Aleppo in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004,
pp. 94–114.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 339
facilities for consuls and foreign merchants, who congregated in this interna-
tional center for exchanging information. I find the Khan al-Gumruk compa-
rable to a building type that emerged in western Europe in the early 16th
century: the “exchange,” variously known as bourse, borsa, loggia, lonja, portico
del cambio, or portico della mercanzia. The origins of Sinan’s design can ulti-
mately be traced to the fondaco (Greek pandcheion, Arabic funduq), which was
prevalent in the Mediterranean region since late antiquity, with numerous
medieval Islamic examples dotting the Ottoman territories.38 However, the
Khan al-Gumruk, an inventive urban complex arranged around a porticoed
courtyard and creatively combining Ottoman with Syrian-Mamluk forms, can
also perhaps be seen as an early modern descendant of the ancient Roman
forum (as reconstructed in Vitruvius’s illustrated treatises printed in the 16th
century). A century after its creation, the Venetian nobleman Ambrosio Bembo,
writing in his travel journal (1671–1675), did, in fact, liken the spacious arcaded
courtyard of the Khan al-Gumruk in Aleppo to an urban piazza serving as a
“public square”:
Both these consuls [French and British] and the other merchants have
their houses above the Grand Khan (Great Caravanserai), which is a
square area with houses all around it and beneath them many ware-
houses and the customs house, the officials of which are called titabanni
[Turkish dideban, market police] and are all Jews, atrocious thieves,
through whose hands pass all business concerning the duties on the
Franks…. In this plaza and in the adjoining bazaar the Frankish mer-
chants gather in the morning to stroll and to do their business, since that
place serves as a public square.39
38 It is noteworthy that a lonja (Turkish lonca) existed in Ottoman Thessaloniki and in the
Pera/Galata district of Istanbul, originally a Genoese colony. In many Mediterranean
Christian cities, the term loggia supplanted fondaco. On early modern market places and
the “exchange” as a building type in Europe, see Donatella Calabi, The Market and the City,
trans. Marlene Klein. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004, and Donatella Calabi and Derek Keene,
“Exchanges and Cultural Transfer in European Cities, c. 1500–1700,” and, by the same
authors, “Merchants’ Lodgings and Cultural Exchange,” both in Cities and Cultural
Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700, eds. Donatella Calabi and Stephen Turk Christensen.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 286–314, 315–348. On the fondaco, see
Ennio Concina, Fondaci: Architettura, arte e mercatura tra Levante, Venezia e Alemagna.
Venice: Marsilio, 1997.
39 Ambrosio Bembo, The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo, trans. Clara Bargellini and
ed. Anthony Welch. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press,
2007, pp. 60–61.
340 necipoğlu
Routes
What has been dubbed the Pax Ottomana flourished particularly in the 16th
century, when major networks of Balkan transversal land routes connecting
the eastern Adriatic coast with Asia came under the empire’s centralized con-
trol. These communication systems, linked by postal and currier stations,
became nodes for the redistribution of goods and the circulation of “things” as
well as people in trans-Balkan trade. Some stretches of these routes revived the
paved ancient Roman roads that had long ago lost their transit function
between Italy and Byzantium. The revitalization of the Via Egnatia is a case in
point (see map, Fig. 8).40 The connectivity of land routes, complemented by
overseas connections between Mediterranean ports featuring arsenals for the
Ottoman navy, was a crucial precondition for mobility and “portable archaeol-
ogy.” The 16th-century trajectory of these land and sea routes was shaped by
an Ottoman imperial vision of geopolitics in which the Adriatic Sea—an
extension of the Mediterranean, like the Aegean, Marmara, and Black seas—
occupied a pivotal position between East and West.
Elizabeth Zachariadou has argued that this vision reveals “a political aspira-
tion to empire” as early as the 1380s, when the Ottoman sultan Murad I
(r. 1360–1389) intended to secure control of what remained of the Via Egnatia,
which in ancient times had connected Rome and Constantinople, the two
capitals of the Roman Empire. That route, leading from the Adriatic coast of
Albania to the future Ottoman capital of Istanbul (officially designated
Ḳosṭanṭiniyye on Ottoman coins), was the horizontal extension of the Via
Appia, which vertically crossed from Rome to Brindisi in southern Italy (see
map, Fig. 8). The ports of Avlona (Valona, or Vlora) and Durazzo (Durres or
Drač) in Albania formed its two starting points along the eastern Dalmatian
littoral. Zachariadou notes that Murad I not only conquered Thessaloniki
(Selanik) and Monasterion (Manastır, Bitola) but also attacked Avlona and
Durazzo in Albania, all of these being towns strategically situated on the Via
Egnatia that eventually became Ottoman possessions. After the second
Ottoman conquest of Thessaloniki in 1430, pious foundations (waqf) began to
sprout during the 15th and 16th centuries on this partially resuscitated road
and its various new branches, along which endowed architectural monuments
were created for renowned dignitaries of the Ottoman Empire (including the
three grand viziers).41 As noted by Nicolas Oikonomides, in order to be opera-
tional again, the fragmented medieval trans-Balkan highway “needed a unify-
ing power that would control it from one end to the other, that would have a
keen interest in its strategic and economic potential, and would guarantee
maintenance and security. This was to come with the Ottoman conquest.”42
The Via Egnatia would play a vital military role in Sultan Süleyman’s unful-
filled project, during the early part of his reign, of invading southern Italy and
then conquering Rome—especially in his preparations for the 1537 expedition
against Apulia and Corfu.43 The sultan’s dream of renewing the ancient Roman
Empire by reuniting its two former capitals had been initiated in 1453, with his
great-grandfather Mehmed II’s conquest of Constantinople. The Greco-
Venetian humanist Niccolò Sagundino, who met the 21-year-old conqueror of
Constantinople during Venetian peace negotiations that year, reported that
the youthful ruler believed that crossing the Adriatic Sea from Durazzo to
Brindisi would pose no difficulty. He was therefore resolved to make himself
the master of Rome and Italy.44 Indeed, it is only a short distance from the
Zachariadou, ed., Via Egnatia, pp. 85–95, 227–232. Endowed structures built by Sinan on
the Via Egnatia include Rüstem Pasha’s mosque complex in Rodoscuk (Rodosto), Semiz
Ali Pasha’s mosque in Marmara Ereğlisi (Perinthos/Heraclea), and Sokollu’s complexes
near Edirne and Thessaloniki (Sidhirokastron); see Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 314–321;
345–355, 384–386, 444–447.
42 Nicolas Oikonimides, “The Medieval Via Egnatia,” in Zachariadou, ed., Via Egnatia, p. 16.
43 Demetriades, “Vakıfs along Via Egnatia,” pp. 92, 95.
44 For Mehmed II’s dream of reuniting Constantinople with Rome, see Necipoğlu, “Visual
Cosmopolitanism and Creative Translation: Artistic Conversations with Renaissance Italy
342 necipoğlu
Dalmatian coast to the Apulia region in southern Italy. But it was not until the
end of his reign that Mehmed II could begin to implement his global vision by
conquering Otranto, in the Apulia region near Brindisi, in 1480. This was
accomplished by his navy, when it launched an attack from the nearby
Albanian port of Avlona, which had functioned as a cosmopolitan Ottoman
naval base for shipbuilding since 1417 (although by the 16th century its pre-
dominantly Christian populations mingled with new Jewish settlers from
Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Otranto, and Calabria).45
The conquest of Otranto was intended as a step toward the realization of
Mehmed II’s aspiration to control eastern Mediterranean sea routes. That aspi-
ration had triggered a 16-year-long Ottoman–Venetian War (1463–1479), after
the sultan became the new master of southeastern Europe through his con-
quest of Serbia (1459), the Morea (1458, 1460), Bosnia (1463), and Herzegovina
(1465). During this protracted war, Venice lost many strongholds in the Morea
and Albania, including the port of Scutari (Shkoder), which a Florentine
chronicler characterized as the “right eye of the [Adriatic] Gulf” (“l’occhio ritto
del gholfo”).46 Soon after Mehmed II’s demise in 1481, Ottoman forces with-
drew from Otranto under a truce with the Kingdom of Naples, partly due to a
dynastic succession crisis. Once that matter was resolved by the new sultan,
Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512), the unabated objective of possessing the Adriatic lit-
toral triggered the second Ottoman–Venetian War, between 1499 and 1503,
during which the sanjak governor of Bosnia organized raids on the Serenissima’s
Dalmatian strongholds (including Zadar, Trogir, Šibenik, and Split). In the
course of alliance negotiations with the ambassador of the king of Naples,
Bayezid II promised to supply the king with 23,000 soldiers, but only if he could
have Taranto in return. Besides several strategic islands (Lepanto, Modon, and
Coron in southwestern Greece), among the ports conquered by the Ottoman
forces at that time was Durazzo (1501) in Albania. One of the terminal points of
the Via Egnatia, it featured antique ruins, including a Roman amphitheater.47
As noted above, the Adriatic Sea once again became the focus of Ottoman
attention in 1537, when Sultan Süleyman unsuccessfully attempted to coordi-
nate a two-pronged land and sea attack with his ally, King Francis I (r. 1515–
1547), against the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (r. 1519–1556) in
Italy and Dalmatia. The sultan marched along the Via Egnatia to the port of
Avlona (Vlora) in Albania, where his land and naval forces met (see map,
Fig. 8). Süleyman camped there for a while, as the Ottoman fleet captured 80
castles near Otranto, spending about a month in the emperor’s Apulian territo-
ries. The sultan then moved from Avlona southward, toward the island of
Corfu, blocking the entrance to the Adriatic Gulf in order to punish the “rebel-
lious” Venetians, who not only refused to join the Ottoman–French alliance
but also acted in unison with the Habsburg navy. This “disloyalty” in turn
resulted in the third Ottoman-Venetian War (1537–1540), after 34 years of con-
tinuous peace since 1503.48
The sultan’s grandfather, Bayezid II, had previously sent a fruitless expedi-
tion to Corfu upon the advice of his admiral, Kemal Reis (d. 1511), who described
that island as “the right eye of Venice” (the left eye being Modon, conquered by
the same admiral in 1500).49 It was during Sultan Süleyman’s otherwise ineffec-
tive Apulia–Corfu campaign, directed against the Habsburgs and the Republic
of Venice, that a number of Dalmatian castles were captured by the Ottomans.
One of these was the Habsburg fortress Klis (meaning “key”), which occupies a
commanding position on a mountaintop just a few kilometers inland from
Venetian Split (see Fig. 3b). This formidable fortress, overlooking the main
47 Machiel Kiel, “Draç,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfi İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 9, pp. 522–524. On
Bayezid II’s Western campaigns, which consolidated his domination over a third of the
eastern Mediterranean, bringing East–West trade under Ottoman control, see Selahattin
Tansel, Sultan II: Bâyezit’in Siyasî Hayatı. Istanbul: M.E.B. Devlet Kitapları Müdürlüğü,
1966, esp. 133–226, and Hans J. Kissling, “İkinci Sultan Bayezid’in Deniz Politikası Üzerine
Düşünceler,” Türk Kültürü 7, no. 84 (1968): 894–906.
48 For a justification of Süleyman’s campaign, see Lütfi Paşa, Lütfi Paşa ve Tevārīh-i Āl-i
Osman, ed. Kayhan Atik. Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, 2001, pp. 127–128.
49 Kemal Reis’s statement, reported by his nephew Piri Reis, is quoted in İdris Bostan,
“Korfu,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfi İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 26, pp. 201–202. For the original
text, see Pīrī Reis, Kitab-ı Bahriye, vol. 2, p. 709: “Concerning this island [Corfu, Korfuz],
the late Kemal Reis always used to say, ‘Venice has two eyes; its left eye is the castle of
Modon and its right eye is this island of Corfu.’ He offered this opinion to the late Sultan
Bayezid, who thereupon brought his land and sea forces in a campaign against that island
with the intention of conquering it.”
344 necipoğlu
road from Split to its hinterland, guards the highly strategic mountain pass that
from early times was the “key” to controlling central Dalmatia. Murad Beg
Tardić, who captured the fortress of Klis, was a convert from that region serv-
ing as military commander under the sanjak governor of Bosnia, Gazi Hüsrev
Beg—Bayezid II’s grandson from his daughter Selçuk Sultan—who sporadi-
cally occupied that position between 1521 and 1541. Together, this sanjak gover-
nor and his loyal steward (kethüda) Murad Beg Tardić jointly expanded the
borders of Bosnia by conquering many neighboring castles. The two are buried
in individual mausoleums within the mosque complex of Gazi Hüsrev Beg in
Sarajevo. Murad Beg’s brother, Juraj Tardić, was a Catholic priest in their native
city of Šibenik. The latter frequently interceded with his Muslim sibling on
behalf of Venice, indicating that family ties were not easily dissolved by con-
version in this “border zone,” which was inhabited by many Slavonic-speaking
recent converts to Islam. Soon after its conquest, Klis became the seat of a new
sanjak in Ottoman Croatia, called “vilāyet-i ḫırvād,” with Murad Beg as its first
governor. After protracted negotiations, a landing station was subsequently
established in the neighboring Venetian port of Split. Its creation had been
proposed to the doge as early as 1573 by an Ottoman sanjak governor of Klis,
upon the suggestion of Daniel Rodriguez, a Portuguese Jewish merchant active
in the Levant. This was meant to divert transit trade away from Ragusa, thereby
avoiding the attacks of Uskok pirates, who were supported by the Austrian
Habsburgs. This project, which was finally realized in 1592 with the consent of
the Venetian Signoria, exemplifies the augmented importance of Ottoman
Jewish merchants and trans-Balkan land routes linking the ports of Dalmatia/
Croatia and Albania with the East and West.50
50 On Murad Beg/Voyvoda and Gazi Hüsrev Beg, see Moačanin, “Klis”; Muhammed
Tayyib Okiç, “Gazi Hüsrev Bey,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 13,
pp. 453–454; and Semavi Eyice, “Gazi Hüsrev Bey Külliyesi,” in ibid., vol. 13, pp. 454–458.
On Murad Beg’s Christian brother, see Bracewell, Uskoks of Senj, 34 (n. 39). The scala
of Split and attacks by Uskok pirates are discussed in Bracewell, Uskoks of Senj,
pp. 178–180, and in İdris Bostan, Adriyatik’te Korsanlık: Osmanlılar, Uskoklar, Venedikliler,
1575–1620. Istanbul: Timaş, 2009, pp. 104–109. On the landing station of Split, see Renzo
Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato e il commercio Veneziano nei Balcani fra cinque e seicento. Venice:
Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, 1971, esp. 48ff, and Cemal Kafadar, “A Death
in Venice (1575): Anatolian Muslim Merchants Trading in the Serenissima,” Journal
of Turkish Studies 10 (1986): 191–218. The growing prominence of Ottoman Jewish
merchants in the 16th century is demonstrated in Benjamin Arbel, Trading Nations:
Jews and Venetians in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean. Leiden, New York, Köln:
Brill, 1995.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 345
Exchanges
51 Only by the second half of the 16th century did Balkan transversal routes become dynamic
arteries of commerce and cultural exchange. See Veinstein, “Avlonya (Vlorë), une étape de
la Voie Egnatia,” pp. 217–225.
52 Gökbilgin, “Venedik Devlet Arşivindeki Türkçe Belgeler,” p. 17 (n. 104). The sultan’s decree
informs Doge Francesco Donato that the sanjak governor of Herzegovina had complained
about the delay. Other documents refer to items that the sanjak governors of Herzegovina
sought from Venice, including salt, rice, and luxury textiles, as well as pleas for coopera-
tion against Uskok pirates: ibid., pp. 34, 36, 57, 119, 121–128.
53 On Sinan’s participation in the Apulia–Corfu campaign and his close relationship with
Lutfi Pasha, see Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 132–135, 293–296. Evliya’s “Avlonya” descrip-
tion is in Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, vol. 8, eds. Seyit Ali Kahraman, Yücel Dağlı, and
R. Dankoff. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2000: pp. 312–314. On the constructions
and Evliya’s comment, see Kiel, “Avlonya,” and Curčic, Architecture in the Balkans,
346 necipoğlu
Any sketches that Sinan may have drawn during his travels on military expe-
ditions have not survived. In his autobiography, he explains how after being
trained in the science of geometry as a military carpenter in Istanbul, he
eagerly examined buildings and ruins on campaigns with Süleyman’s father in
Safavid Iran and Mamluk Egypt (1514–1518): “For a while, in the service of the
sultan [Selim I], I wandered in the Arab and Persian lands, deriving my suste-
nance from the pinnacle of each iwan [arched vault], and my lodging from the
corner of every ruin.”54 Later on, as a janissary, Sinan encountered many
ancient and contemporary monuments that probably fueled his architectural
imagination while taking part in Sultan Süleyman’s early campaigns (1521–
1538) in Rhodes, Belgrade, Mohács, Buda, Vienna, Baghdad, Apulia/Corfu, and
Moldavia, during which he built wooden bridges and warships.55
After he was appointed chief architect in 1539, upon the recommendation
of Lutfi Pasha, who had by then become grand vizier, Sinan only rarely left
Istanbul, from which he directed long-distance building operations. His plans
on paper and three-dimensional models, which are mentioned in written
sources, have not survived; but they circulated throughout the territories of
the empire, to which his assistants, enrolled in the centralized corps of royal
architects, were dispatched for diverse construction projects. During the
decade between 1557 and 1566–1567, one of these architects, Mimar Hayrüddin,
built the celebrated Mostar Bridge and probably the neighboring mosque of
Karagöz Mehmed Beg, who was the construction overseer of that bridge on
behalf of the sanjak governor of Herzegovina. According to the Ottoman trav-
eler-geographer Mehmed Aşık’s compendium of geography, written in the
1590s, the architect of the Mostar Bridge was a native of that region. Upon the
request of the next sanjak governor of Herzegovina, Hüseyin Paşa-Boljanić
(a relative of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha), the chief architect Sinan was ordered by
imperial decree in 1568 to appoint and send the architect Hayrüddin to con-
struct a fortress in the nearby Dalmatian port of Makarska (Fig. 3c). Another
imperial decree bearing the same date asked the rector (chief magistrate) of
the Republic of Ragusa to dispatch paid masons, “with their tools,” for the
construction of this fortress. Planned just before the Ottoman naval campaign
against Venetian Cyprus, the fortress had not yet been completed in 1570.
No longer featuring any fortifications, Makarska, which was particularly
pp. 774–775. Sultan Süleyman also commissioned a mosque in Avlona, which replaced the
Halveti shaykh Yakub Efendi’s small masjid.
54 Translated in Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, p. 131.
55 On campaigns attended by Sinan, see Crane and Akın, Sinan’s Autobiographies. His con-
struction of warships and a bridge are mentioned in ibid., pp. 115–116.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 347
vulnerable to plundering raids by Uskok pirates, is now one of the most capti-
vating beach resorts of Croatia, situated between the idyllic coastline of Split
and Dubrovnik.56
Evidence exists for architectural exchanges between Ottoman Bosnia-
Herzegovina and Ragusa, in the form of several official documents. For exam-
ple, Sultan Süleyman, in a decree addressed to the Rector of Ragusa in 1556,
requested that salaried master masons be sent, “with their tools, for the con-
struction of the bridge in the township of Mostar, in the sanjak of Herzegovina.”
In accordance with the local Dalmatian building tradition, the hemispherical
domes of Karagöz Mehmed Beg’s mosque near that bridge—in all probability
built by the architect Hayrüddin according to a design prepared by Sinan—
are of stone masonry, unlike typically Ottoman brick domes. Masons from
Dubrovnik were employed in other Ottoman building projects in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, including the aforementioned caravansaray and bridge that
Sokollu Mehmed Pasha commissioned in Trebinje for the soul of his late son.
In these cross-cultural exchanges, architectural knowledge must have flowed
in both directions.57
Hayrüddin, who was a native of that region, undoubtedly saw the ancient
ruins and contemporary monuments of Dalmatia during his more-than-
decade-long presence in the sanjak of Herzegovina. In the course of his
extended stay there, he may have traveled to Istanbul for instructions and per-
haps described some of these sites to Sinan. In the previously mentioned 1568
imperial decree ordering the chief architect to send Hayrüddin, the architect
of the Mostar Bridge, to Makarska as requested by the sanjak governor of
Herzegovina, it is implied that he had returned to the capital after completing
the bridge in 1566–1567. One Roman archaeological site with which Hayrüddin
must have been familiar is the Ottoman port of Solin (Salona), the birthplace
of the Roman emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305), only 5 kilometers northeast of
Split. The ruins of this classical port are labeled “Salona Citta antiqua ruinata”
on a view depicting Ottoman Klis (as “Clissa”) and Venetian Split (“Spallato”)
(see Fig. 3b). Nowadays, Solin boasts fewer archaeological remnants, the most
impressive ruin being an amphitheater (destroyed in the 17th century by
Venetian generals who gained possession of the city and decided to level this
imposing structure rather than leave it for the encroaching Ottomans), a bath
complex, an urban villa, a forum, an aqueduct, Christian basilicas, and an
octagonal baptistery. Ottoman Salona is described in Michiel’s 1558 report,
who encountered its antique vestiges along the Adriatic coastline together
with those of Diocletian’s Palace in Split while on his way to Istanbul:
Eight miles from Traù [Trogir], one finds the shores of the antique city of
Salona, built by the Emperor Diocletian. One sees most beautiful col-
umns, vaults, walls, and aqueducts, and vestiges demonstrating that it
had been a most beautiful and most grand city. It is now within the dis-
trict of Clissa, in Turkish territory…. [Near the fortress of Clissa] along the
sea is the territory of Spalato, which is said to have been the palace of the
Emperor Diocletian, constructed with great magnificence, all of marble,
and one still sees six columns of diverse colors. This adjoins another
section at the western side, recently built; in the middle is a place which
is said to have been a temple with 32 columns and 8 façades, very
beautiful.58
58 According to Evliya, the castle of Solin was built by the sanjak governor of Bosnia, Gazi
Hüsrev Beg, and his steward (kethüda), Murad Beg, in 941 (1534–1535); these two subse-
quently seized the castle of Klis in 943 (1536–1537). Evliya explains that Solin Castle was
demolished by the Venetians so that it would not fall into Turkish hands; see Evliyâ Çelebi
Seyahatnâmesi, vol. 5, eds. Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman, and İbrahim Sezgin. Istanbul:
Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2001, p. 260. An imperial decree sent by Sultan Süleyman to Doge
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 349
The “very beautiful” temple (now the cathedral of Split where Christian mar-
tyrs are buried) is no doubt the octagonal mausoleum of Diocletian (d. 316),
who was devoted to pagan gods and claimed to be a descendant of Jupiter. It is
ornamented with precious columns, some of Egyptian granite, along with a
sphinx brought from Egypt. Its imported white marble revetments and capitals
are thought to have been produced in the workshops of Proconnesus Island in
the Marmara Sea (a long defunct Roman marble quarry that would be revived
during Sinan’s tenure as chief architect).
I would like to suggest that during the period of peace prior to the Cyprus
and Lepanto wars, the architect Hayrüddin could have explored the antiqui-
ties of Venetian Split as well, including Diocletian’s sumptuous domed mauso-
leum featuring an inner and outer colonnade. Without explaining how its
“influence” traveled to Istanbul, this late antique funerary monument has been
posited by Doğan Kuban as a possible model for Sultan Süleyman’s octagonal
mausoleum at the Süleymaniye mosque complex, which boasts unprece-
dented inner and outer colonnades. Assuming that Sinan had no way of
informing himself about the design of Diocletian’s distant mausoleum, how-
ever, Uğur Tanyeli dismisses this possibility.59 Nevertheless, it may not be a
coincidence that the sultan’s posthumous mausoleum, built by Sinan between
1566 and 1568, was created just after Hayrüddin had returned to the capi-
tal upon completing the Mostar Bridge (1566–1567) and soon before he was
Andrea Gritti in 1531 announced the construction of a seashore castle in Solin within the
sanjak of Bosnia, and asks that no interference be made by Venice in this regard; Gökbilgin,
“Venedik Devlet Arşivindeki Türkçe Belgeler Kolleksiyonu,” pp. 24–25, and Nicolò Michiel,
“Viaggio e relazione,” pp. 91–92.
59 The mausoleum in Split is described in Curčic, Architecture in the Balkans, pp. 14, 26–37,
40–42. On the influence of Diocletian’s mausoleum on that of Süleyman, see Doğan
Kuban, Istanbul: An Urban History, Byzantion, Constantinopolis, Istanbul. Istanbul:
Economic and Social History Foundation of Turkey, 1996, p. 263: “This octagonal space,
covered by a double shell dome and surrounded by an outer arcade overhung by large
eaves, follows a Mediterranean tradition. Its plan is a reworking of the plan of Diocletian’s
Mausoleum at Spalato (today Split). In spite of their similarity as geometrical schemes,
the architecture of Süleyman’s tomb is a radically different composition…. If this reminis-
cence is evidence of a Mediterranean Roman strain in the classical architectural culture
of the Ottoman period, it also stands as proof of the creative interpretation of the Turkish
architect.” On the rejection of the influence of Diocletian’s mausoleum, see Uğur Tanyeli,
“Kanuni ve II: Selim Türbeleri Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme,” Taç Vakfı Yıllığı 1 (1991): 93–94,
and, by the same author, “Klasik Osmanlı Dünyasında Değişim, Yenilik ve ‘Eskilik’
Üretimi,” in Afife Batur’a Armağan: Mimarlık ve Sanat Tarihi Yazıları. Istanbul: Literatür
Yayınları, 2005, pp. 29–31.
350 necipoğlu
dispatched again to Dalmatia for the Makarska castle project (1568). I have
argued elsewhere that another likely model for the unique layout of Süleyman’s
mausoleum, with its double-shell dome, is the late antique-flavored Umayyad
Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, dated 692. Believed to be the site of Solomon’s
Temple, this octagonal commemorative structure, featuring a double ambula-
tory with two rows of internal colonnades and crowned by a double-shell
wooden dome, had recently been renovated with ceramic tiles (completed in
1551–1552) by the Ottoman sultan, who fashioned himself as the “Second
Solomon” and “Solomon of the Age.” For the posthumous mausoleum of his
greatest patron, Süleyman the Magnificent (d. 1566), the foundations of which
had been laid in 1550, Sinan may well have drawn inspiration from several
models with prestigious imperial associations, including both the Dome of the
Rock and Diocletian’s mausoleum.60
Late antique monuments with domed centralized plans were, in fact, highly
admired by Ottoman travelers and dilettantes, judging by Mehmed Aşık’s
description of the late Roman rotunda in Thessaloniki, which had been con-
verted into the Church of St. George and decorated with opulent Byzantine
gold mosaics.61 The 16th-century traveler-cum-geographer, who resided in
60 The foundations of Süleyman’s “future tomb” were laid together with those of his mosque
complex in 1550; see Pierre Gilles, Pierre Gilles’ Constantinople, trans. Kimberly Byrd. New
York: Italica Press, 2008, p. 156. On Süleyman’s posthumously built mausoleum, for which
skilled masons and marble cutters were recruited in a decree dated 975 (1567–1568), and
its cross-reference to the Dome of the Rock, see Gülru Necipoğlu, “The Süleymaniye
Complex in Istanbul: An Interpretation,” Muqarnas 3 (1985): 113 (n. 1), and Necipoğlu, Age
of Sinan, pp. 207–222. The renovation of the Dome of the Rock in several campaigns
between 1528–1529 and 1561–1562, the most prominent feature of which was the reclad-
ding of its exterior with Ottoman tiles (dating from 1545–1546 to 1551–1552), is analyzed in
Gülru Necipoğlu, “The Dome of the Rock as Palimpsest: ʿAbd al-Malik’s Grand Narrative
and Sultan Süleyman’s Glosses,” Muqarnas 25 (2008): 17–105. My view that Süleyman’s
mausoleum makes a cross-reference to the Dome of the Rock is accepted, with some
qualifications, by Uğur Tanyeli, who draws attention to the unique structural design of
this tomb and that of Süleyman’s son Selim II; see Tanyeli, “Kanuni ve II. Selim Türbeleri
Üzerine bir Değerlendirme,” pp. 93–94, and Tanyeli, “Klasik Osmanlı Dünyasında Değişim,
Yenilik ve ‘Eskilik’ Üretimi,” pp. 29–34.
61 Mehmed Aşık, Menāzirü’l-‘avālim, Topkapı Palace Library, E.H. 1446, fol. 356r, quoted and
discussed in Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 58–59. For a recently published version based on
a different manuscript, see Âşık Mehmed, Menâzırü’l-‘avâlim, 3 vols, ed. Mahmut Ak.
Ankara, 2007, pp. 986–988. On the controversial dating of the rotunda in Thessaloniki, see
Robin Cormack, Byzantine Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 25–31. It is gener-
ally identified as the mausoleum of the 4th-century Roman emperor Galerius, with its
conversion into a church hypothetically dated to the late 5th or early 6th century. For a
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 351
Ottoman Thessaloniki for several years, says that this landmark was a favorite
excursion spot prior to being converted into a mosque during his second visit
to the city in 1595. Its cultic transformation required the addition of a minaret,
mihrab, minbar, and muezzin’s tribune, as well as a courtyard fountain that
incorporated a large monolithic antique white marble basin laboriously exca-
vated and transported from the residence of a Christian inhabitant located a
mile away. Mehmed Aşık, who composed the mosque’s foundation inscription
celebrating the “conquest” (fetḥ) of the church by Muslims, wrote, “Whenever
this author went for a pleasurable outing (teferrüc) to that church with several
acquaintances from the people of Selanik, we would wish it to become a sanc-
tuary of the community of Islam (ma‘bed-i ehl-i İslām); with the help of God,
after a short while, our wish was granted.” Appropriation thus went hand in
hand with aesthetic attraction and desire. This partly explains the preservation
of the rotunda’s extraordinary early Christian mosaics (Fig. 9a–d), which
remained exposed to the view of Muslim congregations over the centuries.
Around the middle of the 17th century, Evliya Çelebi was awestruck at the
wondrous “sights” (temāş̣āgāh) of this light-filled mosque, with its lofty dome
resting on eight “rainbow-like” arches and decorated with exemplary mosaics
on which “masters of the past” (üstādān-i selef) had demonstrated their unsur-
passed artistry. He displays his connoisseurship by remarking that Greek
chronicles identify the rotunda’s patron as Empress Helena (d. ca. 327), the
mother of Emperor Constantine (r. 306–337), who commissioned it before the
Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem was built for her. Evliya’s remark reflects an
awareness of the familial affinity between the two commemorative structures
in Thessaloniki and Jerusalem (both of which are described admiringly in his
travelogue). This affinity is also apparent in Islamic adaptations of such late
antique prototypes, including the Dome of the Rock and Sultan Süleyman’s
mausoleum.62
different view, see Curčic, Architecture in the Balkans, pp. 22, 54–55, 68–71, 202–204, where
it is attributed to Emperor Constantine, who may have started it as his mausoleum before
moving his capital to Constantinople; according to this hypothesis, the incomplete edi-
fice, abandoned ca. 324, was probably decorated with mosaics under Theodosius I in the
late 5th century.
62 Mehmed Aşık, Menāzirü’l-‘avālīm, fol. 356r; Âşık Mehmed, Menâzırü’l-‘avâlim, vol. 3, ed.
Mahmut Ak, pp. 986–988. The rotunda in Thessaloniki was named as the mosque of
Shaykh Hortācī, after the Sufi shaykh who presided over its conversion by means of an
imperial decree obtained by the vizier Sinan Pasha. On the conversion, see Richard Franz
Kreutel, “Ein Kirschraub in Selānik,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 69
(1977): 75–90. For Evliya’s description, see Kahraman, Dağlı, and Dankoff, Evliyâ Çelebi
Seyahatnâmesi, vol. 8, p. 69. Evliya enthusiastically declared that the Umayyad Dome of
352 necipoğlu
the Rock in Jerusalem, another mosaic-decorated domed octagonal building with a cen-
tral plan, was the most wondrous monument he ever saw in his 38 years of travel; the
passage is quoted in Necipoğlu, “Dome of the Rock as Palimpsest,” p. 69.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 353
are much easier to document in other mediums, such as portable objects and
painting. Not surprisingly, the current scholarly interest in cross-cultural artis-
tic exchanges has focused primarily on the portability of “things,” whose mobil-
ity across and beyond the Mediterranean has been documented through the
ages. By contrast, exchanges in the static, unmovable medium of architecture
remain unexplored, particularly the elusive realms of architectural imagina-
tion and memory.
With its infrastructure of road networks and interconnected seaports, which
redefined the early modern mechanisms of mobility in the eastern
Mediterranean region, the so-called Pax Ottomana facilitated the traffic in
“things.” In this network, Dubrovnik played an important role in fulfilling the
Ottoman court’s requests for artifacts, such as Murano glass and luxury tex-
tiles, particularly in periods of diplomatic tension with the Venetian Republic.
While restricting the importation of Italian fabrics for large-scale consump-
tion at the Ottoman court, Rüstem Pasha continued to place private orders via
Dubrovnik for high-quality Venetian prestige textiles for his own use, in keep-
ing with hierarchical codes of decorum.63 Just as patterns on paper were sent
from Istanbul and Cairo to Venice in the 1550s for commissioned objects
(including patterned brocades, Murano lamps, and lanterns for the sultan’s
barge),64 architectural drawings that are no longer extant may have flowed in
63 For Venetian luxury textiles ordered via Dubrovnik by Rüstem Pasha, some of which may
have been intended as samples to be copied in Ottoman workshops, see Tracy, “Grand
Vezir and the Small Republic: Dubrovnik and Rüstem Paşa, 1544–1561,” pp. 196–214, and
Verena Han, “Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Trade in Glass between Dubrovnik and
Turkey,” Balcanica 4 (1973): 163–178. On Ottoman–Venetian exchanges of artifacts, see
Julian Raby, “The Serenissima and the Sublime Porte: Art in the Art of Diplomacy, 1453–
1600,” in Venice and the Islamic World, 829–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni, exh. cat. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 2007, pp. 90–119, and Deborah Howard, “Cultural
Transfer between Venice and the Ottomans in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” in
Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe, vol. 4, Forging European Identities, 1400–1700,
ed. Herman Roodenburg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 138–177.
64 Two types of design on paper for mosque lamps and hanging lamps (cesendello), commis-
sioned by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha from Murano, are illustrated and discussed in Rosa
Barovier and Stefano Carboni, “Enameled Glass between the Eastern Mediterranean and
Venice,” in Venice and the Islamic World, p. 270, figs. 11 and 12. A drawing made in 1599 for
the sultan’s three boat lanterns is illustrated and discussed in Venezia e Istanbul: Incontri,
confronti e scambi, ed. Ennio Concina, exh. cat. Udine: Forum, 2006, pp. 148–149, cat. 70.
Documents referring to patterns on paper featuring written instructions, which were sent
to Venice for textiles ordered by two pashas in 1554, are discussed in Gülru Necipoğlu,
“From International Timurid to Ottoman: A Change of Taste in Sixteenth-Century
Ceramic Tiles,” Muqarnas 7 (1990): 155, 169 (n. 49). One of these documents is a Turkish
354 necipoğlu
Stones
letter sent from Cairo to Venice, by Dukakinzade Mehmed Pasha (the governor-general of
Egypt since 1553) to Propicia Mano, the former bailo of Aleppo; the pasha had befriended
him while governing that city and asks him, for the sake of their old friendship, to help in
the production of textiles ordered from Venice. For this purpose, the pasha had a designer
make a pattern (“naḳḳāşa resm itdirüb”) in Cairo, which was sent with the accompanying
letter to Venice via the new bailo in that city. This document (Archivio di Stato, Venezia,
Documenti Turchi 657) is published in M. Tayyib Gökbilgin, “Venedik Devlet Arşivindeki
Vesikalar Külliyatında Kanunī Sultan Süleyman Belgeleri,” Belgeler 1, no. 2 (1964): 219–220
(n. 99). I discovered the other reference to four types of design, sent to Venice for cushions
Rüstem Pasha ordered for his daughter, among Antonio Erizzo’s dispatches. These designs
on paper were annotated with Turkish instructions, which this bailo had ordered to be
translated to French; Archivio di Stato, Venezia, Dispacci al Senato, Costantinoploli, Filza
1A, fols. 62b–63a, 280b.
65 On the role of architectural drawings and prints in the transmission of knowledge, see
Howard, Venice & the East, pp. 53–59; Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 98–102; and Gülru
Necipoğlu, “Plans and Models in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Architectural
Practice,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 45, no. 3 (1986): 224–243. The
bath plans are described and reproduced in Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, p. 98; Necipoğlu,
“Plans and Models,” pp. 225–227; Howard Burns, “Dialoghi mediterranei: Palladio e Sinan,”
in Palladio, eds. Guido Beltramini and Howard Burns, exh. cat. Venice: Marsilio, 2008,
pp. 236–243.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 355
By the second half of the 16th century, there are no reports of sultans having
antiquarian pursuits comparable to those of Mehmed II, who during excur-
sions to Troy and Athens is said to have displayed an avid interest in antiquities
and classical heroes, about whom he was tutored by two Italian readers in
Greek and Latin. The reader in Greek was a “companion” of the renowned anti-
quarian humanist, Cyriacus of Ancona. According to a history of Mehmed II’s
reign, written in Greek by his courtier Kritoboulos of Imbros, the sultan’s pri-
mary role model was Alexander the Great. Like the Macedonian world con-
queror, Mehmed, during his 1462 visit to Troy, inquired “about the tombs of the
heroes, Achilles and Ajax and the rest,” who were fortunate to “have the poet
Homer to extol them.” Then he boasted of having avenged Troy and its inhabit-
ants through his own conquests, a boast acknowledging the Renaissance con-
flation of the Turks with the Trojans. Kritoboulos also described the sultan’s
“enamored” tour of Athens, after it was conquered in the Morea campaign of
1458, during which he was eager to learn about all its monuments, “especially
the Acropolis itself, and of the places where those heroes carried on the gov-
ernment” and accomplished “wonderful deeds.” Amazed by the remains and
ruins, the sultan reconstructed “mentally the ancient buildings, being a wise
man and a Philhellene.”66
Soon thereafter, the Parthenon was converted from a Latin cathedral into
a mosque (Fig. 10a). Its mihrab apse continued to display a mosaic image of
the Virgin Mary and Christ Child (as in the Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul)
until the building exploded in 1687 during a Venetian bombardment (Fig. 10b).
The Propylaea, which had been transformed into a palace during the 14th
century by the Florentine duke Neri Acciaiuoli, became the official residence
of the city’s Ottoman governors. Kritoboulos reported that after staying in
Athens for 4 days, Mehmed II indulged in a sightseeing tour of Boeotia and
Palataea, “looking all over the Hellenic sites.” He then paid a visit to Euboea
(Negroponte), which he would subsequently seize from the Venetians in 1470
66 On the sultan’s two Italian readers, see Julian Raby, “Cyriacus of Ancona and the Ottoman
Sultan Mehmed II,” Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes 43 (1980): 242–246,
and Kritoboulos of Imbros, History of Mehmed the Conqueror by Kritouvoulos (1451–1467),
trans. from the Greek by Charles Riggs. Princeton, NJ, 1954, pp. 136–137, 181–182. On the
identification of the Turks with the Trojans in some Renaissance sources, see James
Hankins, “Renaissance Crusaders: Humanist Crusade Literature in the Age of Mehmed II,”
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995): 111–207; Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in
Renaissance Historical Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); and
Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism and Creative Translation: Artistic Conversations
with Renaissance Italy in Mehmed II’s Constantinople,” pp. 10–11, 51.
356 necipoğlu
Fig. 10A–B (A) View of the Acropolis in Athens, showing the Parthenon transformed into a
mosque by Mehmed II and other antiquities. Ink drawing, 1670, Kunstmuseum, Bonn
( from Henri Omont, Athènes au XVIIe siècle. Paris, 1898). (B) Depiction of the
Venetian bombardment of the Acropolis in Athens. Drawing from Fanelli’s Atene
Attica (1687) ( from Henri Omont, Athènes au XVIIe siècle. Paris, 1898).
67 On the conversion of the Parthenon’s Latin church into a mosque and descriptions of
the apse mosaic, which survived until the Venetian bombardment of 1687, see
Robert Ousterhout, “‘Bestride the Very Peak of Heaven’: The Parthenon after Antiquity,” in
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 357
Among 16th-century sultans, Selim I (r. 1512–1520) and his son Süleyman
continued to regard themselves as rightful inheritors of the Eastern Roman
Empire and to read translated histories of Alexander the Great as one of their
role models. To a lesser degree than Mehmed II, both of these rulers sustained
an engagement with the visual culture of Renaissance Italy and northern
Europe. However, this engagement would diminish with the codification, in
the 1550s, of a “classical” Ottoman idiom in the arts and architecture.68 During
the second half of the 16th century, a prominent dimension of the Ottoman
aesthetic response to monuments of antiquity was centered on their material-
ity, expressed in the re-use of colored marble columns and panels (porphyry
and Egyptian granite) removed from ancient ruins. This phenomenon was
often deplored in the anti-Turkish discourses of western European humanist
texts. One such example is the French antiquarian Pierre Gilles’s mid-16th-
century book on the ancient topography of Constantinople, which blames the
barbarous Turks, “who in the last century have not ceased utterly destroying
the vestiges of the ancient city.”69
The Parthenon: From Antiquity to the Present, ed. Jenifer Neils. Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 317–324. A reconstruction of the Acciaiuoli Palace
is proposed in Tasos Tanoulas, “Through the Broken Looking Glass: The Acciaiuoli Palace
in the Propylaea Reflected in the Villa of Lorenzo il Magnifico at Poggio a Caiano,”
Bollettino d’Arte 82, no. 100 (1997): 1–32; see also Tanoulas’s wider discussion of the
Propylaea in his book Τα προπύλαια της Αθηναïκής Ακρόπολης κατά τον Μεσαίωνα. Athens: Hē
en Athēnais Archaiologikē Hetaireia, 1997. Mehmed II, accompanied by his Palaiologan
intimate, Has Murad, declared to the Venetian ambassador in 1468 that Negroponte,
Crete, and all Venetian territories in the Levant belonged to him as the rightful heir of the
“Empire of Constantinople” (lo’nperio di Ghostantinopoli); see Dei, La Cronica, p. 166.
68 The emulation of Alexander the Great and the Western artistic orientations of these three
sultans are discussed in Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism and Creative Translation:
Artistic Conversations with Renaissance Italy in Mehmed II’s Constantinople,” pp. 6–22,
46–52.
69 On discourses by humanists on the barbarism of “the Turk,” see Nancy Bisaha, Creating
East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Turks. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2004, and Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical
Thought. See also Kimberly Byrd, “Pierre Gilles and the Topography of Constantinople,” in
Myth to Modernity: Istanbul, Selected Themes, no. 1, eds. Nezih Başgelen and Brian Johnson.
Istanbul: Archaeology and Art Publications, 2002, p. 4; Pierre Gilles’ Constantinople, trans.
Byrd, 47, pp. 224–225. Greek archaeology began and ended with Cyriacus of Ancona,
according to Roberto Weiss, who points out that Western Europeans took no great
interest in the ancient monuments of Byzantium until Gilles, even though Greek
archaeological sites were not entirely inaccessible: “Renaissance archaeology was simply
Roman archaeology” and “despite its Greek veneer, the humanism of the Renaissance was
358 necipoğlu
essentially Latin”; see Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity.
Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1969, pp. 130–134, 142–144, 206.
70 W. Stirling Maxwell, The Turks in 1533: A Series of Drawings Made in That Year at
Constantinople by Peter Coeck of Aelst and Published by His Widow in Antwerp in 1553.
London and Edinburgh: Privately Printed for W.S.M., 1873. For Pieter Coecke van Aelst’s
Istanbul visit and the tapestry project, see Le livre des peintres de Carel van Mander, Vie
des peintres flamands, hollandaise et allemands. Harlem: Voor Paschier van westbvsch
Boeck vercooper, 1604, trans. Henri Hymans. Paris: J. Rouan, 1884, vol. 1, pp. 184–189, and
Necipoğlu, “Süleyman the Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the Context of
Ottoman-Habsburg-Papal Rivalry,” pp. 419–421, 424.
71 “Enthusiasm for Antiquity neither prevented nor even slowed down the destruction
of Roman ruins”; see Weiss, Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, pp. 98–100,
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 359
205–206. The destruction of Renaissance Rome, especially for the New St. Peter’s, is noted
in Michael Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monumental Present: Building with Antiquities in the
Medieval Mediterranean. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009, p. 529. On Raphael’s appoint-
ment, see the pope’s order and discussion in Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past:
Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 37–40. The “Letter to Leo X,” has recently been interpreted
from a more balanced viewpoint that argues for the simultaneous destruction and pres-
ervation of antiquities in Renaissance Rome in David Karmon, The Ruin of the Eternal
City: Antiquity and Preservation in Renaissance Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011, pp. 156–159. Studies on spolia include Derek A.R. Moore, “Notes on the Use of Spolia
in Roman Architecture from Bramante to Bernini,” in Architectural Studies in Memory of
Richard Krautheimer, ed. Cecil L. Striker. Mainz: P. von Zabern, 1996, pp. 119–122, 120–121;
Lex Bosman, The Power of Tradition: Spolia in the Architecture of St. Peter’s in the Vatican.
Hilversum, 2004; Dale Kinney, “Spolia,” in St. Peter’s in the Vatican, ed. William Tronzo.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 16–47; and Bente Kiilerich, “Antiquus et
modernus: Spolia in Medieval Art, Western, Byzantine and Islamic,” in Medioevo: Il tempo
degli antichi, ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle. Milan: Electa, 2006, pp. 135–145.
72 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, eds. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach,
and Robert Tavernor. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1989), pp. 25, 163. Ancient
Romans also preferred “foreign marbles, from as far away as possible,” because “their dig-
nity required exoticism”; see Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monumental Present, pp. 443–444.
73 Concerning the difficulty of sketching ancient edifices in Istanbul, “for fear of arousing
the suspicions of the Turks, who were jealous of these monuments,” see Eve Borsook, “The
Travels of Bernardo Michelozzi and Bonsignore Bonsignori in the Levant (1497–98),”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973): 160. Pierre Gilles complained
that the inhabitants of the city impeded his antiquarian inquiries and asked, “How did I
dare to measure anything or ask anything freely, not only of the barbarians, but even of
the Greeks?”; see Pierre Gilles’ Constantinople, trans. Byrd, p. 224. Hans Dernschwam
(1553–1555) confirmed that it was with great difficulty that one could scribble down a few
words on a slate or make a small sketch in Istanbul, before the barbaric Turks (ein bar-
barisch volkh) would threaten to beat the interested observer, especially because such
activities were perceived as espionage; Dernschwam, Tagebuch, pp. 99–98.
360 necipoğlu
decree from 1577. This document shows how much the same stones were cov-
eted by Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire and by western Europeans.
Copies of the decree were sent to various administrators in the Morea, namely,
the sanjak governor of Negroponte, as well as the kadis of Athens, Livadia (near
Coron), and İstefe (Thebes). The recipients were ordered to guard such stones
in appropriate storage places and to forbid the sale of antique marbles to
“unbelievers”:
74 On the comparable papal monopoly on valuable ancient building stone in Rome, estab-
lished by Pope Nicholas V, see Karmon, Ruin of the Eternal City, p. 65, translated in
Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, p. 180; original document published in Ömer Lütfi Barkan,
Süleymaniye Cami ve İmareti İnşaatı (1550–1557), 2 vols. Ankara, 1972–1979, p. 31 (n. 69):
“Südde-i saʿādetüme ʿarż-ı ḥāl ṣunılup taḥt-ı ḳażāñuzda baʿżı yontulmış mermer direkler
ve ṣomākī mermerler olup kefere ṭā’ifesi alup kiliseler yapup ve ḥarbī kāfirlere ve sā’ire
beyʿ eyledükleri iʿlām olunmaġın buyurdum ki: Varduḳda ānuñ gibi direkleri ve ṣomākī
mermerleri taḥt-ı ḳażāñuzda münāsib olan maḥallerde żabṭ idüp kefereye beyʿ
itdürmeyesiz.”
75 On the tensions involved in the transfer of antiquities from Ottoman territories to German
museums, which sometimes triggered diplomatic crises because representatives of the
sultans were fully cognizant of their value as cultural heritage, see Suzanne L. Marchand,
German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 361
no longer quarried marbles made them all the more desirable, placing an
added value on the “competence in finding, transporting and erecting” them.76
It is not surprising, then, that the autobiography of chief architect Sinan
focuses less on spatial design innovations than on the transportation and erec-
tion, in accordance with the “science of mechanics” (cerr-i s̱aḳil), of the collec-
tion of rare marble columns reassembled at the Süleymaniye mosque, which
was built for Sultan Süleyman between 1550 and 1557 as part of a large complex
completed in 1559 (Fig. 11a–e). I have formerly argued that this “collecting”
extravaganza was partly inspired by late 15th- and 16th-century Persian and
Turkish adaptive translations of the Diegesis peri tes Hagias Sofias, an early
medieval (probably 9th-century) Byzantine text. These written sources
Fig. 11a (A) Axonometric plan of the Süleymaniye mosque complex in Istanbul (drawn by
Arben N. Arapi, after Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan).
Figs 11b–c (B, C) External lateral arcades of the Süleymaniye mosque in Istanbul (photos:
walter b. denny and alina payne).
describe how Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) appropriated spolia from pagan
temples and antiquities throughout his empire for the Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople. Decrees are said to have been sent to provincial governors,
vassals, and judges, ordering them to search for columns, pillars, slabs, and
veneers, which were then to be conveyed to Constantinople on rafts. Ottoman
versions of the semi-mythical Diegesis were well known to Sinan, who cites
them in his autobiography. The texts refer to spoliated stones brought to
Constantinople from Rome, Ephesus, Cyzicus, the Cyclades, the Troad (Biga
peninsula), Baalbek, Palmyra, and Egypt.77 Paul the Silentiary’s 6th-century
ekphrasis of the Hagia Sophia names its variegated marbles, emphasizing how
difficult they were to extract and transport, and treating them as proof of the
extent of Justinian’s domain, a kind of “material map” of empire.78
77 On the Greek text and translations, see Gilbert Dagron, Constantinople imaginaire: Études
sur le recueil des Patria. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1984, and Stéphane
Yerasimos, La fondation de Constantinople et de Sainte-Sophie dans les traditions
turques. Paris: Institut français d’études anatoliennes; J. Maisonneve, 1990. Sinan’s quota-
tions from the Turkish texts are discussed in Necipoğlu, “Sources, Themes, and Cultural
Implications of Sinan’s Autobiographies,” p. x. On the Ottoman reception of Hagia
Sophia’s textual traditions, see Gülru Necipoğlu, “Life of an Imperial Monument: Hagia
Sophia after Byzantium,” in Hagia Sophia: From the Age of Justinian to the Present, eds.
Robert Mark and Ahmet Ş. Çakmak. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992,
pp. 195–225. The collecting of antiquities in Byzantine Constantinople in an effort to fash-
ion its distinct historical identity is analyzed in Sarah Basset, The Urban Image of Late
Antique Constantinople. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
78 Quoted in Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monumental Present, pp. 35, 70.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 363
Egypt.” Sinan, in his autobiography, made the following proud remark about
these rare stones reassembled like an album at the Süleymaniye mosque (see
Fig. 11a–e): “Each of its colored marbles, which arouse admiration in men of
perception, came from a different land as a keepsake. According to historians,
most of them originated from the palace Solomon had built for the Queen
of Sheba. The white marbles were newly quarried in the Marmara Island
[Proconnesus] and the green ones came from the Arab lands [Alexandria],
while the incomparable porphyry roundels and panels were priceless
treasures.”81
This passage identifies the antique marbles in the sultan’s mosque as
mementoes and relics of the past, admired by “men of perception.” Playing a
cognitive role by simultaneously evoking cultural memories and enhancing
the mosque’s aesthetic value, these cherished stones with multilayered asso-
ciations turned the Süleymaniye into a “lieu de memoire.” The abovemen-
tioned Solomonic palace was Hadrian’s Temple in the Temaşalık district of
Cyzicus (Aydıncık), which had been considered one of the Seven Wonders of
the World in the late Roman period. The Ottomans associated its ancient ruins
with Solomon, while verde antique marbles brought from Alexandria were
appropriate relics for the sultan who also claimed to be the “Alexander of
the Age.”82
The places of origin of the four colossal red Egyptian granite columns sup-
porting the mosque’s “heavenlike” monumental dome are identified by Sinan
in his autobiography: two from Constantinople, one from Alexandria in Egypt
that was carried on a barge, and one transported on a slipway from Baalbek
(the Temple of Jupiter, associated with Solomon) up to the Mediterranean
coast, where it was likewise loaded onto a barge (see Fig. 11d and e).83 These
81 Pierre Gilles’ Constantinople, trans. Byrd, 156. The passage from Sinan’s autobiography is
translated in Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, p. 142.
82 Necipoğlu, “Süleymaniye Complex in Istanbul.” Sultan Süleyman is eulogized as the
Alexander and Solomon of the Age in Latifi’s biographical dictionary of poets written in
1546; see Mustafa İsen, ed., Latīfī Tezkiresi. Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, 1990, p. 13.
83 The provenance of the four colossal red granite columns—one of these being the
Maiden’s Column (Kıztaşı) in Istanbul, which was shortened with the sultan’s permis-
sion—is discussed in Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 142–143. Each of these columns is
9.020 meters high; on the Maiden’s Column, which was shortened 1.348 meters and
reduced 0.156 meters in its lower diameter, see Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger and Arne
Effenberger, “Die ‘columna virginea’ und ihre Wiederverwendung in die Süleymaniye
Camii,” in Millenium—Jahrbuch. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004, pp. 369–
407. The assertion that the Column of Theodosius (Colona Istoriata) was reused in the
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 365
Süleymaniye mosque is untenable; see Serpil Çelik, Süleymaniye Külliyesi Malzeme, Teknik
ve Süreç. Ankara, 2009, p. 48. The Theodosian column was dismantled from the grounds
of the Old Palace around 1500 to make room for a bathhouse adjoining Bayezid II’s
mosque complex on that site; see Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism and Creative
Translation: Artistic Conversations with Renaissance Italy in Mehmed II’s Constantinople,”
pp. 26–27. The association, in Islamic sources, of the Temple in Baalbek with the palace
that King Solomon built for the Queen of Sheba is mentioned in Necipoğlu, “Süleymaniye
Complex in Istanbul,” p. 104 (n. 104).
84 On the late medieval Mamluk treatment of spolia in Cairo, without attempt at visual uni-
fication, see the essay by Doris Behrens-Abouseif in this volume. The Italian Renaissance
and Baroque periods do not “display recognizably reused pieces,” a change that is either a
“matter or aesthetics, as when Raphael’s shop simply re-cut what was needed, or when
making some historicizing point”; see Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monumental Present,
p. 30.
366 necipoğlu
most beautiful columns one can find in the whole world, of which it has an infi-
nite quantity” (ornata delle più belle colonne che si possono trovar al mondo, et ve
ne sono un numero infinito). The same observer judges the mosque of Süleyman
as “surpassing all others in beauty” (di bellezza passa tutte le altre).85 The grand
vizier Rüstem Pasha, as the head of the Imperial Council, was responsible for
supervising written decrees related to the construction of the Süleymaniye. One
of these was sent in 1550 to Semiz Ali Pasha, who was then the governor-general
of Egypt residing in Cairo. (He subsequently moved to Istanbul upon being pro-
moted vizier of the Imperial Council in 1553, while the Süleymaniye mosque—
inaugurated in 1557—was still under construction.) The imperial decree that
this pasha received in Cairo, about 3 months after the foundations of the
Süleymaniye were laid, specified the dimensions of columns required from
Alexandria and asked him also to send colored marble revetments:
85 The Venetian report is “Aurelio Santa Croce al séguito del bailo Marcantonio Barbaro,
Notizie da Costantinopoli (1573),” in Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni di ambasciatori Veneti,
pp. 190–191. Nicolò Michiel (1558) praised the extremely beautiful and shining stones
(bellissime et lucidissime pietre) of the Süleymaniye; see “Aurelio Santa Croce al séguito del
bailo Marcantonio Barbaro,” p. 102. On the stones of the Süleymaniye, see Barkan,
Süleymaniye Cami ve İmareti İnşaatı; J. Michael Rogers, “The State and the Arts in Ottoman
Turkey, Part 1: The Stones of Süleymaniye,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 14
(1982): 71–86; Stéphane Yerasimos, La Mosquée de Soliman. Paris: Paris-Méditerranée :
CNRS éditions, 1997; Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, pp. 142, 156–157, 174, 178–181, 220–221; and
İlknur Aktuğ and Serpil Çelik, “Ottoman Stone Acquisition in the Mid-Sixteenth Century:
The Süleymaniye Complex in Istanbul,” Muqarnas 23 (2006): 249–272, in particular 256,
fig. 1, which shows the location of stone resources for the Süleymaniye complex.
86 Translated in Necipoğlu, Age of Sinan, p. 174; the Ottoman Turkish text is published in
Barkan, Süleymaniye Cami ve İmareti İnşaatı, vol. 2, p. 13 (n. 15).
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 367
Fig. 12 Luigi Mayer, ancient ruins in Alexandria. Print from Views in Turkey in Europe
and Asia. London, 1801 (photo courtesy the houghton library, harvard
university).
from the Dalmatian island of Brač, celebrated for its quarry of white stone that
approximated marble when polished, his connoisseurship of stones could
have gone back to his childhood. It is not a coincidence that a manuscript ded-
icated to Semiz Ali Pasha emphasizes the importation of Egyptian marble col-
umns for the Süleymaniye mosque, which we know were supplied by him. This
freely elaborated, composite version of the Diegesis and Patria in Ottoman
Turkish, titled the “History of Constantinople,” was dedicated to the learned
grand vizier in 1562–1563. It ends with a eulogy of the Süleymaniye mosque
complex and the recently completed madrasa (1559–1560) of Semiz Ali Pasha
near Edirnekapı in Istanbul. Built for the “Solomon of the Age” and the
“Alexander of the Epoch,” the new imperial mosque featuring “columns from
Alexandria and Egypt and elsewhere” is referred to as an unrivaled monument
that no other monarch “on the face of the earth” had been destined to create.
The description of the mosque highlights the use of imported spolia laden
with potent memories, paralleling those of the Hagia Sophia, which are enu-
merated in the same text as evidence for the extent of Justinian’s empire. Much
like Sinan’s autobiography, composed in the 1580s, the author emphasizes the
materiality of the Süleymaniye mosque’s stones, characterizing them as souve-
nirs of monarchs mentioned in the Koran and as mementos of the empire’s
provinces:
Each of the materials and components and stones and columns deployed
in it was the tribute of a land and the renown of a province. And each of
its porphyry columns (ol ṣomāḳī ‘amūdları) was the souvenir of a sover-
eign. Some of them were from the Throne/Palace (taḫt) of His Highness,
the Prophet Solomon—may salutations be upon him—and some came
from the Throne/Palace of the Mirror of Alexander, the Two-Horned [a
Koranic reference to Alexander the Great].89
89 İlyas Efendi, Tārīḫ-i Ḳosṭanṭiniyye, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Turc 147, dated 970
(1562–1563). For a summary and French translations of selected passages from this unpub-
lished manuscript, see Yerasimos, La foundation de Constantinople et de Sainte-Sophie
dans les traditions turques, pp. 223–232 (the quoted passage is translated on 231–232).
I have consulted the Paris manuscript, where the author, ʿAlī al-ʿArabī İlyās, identifies him-
self as a madrasa professor on fol. 2r. The Süleymaniye is described on fols. 43r–44r:
“Ve anda olan esbāb ve ālāt ve aḥcār ve üstüvānāt her biri bir memleketüñ ḫarācı ve bir
vilāyetüñ şemʿ-i sirācı idi. Ve ol ṣomākī ʿamūdları birer pādişāhuñ yādgārı idi. Ve bir ḳāçı
ḥażret-i Süleymān peyġamber ʿaleyhi’s-selām taḫtından ve bir ḳāçı İskender el-ḳarneynüñ
āyinesi taḫtından idiler.”
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 369
The systematic search for stones for the Süleymaniye complex amounted to a
veritable archaeological survey of major classical sites and quarries within the
Ottoman domains. Distributed along the empire’s eastern Mediterranean
shores (also encompassing the Aegean and Marmara Seas), some of these sites
were located on the resuscitated Via Egnatia. The daily account books for the
construction of the complex name the royal architects sent between 1550 and
1553, by imperial decree, to fetch stones from archaeological ruins that were
apparently well known to Sinan and his superiors at the Ottoman court.
Instructed not to destroy standing monuments, these royal architects scouted
antiquities throughout the empire’s coastline: wherever they located suitable
marbles and columns, they were to mark them with a sign (nişān). Accompanied
by provincial governors and kadis (judges), they had to prepare catalogues
containing stone samples (numūne) chipped from the ruins, specifying
number, dimensions, color, and estimated transportation costs, including
the construction of landing stations in nearby ports.90 The stones were
collected from numerous sites (see Figs. 13 and 14): Constantinople and
its environs (Hebdomon/Makrihorya, Chalkedon/Kadıköy, Chrysopolis/
Üsküdar, Çengelköy, Hieron/Yoroz); Nicomedia (İznikmid, now İzmit), Nicea
(İznik), Cius (Gemlik), Cape Triton (Bozburun), Myrlea (Mudanya), Lopadion
and Miletopolis (Mihaliç), Cyzicus (Aydıncık), Perinthos/Heraclea (Ereğli),
Viza (Vize), Adrianople (Edirne), Thessaloniki (Selanik), Sidhirokastron
(Sidrekapsi), Tenedos (Bozcaada), Alexandria Troas (Eski İstanbulluk),
Neandria (Eyne/Ezine), Mytilene (Midilli), Pitane (Candarlu), Chios (Sakız),
Miletus (Balat), Seleucia (Silifke), Danisanclus (Mud), Hierocaesarea (Selendi),
Baalbek, Ashkelon (Askalan), and Alexandria (İskenderiyye). Stockpiles of pre-
cious stones were located at the imperial storehouse of the Topkapı Palace, as
well as in such sites as Coracesion (Alaiye), Gülnar, Mersin, Tarsus, Magarsus
(Karataş), Adana, Misis, Euboea (Ağriboz), Athens (Atina), Thebai (İstefe), and
Livadia (Livadya).91
By cross-referencing the construction process of the Hagia Sophia under
Emperor Justinian, Sultan Süleyman proclaimed his own “marble map” of the
Mediterranean (see Fig. 13). The long list of sites shows that by the 16th century
the Ottomans had inherited the main supplies of ancient marble, which they
supplemented by reopening the dormant Roman quarry of Proconnesus
Fig. 13 Marble map showing the location of stone resources utilized for the Süleymaniye
complex (redrawn from aktuğ and çelik, “ottoman stone acquisition in the
mid-sixteenth century: the süleymaniye complex in istanbul”).
Fig. 14 View of the Dardanelles and the plain of “Troy” (actually, Alexandria Troas: Eski
Istanbulluk). Ink drawing from Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Liber Insularum
Archipelagi. Vatican Library, ms. Chig. F.V.110, fol. 39v (after Roberto Weiss, The
Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity. Oxford, 1969).
372 necipoğlu
Conclusion
cleaned annually to “resemble a white swan” (Fig. 15).95 Once again, the
resounding response to this “infidel” city in enemy territory was one of aes-
thetic attraction and desire.
Additional archival documents and narrative sources promise to shed
more light on the interactive processes that governed exchanges at the micro
and macro levels between the Dalmatian coast, its hinterland, and the
Mediterranean space at large. As a modest starting point, I have emphasized
the “centrality” of this “border zone” by situating it within a wider early mod-
ern global perspective that emphasizes transregional connectivity and carries
the potential to revise dichotomous paradigms that tend to stereotype East
and West. In this regard, a promising concept is that of crossed histories (his-
toire croisée), which explores intersections among practices, persons, and
objects capable of generating transformative relational configurations across
time and space.96 From such a viewpoint, the shifting and unstable Dalmatian
Fig. 15 Robert Adam, sea walls of the city of Split, formerly “Diocletian’s Palace,” engraving
(from the palace of emperor diocletian at spalatro in dalmatia. london, 1764).
95 Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, vol. 5, pp. 241–263; for the description of Split, see pp. 242,
260–263.
96 Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and
the Challenge of Reflexivity,” History and Theory 45, no. 1 (2006): 30–50, and Michael
Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, eds., De la comparaison à l’histoire croisée. Paris:
Seuil, 2004, pp. 15–49.
mediterranean “portable archaeology” 375
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Chapter 11
1 Ljubo Karaman, O djelovanju domaće sredine u umjetnosti hrvatskih krajeva. Zagreb: Društvo
historičara umjetnosti N.R.H., 1963, p. 7.
2 Goran Nikšić, “The Restoration of Diocletian’s Palace: Mausolem, Temple, and Porta Aurea,”
in Diokletian und die Tetrarchie. Aspekte einer Zeitenwende, eds. Alexander Demandt, Andreas
Goltz, and Heinrich Schlange-Schöningen. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004, p. 164.
Fig. 1 Inner view of brick dome, Diocletian’s Mausoleum, Split (photo by the author).
probably have escaped the local masons and builders. They had little experi-
ence with brick construction, which was almost completely lost in Dalmatia
during the Middle Ages, when stone and wood became the prime structural
materials. Even had there been a master such as Filippo Brunelleschi, capable
of fully understanding the quality of the Roman structural design, he would
not have been able to reproduce anything like it without the local presence of
high-quality brick production and construction expertise.
Conversely, the stone vault of the Temple of Jupiter became a model for
some of the most significant Dalmatian structures of the 15th and 16th centu-
ries. It was built as a series of eight semicircular arches, each consisting of five
stone blocks (see Fig. 3). Every one of the 40 blocks is richly decorated with two
deeply carved square coffers. The geometry of the temple’s vault is very pre-
cise, and the stone blocks were assembled without metal fixtures (see Fig. 4).
Fig. 3 Inner view of vault, Temple of Jupiter, Split (photo by the author).
The Influence of Building Materials 385
Despite the fact that the vault never received a roof (see Fig. 5)—due to the
abrupt halt of the construction (probably caused by the premature arrival of
Emperor Diocletian)—the interior remained dry and the fine carvings were
still in almost perfect condition after many centuries. Such an achievement
was clearly possible only because of the fine workmanship and the high qual-
ity of the limestone.3
The impact of the Temple of Jupiter on the regional architecture was
twofold: on the one hand, the form of a coffered stone vault was eminently
appropriate for the Renaissance buildings in which classical elements were
introduced, such as the Baptistery and the chapel of the Blessed John in Trogir
3 Nikšić, “Restoration of Diocletian’s Palace,” p. 166, and Goran Nikšić, “Jupiter Rising: Restoring
Diocletian’s Diminutive Temple of Jupiter at Split,” ICON Magazine Fall (2004): 19.
386 nikšić
Fig. 5 External view of vault, Temple of Jupiter, Split (photo by the author).
Cathedral (Fig. 6). On the other hand, the vault, which was visible from the
outside, provided material proof that it was possible to roof a major building
with only a stone structure. However, Šibenik Cathedral remained the only
building derived from this model, because the task proved too demanding and
risky to be repeated.
The structural system of the vaults of Šibenik Cathedral is much more complex
than the straightforward barrel vault of the Temple of Jupiter in Split. In the
Roman building, the joints are straight and have opened up a little because the
supporting walls have given way following the loss of the metal cramps con-
necting the blocks of the side cornices. It is surprising that the builders of the
The Influence of Building Materials 387
Fig. 6 Internal view of vault, Chapel of Blessed John in the Cathedral, Trogir
(photo by the author).
temple did not use joggled joints to prevent it, despite the fact that they were
quite familiar with that technique and used it in the beamlike flat arch over
the north gate of Diocletian’s Palace.
The complexity of the vaulting system in Šibenik Cathedral resulted from
structural requirements, as well as from the need to make the building water-
proof. The dome above the crossing and the vaults above the nave and aisles
were all constructed with slender stone slabs inserted between stone ribs
(see Fig. 7). Thus both the intrados and the extrados of the vaults were visi
ble and exposed. The contour of the west front follows that of the vaults
behind; indeed, it is one of the earliest examples of a trefoil façade in the
Renaissance.4
4 Radovan Ivančević, “Trolisna pročelja renesansnih crkava u Hrvatskoj,” Peristil 35/36 (1992–
1993): 86.
388 nikšić
Fig. 7 External view of vaults and dome of Šibenik Cathedral (photo by the author).
The upper story of the bell tower of the cathedral in Korčula, built by the
local architect Marko Andrijić (Fig. 8) is much smaller than the stone vaults of
Šibenik Cathedral, but its structure is equally complex, and it became highly
significant for the history of Dalmatian architecture. The dome of the Korčula
campanile, built between 1481 and 1483, and the dome of Šibenik Cathedral,
which was erected a little later by Niccolo di Giovanni Fiorentino, probably
following the design of his predecessor Juraj Dalmatinac (also known as
Giorgio da Sebenico or George of Šibenik), have a very similar basic structural
concept: a combination of stone ribs tongued and grooved with thin slabs. It is
The Influence of Building Materials 389
Fig. 8 South façade, belfry of the Cathedral, Korčula (photo by the author).
impossible to identify exactly to which of the two master builders of the cathe-
dral the authorship for this structural idea should be attributed. However,
because the activity of Marko Andrijić falls between theirs, and because we
know that both Juraj and Niccolo came to Korčula to purchase stone for the
building of Šibenik Cathedral, it can be supposed that the builders of Korčula
and of Šibenik influenced one another.5
The upper part of the bell tower in Korčula is a highly original composition,
where the architect proved capable of putting together, in a very restricted
space, three basic architectural elements: the octagonal loggia with pillars (the
main element), which carry the dome consisting of thin stone slabs grooved
into diagonal stone ribs; a narrow passage with a stone balustrade that Marko
5 Emil Hilje, “Juraj Dalmatinac i Korčula: prilog za kronologiju gradnje šibenske katedrale,”
Radovi Instituta za povijest umjetnosti 25 (2001): 53–55.
390 nikšić
succeeded in creating around the loggia above the bell tower’s walls, which are
271/2 inches (70 centimeters) thick; and a lantern on top of the dome with eight
slender pillars that continue the lines of the ribs.
The erection of eight pillars to support the arches and the dome of the log-
gia on a very small surface must have presented great difficulties: the tower
measures only 161/2 feet square (5 by 5 meters) on the outside. Further compli-
cating the construction, the architect also wished to build a balcony with a
stone balustrade around the loggia on top of the tower’s relatively thin walls.
This engineering feat was made possible by an ingenious arrangement where
the weight of the balustrade, cantilevered on the outer side, was counterbal-
anced by the weight of the pillars situated on the inner side of the walls, even
partially hanging over into the central void. Both the balustrade and the pillars
rest on a series of large slabs, which are more than 31/4 feet (1 meter) wide. Their
outer edge is carved, thus forming a fine cornice and a decorative base for the
whole termination of the tower.6
Marko’s idea to build an octagonal loggia above the square trunk of the
tower was not a novelty, but the combination of a domed loggia, surrounded
by a balustrade and terminated by a lantern, represents an original contribu-
tion to the history of European architecture. The fact that such a bold and
novel design was possible in the small provincial town of Korčula shows that
working on the periphery can produce high-quality architecture, on the level
of contemporaneous practice in the great artistic European centers. However
innovative as an architect, as a sculptor, Marko Andrijić was a typical provin-
cial Dalmatian artist working in the medieval tradition and indulging in exu-
berant decoration.7 The crowning of the cathedral tower in Korčula was so
successful that, together with the campanile of the Franciscan monastery in
Hvar for which Marko provided a complete design, it became the model for a
series of church towers in Hvar and elsewhere in Dalmatia (Fig. 9).8
In Šibenik, the task was to construct a dome over the crossing of the nave
and transept. Each side of the octagonal drum has two arched windows with
fluted pilasters between them. The dome is also composed of stone ribs and
slabs, somewhat bigger than those in Korčula, due to the larger dimensions of
6 Goran Nikšić, “Marko Andrijić u Korčuli i Hvaru,” Prilozi povijesti umjetnosti u Dalmaciji 37
(1997–1998): 194.
7 Cvito Fisković, Korčulanska katedrala. Zagreb: Nadbiskupska tiskara, 1939, p. 71; Karaman,
O djelovanju domaće sredine, p. 85; and Goran Nikšić, “Andrijići u Dubrovniku,” in Renesansa
i renesanse u umjetnosti Hrvatske, eds. Predrag Marković and Jasenka Gudelj. Zagreb: Institut
za povijest umjetnosti, 2008, p. 144.
8 Nikšić, “Andrijić u Korčuli i Hvaru,” pp. 206–216.
The Influence of Building Materials 391
Fig. 9 Section through top of the belfry in Korčula, and a series of church towers in Hvar
inspired by it (drawing by the author).
Fig. 10 External view of nave vault and dome over crossing, Šibenik Cathedral
(photo by the author).
its bearing capacity is used to the maximum); and only a vertical load is trans-
mitted to the structural elements below the dome. A very satisfactory struc-
tural system for the loggia is thus achieved.9
In Šibenik Cathedral, the joints between slabs are emphasized by the thicker
lower edges of the slabs, a detail that added to the complexity of the construc-
tion. In the structural system of the dome in Korčula, two different stresses are
resisted by two different and appropriate materials: the stone slabs and ribs for
compression and the copper cramps for tension. In Šibenik, however, the same
material (stone) resists both kinds of stresses. Although this might be described
10 This kind of dual structure can be compared to that of a timber spire, where the skeleton
is maintained rigidly by the face boarding, and at the same time acts like a permanent
formwork. Jacques Heyman, The Stone Skeleton: Structural Engineering of Masonry
Architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 137.
394 nikšić
11 On influence of wind on structural design, see Robert Mark and Ronald S. Jonash, “Wind
Loading on Gothic Structure,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 29, no. 3
(October 1970): 230.
The Influence of Building Materials 395
12 Miroslav Škugor, “Tajna zaglavnog kamena. Sanacija kupole katedrale sv. Jakova u
Šibeniku. Repair of the dome of St. Jacob’s Cathedral in Šibenik.” Arhitektura 1, no. 213
(1997), 138–139.
13 Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism. New York: Meridian Books, 1957,
pp. 20–21. On the structural role of the Gothic ribs, see Françoise Very, “Eugène Viollet-le-
Duc, Pol Abraham et Victor Sabouret. La raison des nervures gothiques,” Journal d’Histoire
de l’Architecture 2 (1989): 23–31; Heyman, Stone Skeleton, p. 54; and Robert Mark and Elwin
C. Robison, “Vaults and Domes,” in Architectural Technology up to the Scientific Revolution,
ed. Robert Mark. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1994, pp. 160–163.
396 nikšić
The stone used in the construction of both buildings is the best limestone
quarried on the islands of Korčula and Brač (Fig. 12). The architects fully relied
on the finest-quality material. It seems that they wanted to push to the limits
of the strength of the stone. Juraj Dalmatinac (George of Šibenik) made the
walls of the three apses using large, but very thin stone slabs, carved on both
sides. The ceiling of the baptistery is in the form of a very shallow dome that is
extremely thin, with fine sculpture below, and a flat extrados that serves as the
floor of the chapel above. The tracery in the niches in the interior of the baptis-
tery is so slender that it dazzles the viewer, who can hardly believe that it is
possible to work the stone in such a way without breaking it. The challenge of
the material limits was further explored in the sacristy (Fig. 13), where the
great load of an apparently massive stone structure rests upon just three slen-
der pillars (the rusticated two being a later addition). Evidently Niccolo di
Giovanni followed in George’s footsteps in exploring the limits of the stone’s
strength, both in the structural and decorative elements.
In Korčula, Marko Andrijić reduced the thickness of the slabs in the vault to
mere 33/32 inches (8 cm). If we take a closer look at the details of construction,
such as the small columns of the lantern, we can see how the stone is cut in
order to lighten the structure, physically and visually, but only in the middle
part, while the ends were left stronger to resist stresses at the critical points
where the members were joined together. This structural logic is very close to
that used in carpentry. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the comparison with the
details used in shipbuilding. The likeness becomes even more natural if we
know that Korčula used to be as famous for its pine forests and its shipyards as
for its stone quarries and stonecutters’ workshops.
Shipbuilding and stonecutting are strongly connected trades. Carpenters
played an important role in the construction process. Apart from the roof and
floor structures, they erected timber scaffoldings without which no serious
construction would have been possible. Joiners made windows and doors, as
well as furniture. In Korčula (and probably in many other places along the
Adriatic coast), all of them learned their craft in the shipyards, and as masters
they would usually perform in parallel different types of works.
In addition, stonecutters ordered and purchased ships for transport of stone
from quarries (most often situated very close to the seashore) to the building
sites in the cities along both Adriatic coasts. We know, for example, that Jacopo
from Trani (in Puglia), the master builder of the cathedral in Korčula in the
mid-15th century, owned a ship that was certainly used to transport stone.14
George of Šibenik made a fortune from trading across the Adriatic Sea with
Dalmatian stone as raw material probably as much as from working as a
famous sculptor and architect. Marko Andrijić was a member of the carpen-
ters’ guild in Dubrovnik at the time when stonecutters had no professional
association of their own.15 This fact suggests that he had a thorough knowledge
of working the wood and that exchanges between the two trades were
commonplace.
In the shipbuilding trade, even more than in the construction of buildings,
aesthetics and fine proportions are very important. An ugly house can be func-
tional, but a wooden ship must have a harmonic line to be able to cut through
the waves successfully. In the transmission of the secrets of the trade from one
generation to another, apart from the thorough knowledge of the material,
of manipulating the tools and making the timber structure, the proportional
systems and design lines of the hull held a very important place.16 All the vital
characteristics of a ship (stability, resistance and propulsion, strength, and
the total seaworthiness) result from the form of the hull. Most of the credit for
the end result—a strong, fast, and beautiful ship—went to the “proto” (proto-
magister navium), just as the responsibility for the functionality, beauty, and
harmony of a building lies with the architect who made the design and super-
vised the construction.
George of Šibenik also made extensive use of carpentry-like details in his
design of the cathedral, such as mortice-and-tenon joints between stone
blocks, and cutting the edges of elements such as pillars or stairs to reduce
their physical and visual weight. Niccolo di Giovanni continued the use of such
details. A closer look, for instance, at the drum of the dome, will show that the
fluted pilasters are made of a single piece of stone (outside and inside), and
that the plain semicircular arches are inserted into the grooves of these pilas-
ters and capitals above them. The fact that each capital was made of one single
piece of stone—meaning that it had to be installed vertically to join the pilas-
ter and the adjacent arches very precisely—is a clear indication of the com-
plexity of the stonecutter’s task. And if this were not enough, at the corners of
the octagon, the stereotomy gets even more complicated.
Unlike the cathedral tower in Korčula, the example of the stone vaults and
dome of Šibenik Cathedral was never imitated. Maybe its design was too bold,
or its construction too complicated to be repeated; but perhaps the reason lies
partially in the fact that the cathedral seems to have had technical problems
from the very beginning. Because of the much admired “unity of material” (the
lack of a roofing membrane), rainwater leaked through the joints, and conden-
sation developed because of the slenderness of the stone slabs. These are the
problems that are still faced today in the repair and maintenance of the build-
ing. It seems to have been the price to be paid for a brilliant and extraordi-
narily innovative design.
If Renaissance architecture was primarily a return to Roman antiquity,
where vaulted structures relied on the massiveness of their components, and
Gothic structural engineering was essentially “rational” in its endeavor to use
the maximum of the resistance capacity of the materials, it could be argued
that in the 15th and 16th centuries in Dalmatia both currents coexisted. Just as
Gothic and Renaissance stylistic elements were very often mixed in the same
building—a characteristic that has often been described as “provincial”—so
the structural features of the two approaches were also hybridized. Due to the
exceptional qualities of the local limestone, the best master builders were
often driven to explore its limits, finding solutions that probably would never
have occurred to them had their choice been limited to average, less resistant
materials.
The concept of periphery (as opposed to provinciality) can thus help us
understand the uniqueness of the best examples of Dalmatian architecture in
400 nikšić
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Vaulting,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 36, no. 4 (1977), 241–251.
Belamarić, Igor, Brod i entropija. Split: Književni krug, 1998.
Fisković, Cvito, Korčulanska katedrala. Zagreb: Nadbiskupska tiskara, 1939.
Foretić, Vinko, “Vjekovne veze Dubrovnika i Korčule,” Dubrovnik 7, no. 4 (1965):
18–54.
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Hilje, Emil, “Juraj Dalmatinac i Korčula—prilog za kronologiju gradnje šibenske kate-
drale,” Radovi Instituta za povijest umjetnosti 25 (2001): 53–74.
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(1992–1993): 85–120.
Karaman, Ljubo. O djelovanju domaće sredine u umjetnosti hrvatskih krajeva. Zagreb:
Društvo historičara umjetnosti N.R.H., 1963.
Mark, Robert and Ronald S. Jonash, “Wind Loading on Gothic Structure,” Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians 29, no. 3 (1970): 222–230.
Mark, Robert and Elwin C. Robison, “Vaults and Domes.” In Architectural Technology
up to the Scientific Revolution, ed. Robert Mark. Cambridge, MA and London: The
MIT Press, 1994, pp. 138–181.
Nikšić, Goran. “Marko Andrijić u Korčuli i Hvaru,” Prilozi povijesti umjetnosti u Dalmaciji
37 (1997–1998): 191–228.
_____, “Jupiter rising: restoring Diocletian’s diminutive Temple of Jupiter at Split,”
ICON Magazine Fall (2004a): 18–21.
_____, “Marc Andrijić.” In La Renaissance en Croatie, eds. Alain Erlande-Brandenburg
and Miljenko Jurković. Zagreb: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Galerie Klovićevi
dvori, 2004b, p. 237.
_____, “The Restoration of Diocletian’s Palace—Mausolem, Temple, and Porta Aurea.”
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The Influence of Building Materials 401
Doris Behrens-Abouseif
Since the beginning of its long history, Egypt has continuously experienced
and practiced despoliation and looting of the monuments of its past. From
antiquity through the 19th century, historic monuments have been dismantled
either for their presumed treasures or to provide building materials for new
ones. The tomb of Pharaoh Tuth Ankh Amon in the Valley of the Kings has
been a sensational discovery less because of the patron’s significance in ancient
Egyptian history than for the fact that it was found undisturbed with its origi-
nal content.
It is well-known—and clearly visible—that many medieval Islamic monu-
ments have been built with materials removed from ancient buildings dating
from the Pharaonic through the Byzantine and Coptic past. Even mosques
and contemporary secular buildings were not spared spoliation when a
sultan or a high dignitary was in need of materials for his own monument.1
Pre-Islamic spolia were used in different ways; different categories of spo
liation co-existed in medieval Egypt and were associated with different
meanings. Spolia from Crusader monuments were also used in the Islamic
architecture of Egypt.
Along with the monumental heritage of pre-Islamic Egypt, the Arab con-
querors inherited a considerable literature dealing with the cultures of the
past. For the obvious reason of its magnitude, the Pharaonic legacy occupied a
prominent place in this lore. The pagan origin of ancient monuments was not
necessarily viewed by Arab authors as a reason to condemn them or to discard
them or even ignore them. Rather, fascination and wonder characterizes the
literature dealing with ancient cultures, especially Egypt, which was tradition-
ally viewed as a land of magic and marvels. Even a certain regional pride,
as suggested by the historian Ulrich Haarmann, seems to be perceptible in
1 Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Cairo of the Mamluks: A History of the Architecture and Its Culture.
London: I.B. Tauris, 2007, pp. 46–47.
2 The reception of ancient Egypt in Islamic literature has been exhaustively discussed in many
publications by Ulrich Haarmann: “Medieval Muslim Perceptions of Pharaonic Egypt,” in
Ancient Egyptian Literature, History and Forms, ed. Antonio Lorenzo. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996,
pp. 605–627; “Evliya Celebis Bericht über die Alertümer von Gize,” Turcica/Revue d’Etudes
Turque 8, no. 1 (1976): 157–384; “Haram,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. H.A.R. Gibb
et al. Leiden: Brill, 1986–2000 (page number, forthcoming); “Die Sphinx: Synkretische
Volksreligiosität im späatmittelalterlichen Ägypten,” Saeculum 29 (1978): 367–384; “Das
Pharaonische Ägypten bei Islamischen Autoren des Mittelaters,” in Zum Bild Ägyptens im
Mittelalter und in der Renaissance, ed. Erik Hornung. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1990,
pp. 29–58; Das Pyramidenbuch des Abū Ga’far al-Idrīsī. Beirut: Frānts Shtāyrir, 1991, with an
extensive bibliography. See also Erwin Gräf, Das Pyramidenkapitel in al-Maqrizi’s “Hitat”.
Leipzig: G. Kreysing, 1911; Alexander Fodor, “The Origins of the Arabic Legends of the
Pyramids,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 23, no. 3 (1970): 335–363;
Fodor, “Haram and Hermes: Origins of the Arabic Word haram meaning pyramid,” Studia
Aegiptica 2 (1976): 157–167; Fodor, “The Metamorphosis of Imhotep: A Study in Islamic
Syncretism,” in Akten des Siebten Kongresses für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft, Göttingen,
15–22 August 1974. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976, pp. 155–181; Christian Cannyer,
“L’Intérêt pour l’Egypte pharaonique à l’époque fatimide: Etude sur l’Abrégé des Merveilles
(Mukhtasar al-’ajā’ib),” in L’Egypte fatimide. Son art et son histoire, ed. Marianne Barrucand.
Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1999, pp. 483–496.
3 See Ulrich Haarmann, “Luxor und Heliopolis: Ein Aufruf zum Denkmalschutz aus dem 13.
Jahrhundert n. Chr.,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo 40
(1984): 153–157; Sylvestre de Sacy, Relation de l’Egypte par Abd-allatif, médecin arabe de
Baghdad…. Paris: Imprimerie impériale, chez Dreuttel et Wurtz, 1810, pp. 183, 186, 195.
404 behrens-abouseif
gone with a group of followers to break the nose of the Sphinx in 1378,
was aimed against the popular belief that attributed apotropaic powers to
the Sphinx, which protected Egypt against natural catastrophes. According
to the 15th-century Egyptian historian Aḥmad ibn ʻAlī Maqrizi, Giza has
been under sand ever since this action.4 In 1311–1312 an emir ordered the
demolition of an ancient Egyptian statue at Fustat believed to perpetuate
the yearly Nile flood, vital for Egypt; the initiative was applauded by the histo-
rian Ibn Duqmaq.5 The demolition in 1378–1379 of a spectacular temple in
the Upper Egyptian town of Akhmim by a zealot similarly targeted popular
beliefs; the temple was believed to be a source of knowledge to the Egyptian
Sufi saint Dhu ’l-Nun (d. 874). Maqrizi added that the perpetrator of this demo-
lition died soon afterward.6 This temple had been described in the 12th century
with unusual detail and great fascination by the Andalusian traveler Ibn
Jubayr.7 No reason is given for the emir Shaykhu’s destruction of a monolithic
granite chamber in a temple in Memphis; but he must have believed in some
magic power it contained, for he transferred some of its stones to his religious
complex, including the architrave at the entrance of his monastery built
in 1356.8
Some ancient monuments that had been previously Christianized with the
insertion of a church were eventually Islamicized with the founding of a
mosque there. This happened with the temple of Luxor in the 12th century
when the mosque of Shaykh Abu’l-Hajjaj, to whom the definitive conversion of
Upper Egypt to Islam is attributed, was erected on its premises. Similarly, the
Serapeum of Alexandria included a church and later a mosque before it was
dismantled and its columns used as breakwaters on the shore.9 The Ptolemaic
lighthouse of Alexandria also included a church and later a mosque, and was
continuously restored to be used in its original function until it collapsed
beyond repair during the 14th century.10 In this particular case, pragmatic
reuse was combined with the Islamization of a monument acknowledged to
4 Taqiyy al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-mawāʿiẓ wa’l-Iʿtibār bi dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa’l-āthār,
vol. 1. Bulaq: Dār al-Ṭibā’ah al-Miṣrīyah, 1888–1889, p. 123.
5 Ibn Duqmāq, Kitāb al-intiṣār li wāsiṭaṭ ʿiqd al-amṣār, vol. 4. Bulaq: al-Maṭba’ah al-Kubrá
al-Amīrīyah, 1897–1898, pp. 21–22.
6 al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-mawāʿiẓ wa’l-Iʿtibār bi dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa’l-āthār, vol. 1, p. 240.
7 Ibn Jubayr, Riḥlat Ibn Jubayr. Beirut: Dār Sādir and Dār Bayrūt, 1959, pp. 35–38.
8 al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, vol. 1, p. 135.
9 Judith McKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt 300 bc–ad 700. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2007, pp. 246–247, 313.
10 Doris Behrens-Abouseif, “The Islamic History of the Lighthouse of Alexandria,” Muqarnas
23 (2006): 1–14.
Between Quarry and Magic 405
belong to the marvels of the world, and mentioned in all maribilia literature.
Its association with Alexandria, founded about 331 bce by Alexander the Great,
whom Islamic tradition reckons among the pre-Islamic patriarchs, added to its
significance.
Besides the search for treasures, the major motivation for the demolition of
ancient Egyptian monuments was the use of their cut stone blocks as building
material. The Fatimid fortifications of Cairo, built in the late 11th century, reveal
a multitude of such blocks with visible hieroglyphs; in other monuments the
spolia are less visible. Pharaonic aesthetics, however, did not seem to have
appealed to Muslim builders. It is surprising that the architecture of the Islamic
period was not the least inspired by the variety of ancient Egyptian capitals
that could be seen on so many sites, although these are generally devoid
of figural motifs. Instead, the builders continued reusing and copying
capitals. This was not necessarily an Islamic attitude, but a continuation of a
Byzantine-Coptic architectural decoration where Pharaonic art is no longer
perceptible.
Rather than quarry hard stone themselves, Muslim builders made use of
Roman granite and porphyry columns. The granite columns that support the
domes above the mihrab (prayer niche) at the mosque of Sultan al-Nasir
Muhammad in the Citadel of Cairo (1318–1335) are crowned with capitals that
are coarsely hewn and either bare or displaying rudimentary carving (Fig. 1), as
if the craftsmen had tried to carve them but failed to. This imperfection is sur-
prising in the royal mosque of the sultans’ residence. The transfer of these col-
umns from a Roman temple in the town of Ashmunayn (Hermopolis Magna)
had taken place with great difficulty and at high cost. The 14th-century histo-
rian Abu Bakr Ibn al-Dawadari reported that the sultan assigned all his gover-
nors in Upper Egypt each with the task of providing a certain number of
columns. To ship them on the Nile to Cairo, he sent big sturdy vessels; and
when they arrived, the governors of the two agglomerations of the Egyptian
capital, Fustat and Qahira,11 took charge of them, whereby they recruited thou-
sands of people to help drag them onto land. He writes that these extraordi-
nary columns, the scale of which confused the mind, were not made by human
beings but were originally commissioned by the priests of the ancient temples,
who used their magic powers to recruit djinns to produce these columns
from a soft molded body that eventually turned into an extremely hard
material. The priests would then order giants to transport the columns to their
11 Medieval Cairo consisted of two cities: Fusṭāṭ the old Arab foundation and its subsequent
satellites, and Qāhira, founded the Fatimids in the 10th century.
406 behrens-abouseif
Fig. 1 Domed area of the Mosque of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad in the Citadel of Cairo
(photo by the author).
12 Ibn Aybak al-Dawādārī, Kanz al-durar wa jāmiʿ al-ghurar, vol. 9, ed. Hans Robert Römer.
Cairo: Qism al-Dirāsāt al-Islāmīyah, al-Maʿhad al-Almānī lil-Āthār bi-al-Qāhirah, 1960–
1994, pp. 382–383.
13 Description de l’Egypte par les Savants de l’Expedition Française: Etat Moderne, vol. 1. Paris:
Imprimerie Impériale, 1812, plates 70, 71.
Between Quarry and Magic 407
Fig. 2 Domed area of the vanished palace of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad in the Citadel of
Cairo ( from Description de l’Egypte par les Savants de l’Expedition Française. Etat
Moderne, Paris, 1812).
Fig. 3 Domed area of the Mosque of Emir al-Maridani (photo by the author).
408 behrens-abouseif
Fig. 4 The loggia of the palace of Emir Mamay, featuring lotus-shaped columns (photo by
the author).
Fig. 5 The architrave at the entrance of the monastery of Emir Shaykhu (photo by the
author).
15 Most of these blocks have been removed to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. See
Hasan Abd al-Wahhab, “al-Āthār al-manqūla wa’l-muntaḥala fī’l-ʿimāra’l-islāmiyya,”
Bulletin de l’Institut d’Egypte/Majallat al-Majma ʿal-ʿilmī al-Miṣrī 38, no. 1 (1955–1956):
243–253.
410 behrens-abouseif
16 ʿAlī Mubārak, al-Khiṭaṭ al-jadīda al-tawfīqiyya li-Miṣr wa’l-Qāhira, 20 vols. Būlāq Miṣr:
al-Maṭba’ah al-Kubrá al-Amīrīyah, 1886–1889, pp. 324; Jean Baptiste Le Mascrier,
Description de l’Egypte: composée sur les mémoires de m. de Maillet, ancien Consul de
France au Caire. La Haye: Isaac de Beauregard, 1740, p. 195.
17 Evliyā C˛elebi, Seyahatnāmesi, vol. 10, eds. Seyit Ali Kahraman, Yücel Dagli, and Robert
Dankoff. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları Ltd, 2007, p. 266.
18 Edward William Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians.
The Hague: East–West Publications, 1978, pp. 26, 422.
19 Another sarcophagus, of Nectanebo II (360–43 bc), was found in the ʿAttarin Mosque in
Alexandria, where it was also used as a tank. McKenzie, Architecture of Alexandria and
Egypt, pp. 258–259.
20 Finbarr Barry Flood, “Image against Nature: Spolia as Apotropaia in Byzantium and the
Dar al-Islam,” in “Mapping the Gaze-Vision and Visuality in Classical Arab Civilisation,”
Special Issue, The Medieval History Journal 9, no. 1 (2006): 143–166.
Between Quarry and Magic 411
Unlike ancient Egyptian stone blocks, columns and capitals from the Greco-
Roman and Byzantine-Coptic heritage were displayed to emphasize the glory
of the early mosques. At the time of the Arab conquest, Alexandria was the
capital of Egypt, and second only to Constantinople as the major city of the
Mediterranean world. The accounts of the conquest refer to the Arabs being
dazzled by the beauty of its architecture and the whiteness of its marble, which
made the city so bright at night it did not need artificial light.21 The Arab con-
querors made use of the city’s riches by appropriating its architecture and also
by melting down its bronze statues for their coinage. The Arab general and first
governor of Egypt, ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAs, favored Alexandria as the capital of Muslim
Egypt for the sake of continuity. However, orders by Caliph ʿUmar in Medina
forced him to abandon this scheme and declare as his new capital the site of
his encampment south of the Nile Delta. This was Fustat, which later became
part of Cairo. In the early centuries of the Islamic period, when all great
mosques had a hypostyle layout, the despoliation of the pagan and Christian
monuments of Alexandria and other cities for their columns took place on a
broad scale. Mosques in Cairo and the province still display to the present day
considerable collections of classical columns and capitals, predominantly of
the Corinthian order.22 The preference for Corinthian capitals was already
apparent in pre-Islamic classical and Christian architecture of Egypt.
The emphasis associated with the use of classical columns is expressed not
only in placing them in focal points in mosques but sometimes also in omit-
ting them there in contrast to the rest of the mosque. As Marianne Barrucand
noted, the most spectacular capitals in the Fatimid Azhar mosque, founded in
the 10th century, are to be seen around the courtyard, whereas the mihrab,
which is the focal point of the mosque, is flanked with plain Islamic capitals.23
Similarly, at the Mu’ayyad mosque (1420) the capitals in front of the mihrab are
plain in contrast to the Corinthian capitals that characterize all other columns
of the sanctuary (Fig. 6). Prominent spots were thus emphasized by making
them stand out in contrast to the rest of the building, through either the pres-
ence or the omission of pre-Islamic capitals. At the mosque of Ibn Tulun,
which was built in the 9th century with piers instead of columns, following a
Fig. 6 The mihrab area of the mosque of Sultan al-Mu’ayyad, featuring plain capitals
(photo by the author).
Mesopotamian prototype, only the prayer niche was adorned with two pairs of
basket-style Byzantine-Coptic columns (Fig. 7). The despoliation of churches
may not have taken place without some reservations; this would explain the
legend that interprets the piers of the mosque of Ibn Tulun as intended by the
architect, who was a Christian, to avoid the plunder of churches.
Barrucand’s interpretation of the capitals of the Azhar mosque as a “new”
type of Islamic Corinthian capitals created in the Fatimid period, needs to be
rectified. The use of Islamic Corinthian capitals goes back to an earlier period,
as is evidenced by the Nilometer, built in the early 9th century. Here, the
engaged columns flanking the niches carved in the stone walls of the shaft (see
Fig. 8), which are obviously contemporaneous with the structure itself, are
crowned with capitals in the Corinthian style echoing the original pre-Islamic
capital of the central column that served as a measure stick. In fact, the tradi-
tion of carving Corinthian capitals seems to have been continuous, as Coptic
church architecture down through the 5th century shows. Coptic architecture,
however, made use of a variety of capitals.24
Fig. 7 The mihrab conch of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun (photo by the author).
Fig. 8 A niche with engaged columns in the Nilometer of Cairo (photo by the author).
As spolia did not suffice to meet serial requirements, medieval Egyptian build-
ers handled the symmetry of their columned halls with a great deal of flexibil-
ity, by combining in the same building columns and capitals of different styles
and sizes. The need to complement a series was particularly problematic
in architectural decoration, where the columns were used to flank niches
and panels and to adorn façades. Whereas marble and other hard stones of
414 behrens-abouseif
Fig. 9 Detail of the minaret of Emir Aqbugha in the Azhar mosque (photo by the author).
Between Quarry and Magic 415
Fig. 10 Engaged columns in the Mosque of Sultan al-Ghawri (photo by the author).
416 behrens-abouseif
Fig. 11 Base of an engaged column in the Mosque of Sultan al-Ghawri (photo by the
author).
great mosque in Cairo (1266–1269).25 A Gothic portal that had been seized
from a church in Acre during the battle that ended the Crusaders’ presence in
Muslim lands was incorporated into the façade of the madrasa of Sultan al-
Nasir Muhammad (1295–1304), in the very heart of the medieval city (Fig. 12).
However, the use of Gothic capitals in Mamluk architecture cannot be always
Fig. 12 Gothic portal in the madrasa of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad (photo by the author).
and only explained with the notion of trophy and political triumph alone. The
Mamluks seem to have valued Crusader architecture, as is attested by the pres-
ence of a “Frankish” or Latin European community of prisoners of war in early
14th-century Cairo.26 This community, which was associated with the building
26 Doris Behrens-Abouseif, “European Arts and Crafts at the Mamluk Court,” Muqarnas 21
(2004): 45–54, esp. 48.
418 behrens-abouseif
craft, enjoyed a privileged status, being allowed to have their own church and
taverns. Their architectural contribution is not documented, but immediately
after the death of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad (d. 1343), who had settled them
there, they were removed from their central location in the city to a marginal
quarter.
The façade and decoration of the religious-funerary complex with hospital
founded by Sultan Qalawun (1284–1285) is strikingly reminiscent of Norman
Sicilian architecture, revealing that European elements were involved in its
design (Fig. 13).27 Such an involvement is not mentioned in any Egyptian
source, although the contribution of Mongol prisoners of war is mentioned.
The silence of the sources regarding European influence suggests that the style
Fig. 13 Façade of the funerary complex of Sultan Qalawun (photo by the author).
27 K.A.C. Creswell, Muslim Architecture of Egypt, vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952–1959,
pp. 198–200. Creswell, who already noticed Western influences on the designed of the
facade, also noted French craftsmanship on a wrought iron grill at the entrance, see p. 191;
Behrens-Abouseif, Cairo of the Mamluks, pp. 135–136.
Between Quarry and Magic 419
of the façade was to be perceived as a novelty rather than as a trophy. The pair
of Gothic-style miniature capitals that adorn a small window on the façade of
the college and hospice founded by Emir Sunqur al-Sa’di in Cairo (1315–1321)
could only have been made especially for this window. However, a pair of
Gothic stone slabs in the portal of the mosque of Sultan Hasan (1256–1262)
built more than 60 years after the fall of the last Crusader bastion (Figs. 14
Fig. 14 Slab of European origin in the portal of the Mosque of Sultan Hasan (right side)
(photo by the author).
420 behrens-abouseif
and 15), could not have been a booty of war, but most likely were taken for
aesthetic reasons from a Christian monument, perhaps in the city of Antioch,
which had remained in ruin since the eviction of the Crusaders a century ear-
lier and which Sultan Hasan eventually included in the endowment of his
mosque, dedicating half the city’s revenue to it.
To the viewer of that time, these Gothic elements may have been equivalent
to the Chinoiseries that can be seen nearby on the same portal, similarly exotic
Fig. 15 Slab of European origin in the Mosque of Sultan Hasan (left side) (photo by the
author).
Between Quarry and Magic 421
Fig. 16 Gothic colonnettes at the mihrab of the Mosque of Sultan Hasan (photo by the
author).
422 behrens-abouseif
28 Jean Sauvaget, La Mosquée omeyyade de Médine. Paris: Vanoest, 1947; K.A.C. Creswell,
Early Muslim Architecture: Umayyads, Early ʿAbbāsids and Ṭūlūnids, vol. 1. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1932–1940, pp. 211–213; K.A.C. Creswell and James Allan, A Short Account
of Early Muslim Architecture. Aldershot: Scolar, 1989, pp. 15–17.
29 On this subject see in particular his Formation of Islamic Art, 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1987.
30 Terry Allen, A Classical Revival in Islamic Architecture. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1986, p. 91.
Between Quarry and Magic 423
Bibliography
31 Hayat Salam-Liebich, The Architecture of the Mamluk City of Tripoli. Cambridge, MA: Aga
Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, 1983, p. 25.
32 Michael Meinecke, “Löwe, Lilie, Adler: Die europäischen Wurzeln der islamischen
Heraldik,” in Das Staunen der Welt: Das Morgenland und Friedrich II (1194–1250), Bilderheft
der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin—Preußicher Kulturbesitz 77–78. Berlin: Gebr. Mann,
1995, pp. 29–32.
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Behrens-Abouseif, Doris, “European Arts and Crafts at the Mamluk Court.” Muqarnas
21 (2004): 45–54.
_____, “The Islamic History of the Lighthouse of Alexandria.” Muqarnas 23 (2006):
1–14.
_____, Cairo of the Mamluks: A History of the Architecture and its Culture. London: I.B.
Tauris, 2007.
Cannyer, Christian, “L’Intérêt pour l’Egypte pharaonique à l’époque fatimide: Etude
sur l’Abrégé des Merveilles (Mukhtasar al-’ajā’ib).” In L’Egypte fatimide. Son art et
son histoire, ed. Marianne Barrucand. Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-
Sorbonne, 1999, pp. 483–496.
Creswell, K.A.C., Early Muslim Architecture: Umayyads, Early ʿAbbāsids and Ṭūlūnids, 2
vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1932–1940.
_____, Muslim Architecture of Egypt, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1952–1959.
Creswell, K.A.C. and James Allan, A Short Account of Early Muslim Architecture.
Aldershot: Scolar, 1989.
de Sacy, Sylvestre, Relation de l’Egypte par Abd-allatif, médecin arabe de Baghdad….
Paris: Imprimerie impériale, chez Dreuttel et Wurtz, 1810.
Description de l’Egypte par les Savants de l’Expedition Française: Etat Moderne, vol. 1.
Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1812.
Evliyā C˛elebi, Seyahatnāmesi, 10 vols, eds. Seyit Ali Kahraman, Yücel Dagli, Robert
Dankoff. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları Ltd, 2007.
Flood, Finbarr Barry, “Image against Nature: Spolia as Apotropaia in Byzantium and
the Dar al-Islam.” In “Mapping the Gaze-Vision and Visuality in Classical Arab
Civilisation.” Special Issue, The Medieval History Journal 9, no. 1 (2006): 143–166.
Fodor, Alexander, “The Origins of the Arabic Legends of the Pyramids,” Acta Orientalia
Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 23, no. 3 (1970): 335–363.
_____, “Haram and Hermes: Origins of the Arabic Word haram meaning pyramid,”
Studia Aegiptica 2 (1976a): 157–167.
_____, “The Metamorphosis of Imhotep: A Study in Islamic Syncretism.” In Akten des
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Gräf, Erwin, Das Pyramidenkapitel in al-Maqrizi’s “Hitat”. Leipzig: G. Kreysing, 1911.
Haarmann, Ulrich, “Evliya Celebis Bericht über die Alertümer von Gize.” Turcica/
Revue d’Etudes Turque, 8, no. 1 (1976): 157–384.
_____, “Die Sphinx: Synkretische Volksreligiosität im späatmittelalterlichen Ägypten.”
Saeculum 29 (1978): 367–384.
_____, “Luxor und Heliopolis: Ein Aufruf zum Denkmalschutz aus dem 13. Jahrhundert
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_____, “Haram.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 13 vols., eds. H.A.R. Gibb et al.
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_____, Das Pyramidenbuch des Abū Gaʿfar al-Idrīsī. Beirut: Frānts Shtāyrir, 1991.
_____, “Medieval Muslim Perceptions of Pharaonic Egypt.” In Ancient Egyptian
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Qāhirah, 1960–1994.
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Kubrā al-Amīrīyah, 1897–1898.
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Maillet, ancien Consul de France au Caire. La Haye: Isaac de Beauregard, 1740.
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Yale University Press, 2007.
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Heraldik.” In Das Staunen der Welt: Das Morgenland und Friedrich II (1194–1250).
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Chapter 13
Apart from Rome itself, few places in the Renaissance world offered such
incredible concentrations of antiquities to attract scores of antiquaries and
artists. Some so favored were Verona, Pozzuoli, and Tivoli on the Italian pen-
insula, Nîmes in France, and the Roman colony of Pula in Venetian Istria. The
Roman antiquities in Pula that were known in the Renaissance—an amphi-
theater, a pair of small, twin temples, an honorific arch, and a theater—still
determine its urban image today. The Arch of the Sergii, an Augustan honorary
arch incorporated into one of Pula’s ancient gates, had a particularly impor-
tant role to play in shaping the triumphal language of Quattrocento Italian
architecture. It was one of the direct models for the first permanent triumphal
entrance of the modern era, the Aragonese arch in Naples (ca. 1446–1458),
followed shortly by the gate of the Arsenale in Venice (1460). What do we
know today about the circumstances and significance of Naples’ “architectural
quotation” of Pula’s arch? What were the vehicles of transmission and the web
of personal relationships that enabled the cultural transfer of that remote
antique model?
The Arch of the Sergii was the subject of Traversari’s (1971) monographic
study, which, summing up previous scholarship, delineated the arch’s main
formal characteristics and listed some of the historical sources that recorded
interest in the antique monument during the early modern period.1 More
recently, Margaret Woodhull has studied the context and meaning of
Salvia Postuma Sergia’s commission of the arch within the Roman colony of
Pula.2 The general resemblance between the honorific arch in Pula and
Alfonso’s arch in Naples has been discussed by various authors, generally as an
argument for the attribution of the latter to either Pietro da Milano or Francesco
Laurana.3 Here in this essay the approach is inverted, as I focus not only on a
close formal comparison of the two monuments but also on a reading of the
Arch of Pula “through the Renaissance lens.”
Pula lies just 1 day of sailing southeast across the Adriatic Sea from the Venetian
lagoon, a distance of about 100 miles (200 kilometers). Pula’s large bay served
as a secure stop for vessels headed for the eastern Mediterranean, and quarries
on the nearby Brioni islands attracted stonemasons from the Veneto and
Lombardy. Under Venetian rule since 1331, the small comune consisted of
approximately 1500 inhabitants during the Quattrocento. Although it was
reduced to some 500 by plague and malaria in the following century, Pula nev-
ertheless continued to function as the see of a podestà and a bishop, both
appointed and confirmed from Venice.4
The arch in Pula features a design that is both very beautiful and very effi-
cient (Fig. 1). It was the only known antique arch in the Renaissance that pairs
a half column and a corner column sharing the same pedestal and flanking a
single vaulted passage, with a corresponding projecting entablature and attic
above the Corinthian capitals. Other Italian Roman single-bay arches with col-
umns on the shared pedestals—namely, the arch of Aosta, the arch of Gavi in
Verona, the arch of Tito in Rome, the arch in Ancona, and the arch in
Benevento—have columns divided by niches or reliefs. Furthermore, the
entablatures of these arches never recede above the archivolt, as the one in
Pula does. Paired engaged columns are a rare composition in Roman architec-
ture, one not sanctioned by Vitruvius.5 The proportional system of the arch
can be inscribed approximately inside a rectangle divided vertically into four
equal parts, with the two outer sections corresponding to the piers and two
inner sections to the fornix. The proportion of the piers to the fornix is 1:2, and
the composition is readable as a tripartite group with the axis of symmetry cor-
responding to the key of the arch, or A B A, where A is a short and B is a large
3 Ennio Concina, L’Arsenale della Repubblica di Venezia. Milano: Electa, 2006, esp. 45–64; Ralf
Lieberman, “Real Architecture, Imaginary History: The Arsenale Gate as Venetian Mythology,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991): 117–126.
4 Egidio Ivetic, La popolazione dell’Istria nell’età moderna. Trieste: Università popolare di
Trieste, 1997, p. 50.
5 The Roman arch of Bara, Spain, built during the time of Augustus, has engaged pilasters, but
the entablature neither projects nor recedes.
428 Gudelj
6 Mark Wilson Jones, Principles of Roman Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000,
p. 118.
7 Traversari, in his L’Arco dei Sergi, proposed a proportional system based on a relationship of
2:1 of the fornix and pylons, however, to analyze the elevation, he used a series of equilateral
The King of Naples Emulates Salvia Postuma? 429
symmetry and proportions of the arch, based on multiples of six of the Roman
foot, render the entire structure clear and legible, while its decoration is rich
and masterfully carved.
The Corinthian order of the arch’s columns is so exemplary that Marquis
Scipione Maffei, writing in 1728, proposed transferring Pula’s monument to
Venice for educational purposes.8 The spandrels are filled with winged victo-
ries holding laurel wreaths. The frieze contains a dedicatory inscription framed
by figures on chariots.9 The projecting parts above the columns are decorated
with garlands supported by erotes and bucrania while armor embellishes the
frieze on the sides of the arch.10 The interiors of the piers are decorated with
reliefs of grape and acanthus tendrils. Rhomboidal panels featuring roses and
marine creatures support the arch soffit, with a large central panel framing an
eagle holding a serpent in its talons. The funerary character of the decorative
program, coupled with inscriptions listing the accomplishments of the men of
gens Sergia, reveal the honorary intention of the patron.
The inscriptions testify that the arch was erected as part of one of Pula’s city
gates by Salvia Postuma Sergia to commemorate three male members of her
family who played prominent roles within the Roman colony. Statues of Salvia
Postuma and her relatives (now lost) stood upon the attic, as is evident from
traces on its surface. The inscriptions do not make clear the relationship of the
commemorated individuals to Salvia Postuma: she was either mother or wife
to the most prominent member of the Sergii family, Lucius Sergius Lepidus Jr.,
an aedile and a military tribune of the 29th legion. The monument, therefore,
may date anywhere from last decades of the 1st century bce to the first half of
the 1st century ce. In any case, it is stylistically linked to the Augustan period.11
triangles, suggesting a system based on √3. This approach was criticized by Mark Wilson
Jones, who argued that it was more probable that Roman architects used arithmetic
rather than complex geometric constructions for the composition of the elevation. See
Wilson Jones, Principles, pp. 126–127.
8 Scipione Maffei, De gli anfiteatri e singolarmente del veronese libri due. Verona: Gio.
Alberto Tumermani, 1728, pp. 318–319.
9 Woodhull identifies these figures as Helios and Selene; Woodhull, “Matronly Patrons,”
p. 84.
10 On the frieze with arms, see Eugenio Polito, Fulgentibus Armis: Introduzione allo studio dei
fregi d’armi antichi. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1998, pp. 146–149.
11 Inscriptions from left to right on the attic read: L(ucius) SERGIUS C(ai) F(ilius) AED(ilis)
IIVIR; SALVIA POSTHVMA SERGII DE SVA PECVUNIA; L(ucius) SERGIUS F(ilius)
LEPIDUS, AED(ilis) TR(ibunus) MIL(itaris) LEG(ionis) XXIX; CN(aeus) SERGIVS C(ai)
F(ilius) AED(ilis) IIVIR QUINQ(enalis). On the frieze: SALVIA POSTHVMA SERGII DE
SVA PECVUNIA (CIL 5.50) The most recent suggestions are those of Woodhull (“Matronly
430 Gudelj
The exceptional location for the family’s honorary arch as a city portal, incor-
porated into the innermost part of a city gate dedicated to Minerva, certainly
emphasized the importance of the gens Sergia for the Roman colony of Pula,
then known as Pietas Iulia Pola, ensuring a sempiternal procession under the
arch. As described by Margaret Woodhull, “the apotheotic iconography func-
tioned kinetically within the monument’s design to activate a theatrical dra-
matization of this event: approaching the arch, the viewer would first see the
portraits; then moving in closer, she would read the inscriptions accrediting
civic and military valor; finally, passing under the arch, she would look up and
note the eagle in the soffit, wings spread, ‘bearing’ the figures just seen on the
arch’s attics heavenwards.”12
The antique function of the arch as the innermost part of Pula’s city gate
was preserved until the demolition of the city walls in the 19th century. The
dwindling size of the town’s population had led to the gradual abandonment
of the eastern part of the Roman town already in late antiquity, resulting in the
closing of the other representative antique gates (Porta Gemina and Porta
Ercole). Porta Rata (the shortened form of Porta Aurata), the name by which
the gate containing the arch of the Sergii is recorded in medieval and early
modern documents, however, remained intact. Given the modest dimensions
of the arch, it is reasonable to think that it maintained its original street level,
as otherwise it would be difficult for vehicles to circulate.
The arch—a provincial family’s emulation of a typology and location nor-
mally reserved for public monuments—gave way to different layers or read-
ings through the centuries. At the local level, the arch continued to be the
monument of the Sergii, emphasized by claims of ancestry from the locopositi
(local officials) of the town’s ruling family of Castropola.13 Also, as the town’s
landmark and most beautiful gate, it was identified with Pula and incorpo-
rated into accounts of its civic history. The family of Castrum Polae, or
Castropola, ruled the town in the 14th century. After a period of civic unrest
resulting in the installation of Venetian power in Pula in 1331, the family was
banned from Istria. They seem to have moved to the town of Treviso in the
mid-15th century, according to documents found by Ennio Concina.14 Pietro
Patrons,” p. 83) who identifies Sergia Postuma as the mother of Lucius Sergius’s son, while
Polito (in Fulgentibus Armis, p. 149) argues that she could also be his wife.
12 Woodhull, “Matronly Patrons,” p. 89.
13 Camillo De Franceschi, “Il comune polese e la Signoria dei Castropola,” Atti e Memorie
della Societa Istriana di Storia Patria 18 (1903): 168–212, 281–361.
14 Ennio Concina, L’Arsenale, p. 51; Venetian State Archive, Avogaria di Comun, Processi per
nobiltà, b. 303/21, Castropola.
The King of Naples Emulates Salvia Postuma? 431
Dragano, who lived in Pula in the late 16th century, discusses Salvia’s commis-
sion in his Dialoghi sopra le antichità di Pola, imagining that the male members
of the Sergii family in ancient times entered the town in triumph, but also con-
firming the belief that they were the ancestors of the Castropola family, “today
in Treviso and Venice, called the Pola family.”15 This “private” reading of the
antique monument was partially confirmed by 15th-century antiquarian inter-
est in the inscriptions, which put the name of the original commissioner back
into circulation. Francesco Scalamonti in his biography of Ciriaco Pizzecoli
d’Ancona, describes the visit of the pioneer of antiquarianism to Pula and the
arch: Et SALVIAE (SALVIE) Postumiae Sergi duoviri (II vir) aedilis clari filiae egre-
gias portas et aedificia pleraque ingentia viderat.16 Scalamonti’s eglogae, which
most probably was based on Ciriaco’s lost writings, quotes inscriptions from
the arch, ensuring that knowledge about the original commissioner would be
disseminated. That he omitted claims of ancestry was only natural, given the
very nature of antiquarian interest and perhaps a certain degree of damnatio
memoriae in relation to the Castropola family.
Other, more scholarly, elements of the Renaissance reading of Pula’s history
are based on its founding myth, already codified in Roman times.17 The mythi-
cal town called Πόλαι (pòlai), mentioned by the Greek poets Callimachus,18
Lycophron,19 and Apollonius of Rhodes in connection with the myth of the
Argonauts, but also with the Theban cycle and the story of the return of
the Achaeans after the fall of Troy, was identified by Roman authors as the
colony Pietas Iulia Pola.20 Pliny the Elder, the ultimate authority for
Renaissance authors, mentions Pula among the oppida (fortified settle-
ments) of Istria as “colonia Pola, quae nunc Pietas Iulia, quondam a Colchis
15 Pietro Kandler, Cenni al forestiero che visita Pola. Trieste: I. Papsch, 1845, pp. 63–64.
16 Jasenka Gudelj, “Pellegrini e scalpellini: Viaggio tra le antichità di Pola nel Rinascimento,”
in La Dalmazia nelle relazioni di viaggiatori e pellegrini da Venezia tra Quattro e Seicento,
ed. Sante Graciotti. Roma: Bardi, 2009, pp. 375–384.
17 For the antique myth of the founding of Pula, see Mate Križman, Antička svjedočanstva o
Istri. Pola: ZN “Žakan Juri”, 1997; C. Voltan, Le fonti letterarie per la storia della Venetia et
Histria, vol. 1: Da Omero a Strabone. Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti,
1989; Vanna Vedaldi Iasbez, La Venetia orientale e l’Histria: Le fonti letterarie greche e latine
fino alla caduta dell’Impero d’Occidente. Roma: Quasar, 1994; Giuseppe Brancale and
Lauro Decarli, Istria: Dialetti e preistoria. Trieste, 1997, pp. 30–32; and Radoslav Katičić,
Illyricum Mythologicum. Zagreb: Antibarbarus, 1995, pp. 80–84.
18 Callimachus, fragment 11 in Strabo, 1, 2, 39, in Križman, Antička svjedočanstva, p. 51.
19 Lycophron, 1016–1026, in Križman, Antička svjedočanstva, p. 51.
20 Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautiche, vol. 4, pp. 507–521, in Križman, Antička svjedočanstva,
p. 51.
432 Gudelj
21 Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historiae, vol. 3, p. 129, accessed February 2010, at http://
penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/3*.html.
22 Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historiae, vol. 3, pp. 127–128, accessed February 2010, at http://
penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/3*.html.
23 “La fu edificata questa Città da i Colchi, che furono ma(n)dati da Oeta a seguitare gli
Argonauti, che co(n)ducevano seco Medea sua figliuola, co i tesori a lui robbati, i quali
(come avanti dissi) ò per paura del Re, ò per straccheza del viaggio non havendo potuto
aggiungere detti Argonauti, quivi si fermarono, et edificarono questa Città, nominandola
così Pola, che significa in lingua greca Città de gli essuli, & ba(n)diti, come dice Callimaco;
ma seco(n)do altri vuol significare, habbiamo fatto assai, cosi ragiona(n)do del viaggio
fatto, & e di quello, che havean da fare, parendo a loro di non piu oltre procedere. Tutti gli
scrittori dicono che la fu edificata da’ detto Colchi. Et perciò ella è molto antica.” See Fra
Leandro Alberti, Descrittione di tutta Italia. Bergamo: Leading, 2003, p. 503; “Relazione del
provveditore Marino Malipiero,” in Notizie storiche di Pola. Parenzo: Tipografia Gaetano
Coana, 1876, p. 311; and Kandler, Cenni al forestiero, p. 62.
24 Kandler, Cenni al forestiero, p. 74.
The King of Naples Emulates Salvia Postuma? 433
spread around the Mediterranean region that Pula was the first stop on the
rotta di Levante, the maritime route from Venice toward the East. There is no
mention of monuments honoring a local family in the diaries of pilgrims stop-
ping in Pula on their way to the Holy Land of, whose private commentary on
this city included only Roman emperors, Attila, and even Nibelung heroes as
builders of the noteworthy monuments in town.25 On a more material level,
the quality of Istrian stone brought carvers and masons from the northern
Adriatic, especially Venice, ensuring that the forms of Pula’s monuments would
circulate among masters of the trade.
The great marble entrance erected between 1446 and 1458 in Naples’s 13th-
century Castel Nuovo (also called Maschio Angioino) was the apotheosis of
the program of fortress renovation and monumentalization begun by Alfonso
I of Naples and continued by his son Ferrante (Ferdinand I; Fig. 2).26 It was also
a permanent record of the new king’s triumphal entry into Naples in 1443 and
the installation of a new dynasty on the Neapolitan throne. The entrance thus
clearly bore the imperial connotations defined by contemporaries as an
all’antica triumphal arch.27
The “Arco di Alfonso” is a tall, white marble structure inserted between two
circular towers on the side of the fortress that overlooks the port and the city.
The lower register consists of an arch with paired columns flanking the open-
ing, surmounted by a sculpted frieze immortalizing Alfonso’s 1443 triumphal
entry into Naples. Above the frieze is a second, somewhat lower arch with
paired columns, topped by four niches containing statues and a curved front
with figures of Abundance. The upper part was built during Alfonso’s second
campaign on the Apennine peninsula (ca. 1465–1471) by Ferrante, who also
inserted an inner arch facing the fortress’s courtyard.
Wilhelm Rolfs, writing in 1907 (and later Roberto Filangeri, in 1937) recog-
nized the Arch of the Sergii as the model for the lower register of the Aragonese
monument, a fact generally accepted by modern scholars.28 Comparison
reveals that the distinctive theme of the Istrian monument—paired engaged
columns flanking the fornix—has been transformed into freestanding col-
umns, while the Corinthian capitals are almost identical (Figs. 3 and 4). The
Neapolitan columns rest on tall pedestals, horizontally divided into several
registers of reliefs. The entablature is very similar, with a three-part architrave
and a taller frieze bearing the inscription ALFONSUS REX HISPANUS SICULUS
ITALICUS/PIUS CLEMENS INVICTUS in its central part. The Renaissance cor-
nice is richer and more plastically accentuated, but generally corresponds to
the ancient one. The fornix in Naples is lowered to allow for large heraldic grif-
fons holding cornucopias emerging from the Aragon coat of arms that con-
nects the keystone of the arch and the entablature. The moldings of the
pedestals continue inside the fornix; as in Pula, however, with the lowering of
the imposts, correspondence to the column bases is lost, hence the accent on
the molding dividing the pedestals into two zones. This is an interesting inter-
mediate solution of the arch framed by columns bearing the entablature com-
position: in Pula the molding inside the piers corresponds to those on the front
elevation, integrating the fornix and its decoration into the whole design,
while, for example, the Arch of Trajan in Benevento or the Arsenale gate in
Venice have continuous arch jambs, conceived as separate elements.
A comparison of the proportional system of the Aragonese arch in Naples to
the ancient Arch of the Sergii in Pula is even more telling, given the necessary
adjustments for the far taller structure on a different scale and the simplified
relationship between the width and height of the arch. The width of Alfonso’s
arch is determined by the distance between the two towers, and, as in Pula, the
fornix span equals the double width of a single pier. The width of a pier in
Naples becomes a module for the elevation, which is repeated six times, thus
28 Wilhelm Rolfs, Franz Laurana. Berlin: R. Bong Kunstverlag, 1907; Roberto Filangeri di
Candia, Castel nuovo: Reggia angioina ed aragonese di Napoli. Naples: Editrice Politecnica,
1937, p. 323.
436 Gudelj
forming a rectangle of four modules in width and six in height. In Pula, the
height is also determined by a multiplication of the number six, but it is a mul-
tiplication of six Roman feet (common in Roman architecture). In both cases,
the height of the fornix equals the height of the columns with the entablature.
The Renaissance columns maintain the canonical proportion of the antique
model, where the shaft height is five-sixths that of the column.
The sculptural decoration also presents similarities that confirm the rela-
tion between the two distant monuments. The frieze above the left pair of col-
umns in Naples literally repeats the motif of the dancing putti holding garlands
in the Istrian arch.29 Flanking the inscription in the angles of the central part
of the frieze, the two chariots with horses are also repeated, which corresponds
with the representation of Alfonso in a triumphal chariot on the relief sur-
mounting the arch, and with the idea of triumph in general. Even the frontal
part of the jambs below the arch imposts represents the delicate decorative
tendrils of the antique model.
As mentioned above, the beautiful white stone gate of the Arch of the Sergii
leads to the imperial palace (i.e. ancient theater) on Monte Zaro just outside
the town, a location clearly comparable to the Neapolitan one. This passage
under Pula’s arch on the way to the palace was also a passage through a
sequence of spaces that formed the town’s fortified gate flanked by towers.
This is also the case in Naples. The kinetic element of Alfonso’s triumph and
apotheosis functioned in exactly the same manner as in Pula.
The refined and conscious imitatio of the Istrian model in Alfonso’s arch has
usually been attributed to its being familiar to two of the artists invited to
court by the Aragonese king—Onofrio della Cava and Pietro da Milano, both
of whom had worked in Dalmatia—a theory reinforced by the appearance in
Naples of an artist of actual Dalmatian origin, Francesco Laurana from Zadar.30
Simple geography, however, disproves the theory. Onofrio della Cava and
Pietro da Milano had worked in Dubrovnik (It. Ragusa; Lat. Ragusium), a mari-
time republic 420 miles (675 kilometers) south of Pula. Therefore, the possibil-
ity that they knew Pula’s monuments firsthand is rather slim. The same can be
29 Hanno Walter Kruft, “Francisco Laurana: Beginnings in Naples,” Burlington Magazine 116
(January 1974): 9–14; Hanno Walter Kruft, Francesco Laurana, trans. Ivana Prijatelj-Pavičić.
Zagreb: Laurana, 2006, p. 39 (n. 18); Beyer, “Napoli,” p. 438.
30 Hersey, The Aragonese Arch at Naples; Clarke, Roman House—Renaissance Palaces, p. 83.
Janez Höfler identifies Francesco Laurana with Francesco di Matteo da Zara, who is men-
tioned in Libro delle spese di Maso di Bartolomeo, and who arrived in Urbino from Rome
to work with Maso. See Janez Höfler, “Maso di Bartolomeo und sein Kreis,” Mitteilungen
des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 32 (1988): 540, and Janez Höfler, Der Palazzo
438 Gudelj
Ducale in Urbino unter den Montefeltro (1376–1508). Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2004,
p. 76. This hypothesis is also cited in Renata Novak-Klemenčić’s entry “Laurana” in the
Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 64. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana
2005, pp. 55–56 (and on the Web at http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/francesco-
laurana_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/), in which Novak-Klemenčić defers the possibil-
ity of Laurana’s direct knowledge of Pula’s arch. There is also no evidence to support
Kruft’s theory that Laurana had been in Dubrovnik. See Igor Fisković, “Les arts figuratifs
de la Renaissance en Croatie,” in La Renaissance en Croatie, exh. cat., eds. Alain Erlande-
Brandenburg and Miljenko Jurković. Chateau d’Ecouen: Réunion des musées nationaux,
2004, p. 161, and Novak-Klemenčić, “Laurana.” Moreover, Kruft’s idea that Pietro traveled
to Pula specifically to gather motifs for the Neapolitan monument remains difficult to
defend, as there is no evidence whatsoever of such an enterprise; see Kruft, “Francisco
Laurana: Beginnings in Naples,” pp. 9–14, and Kruft, Francesco Laurana, p. 39 (n. 18).
31 Clarke, Roman House—Renaissance Palaces, pp. 80–82.
32 Beyer, “Napoli,” and Beyer, Parthenope.
The King of Naples Emulates Salvia Postuma? 439
The mythical Greek foundation of both Pula and Naples can be traced
solely to the writings of Pliny the Elder, and the triumphal entry of Alfonso
of Aragon into Naples was staged in a town of Greek origin, or, as Pliny
had called it, Neapolis Chalcidensium.33 That said, a far more plausible
explanation for the new Neapolitan king’s choice of the remote model of the
Arch of the Sergii is found with the mythical second founder of Pula: Julius
Caesar.
An actor dressed as Julius Caesar greeted Alfonso from an allegorical car-
riage of the Florentine republic during the 1443 festivities, calling him Eccelso
Re and Cesare novello.34 Antonio Beccadelli (called il Panormita), in his De
Dictis et Factis Alfonsi Regis Aragonum et Neapolis (1538), wrote that Alfonso
brought Cesar’s Commentaria with him on every expedition, and that he highly
valued the Roman ruler’s humanistic and military interests.35 It was only to be
expected that Alfonso, when he erected his own arch, would evoke Gaius
Julius Caesar, who, according to Tranquillus Suetonius’s Life of the Caesars,
had celebrated five triumphs. The only problem was that the actual ancient
arch clearly attributed to the most important ruler of the Roman past was
unknown in the Renaissance.36 In 1436, Ciriaco d’Ancona wrote a letter known
as Caesarea Laus to Leonardo Bruni, expressing his opinion regarding the
famous discussion between Poggio Bracciolini and Guarino Veronese on the
merits of Scipion Africanus and Julius Caesar.37 Ciriaco, as Schadee’s recent
analysis makes clear, praised Julius Caesar’s founding of the Roman Empire as
an expression of God’s will, a concept that was certainly dear to Alfonso, the
pious founder of the new dynasty.38
33 Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, book 3, p. 62, accessed February 2010, at http://
penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/3*.html.
34 Philine Helas, “Alphonisis Regis Triumphus un die florentinische Selsbs-Inszenierung
anläßlich des Einzuges von Alfonso d’Aragona in Neapel 1443,” Fifteenth Century Studies
26 (2001): 86–101.
35 Antonio Beccadelli, De Dictis et Factis Alphonsi Regis Aragonum, book 4. Basel: ex officina
Hervagiana, 1538, p. 39.
36 C. Suetonius Tranquillus, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars: The Life of Julius Caesar, p. 37 at
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6400/6400-h/6400-h.htm.
37 Hester Schadee, “Cesarea Laus: Ciriaco d’Ancona Praising Caesar to Leonardo Bruni,”
Renaissance Studies 22, no. 4 (2008): 435–449.
38 Schadee, “Cesarea Laus,” p. 444. It is in this letter that Ciriaco also mentions Georgius
Begna, a humanist from Zadar with whom he examined bas-reliefs of tritons on Melia
Anania’s arch in Zadar and who copied Ciriaco’s collection of inscriptions, including
those from Pula.
440 Gudelj
39 Beccadelli, De dictis, p. 39, and G.F. Hill, “Classical Influence on the Italian Medal,” The
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 18, no. 95 (February 1911): 260.
40 I would like to thank Prof. Ian Campbell for his suggestion to consider Bar Kokhba coins
in relation to the arch in Pula.
41 Hill, “Classical Influence,” pp. 259–263, 266–268.
42 For Pula as the model of the Hampton Court Triumphs, see Andrew Martindale, The
Triumphs of Caesar. London: Harvey Miller, 1979, Appendix I, pp. 172–74; Claudia Cieri Via,
“L’antico in Andrea Mantegna fra storia e allegoria,” in Piranesi e la cultura antiquaria: Gli
antecedenti e il contesto. Roma: Multigrafica, 1983, p. 128; and C.L. Frommel, “Alberti e la
porta trionfale,” p. 18 (n. 32).
43 For Pula as a model, see Anna Maria Tamassia, “Jacopo Bellini i Francesco Schiavone: Due
cultori dell’antichità classica,” in Il mondo antico nel Rinascimento. Firenze: G.C. Sansoni,
1958, pp. 159–165; Patricia Fortini Brown, “The Antiquarianism of Jacopo Bellini,” Artibus
et historiae 26, no. 13 (1992): 65–84; and Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, pp. 117–141.
The King of Naples Emulates Salvia Postuma? 441
Fig. 5 Jacopo Bellini, Christ before Pilatus Musée de Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins (R.F.
1503/39), f. 35.
The inscriptions on the Neapolitan arch echo those on the arch in Pula. As
Alfonso specified, it was he who, like Salvia Postuma, “HANC CONDIDIT
ARCEM” (the same verb was used by Pliny in his description of the arch in
Pula). The second inscription (“ALFONSUS REX HISPANUS SICULUS
ITALICUS/PIUS CLEMENS INVICTUS”), on the frieze below, which describes
442 Gudelj
44 Antonio Panormita, Hermaphroditus, trans. and ed. Eugene O’Connor. Lanham: Lexington
Books, 2001, pp. 13, 51.
45 Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans, inv. I. 527.
46 Di Battista, “La porta e l’arco di Castelnuovo di Napoli,” pp. 15–16.
47 Dragutin Nežić, “Istarski sveci,” in Leksikon ikonografije, liturgike simbolike zapadnog
kršćanstva. Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost, 1990, p. 270.
The King of Naples Emulates Salvia Postuma? 443
Fig. 6 Pisanello (?), drawing of the Arch of Castel Nuovo in Naples, Museum Boijmans,
Rotterdam, inv. I. 527.
444 Gudelj
Fig. 7 Triumphal arch, Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Ms. alfa L. 5. 15 = Lat. 992,
28v.
48 Fortini Brown, “The Antiquarianism of Jacopo Bellini,” pp. 65–84 and Fortini Brown,
Venice and Antiquity, pp. 117–141; Sarah Cartwright, “The Collectio Antiquitatum of
Giovanni Marcanova (Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Ms. alfa L. 5. 15 = Lat.
992) and the Quattrocento Antiquarian Sylloge,” Ph.D. diss., Institute of Fine Arts
New York University, 2007, pp. 72–85.
The King of Naples Emulates Salvia Postuma? 445
Fig. 8 Triumph, Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Ms. alfa L. 5. 15 = Lat. 992, 33r.
“arcus triumphalis” on folio 33r of the Modena manuscript has fluted columns
wrapped in spiraling garlands. Depicted as temporary decoration added for
the event, the garlands could be related to the twisted columns in the
Rotterdam drawing, which also recalls the twisted columns of Tino di
Camaino’s 14th-century tomb of Catherine of Austria in the Neapolitan church
of San Lorenzo Maggiore. Twisted columns atop bases that resemble reversed
capitals appear in one of the drawings in the Modena manuscript representing
the Baths of Diocletian (folio 35r). Each artist interpreted a common model
according to the task at hand, merging antique and medieval visual elements
just as all’antica and Christian readings were combining to form the iconogra-
phy of the Pula arch, which was undergoing its Renaissance redefinition far
away in both time and space from the original model.
Given the number of drawings inspired by the Pula arch that share certain
common features but do not seem to depend on each other, one can assume
that they all derived from a single drawing of the monument, which was more
“archaeological” and therefore closer to the ancient model in modern terms.
While it is impossible to completely reconstruct the prototype drawing from
its later artistic interpretations, it must have been one of the elevations of
Pula’s arch suggesting the freestanding paired columns flanking the arched
entrance, with the entablature recessed above the arch. The decorative ele-
ments and motifs shared by the various subsequent drawings could have been
drawn separately, as blown-up details.
The lost “archaeological” drawing, or a very faithful copy of it, was certainly
utilized in the elaboration of the project for Alfonso’s arch in Naples. Relying
upon the ancient monuments of Naples and its surroundings as visual support,
the master builders—who were familiar with techniques that had survived
through the Middle Ages—were able to re-create an all’antica arch that had
traveled across the Adriatic. To create a structure similar to the ancient model,
all that was needed was an indication accompanying the drawing that the
structure corresponded to height of the pedestal multiplied by six, and that the
fornix was twice as wide as the pier. The patron’s determination to create an
all’antica arch impelled the artists to be guided by the form of the antique
monument within the building program.
Through space and time, the distance between Pula and Naples might have
obfuscated layers of meanings, leaving the aforementioned web of cultural
transfers hidden. One aspect of this has been overlooked up until now in the
The King of Naples Emulates Salvia Postuma? 447
49 Francesco Scalamonti, Vita Viri Clarissimi et Famosissimi Kyriaci Anconitani, eds. and
trans. Charles Mitchell and Edward Bodnar. Philadelphia: American Philosophical
Society, 1996, p. 46. On Ciriaco and the ancient arches, see Jasenka Gudelj, “The Triumph
and the Threshold: Ciriaco d’Ancona and the Renaissance Discovery of the Ancient Arch,”
Città & Storia (forthcoming, 2013).
50 Scalamonti, Vita Viri, p. 41.
51 Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria Ms. alfa L. 5. 15 = Lat. 992.
52 Scalamonti, Vita Viri, p. 143.
53 Ibid., pp. 243–244.
54 What is left of the arch survives as part of the city gate, where it was moved in the 16th
century; see Ivo Babić, “Antičke starine u srednjevjekovnom Zadru,” in Renesansa i
448 Gudelj
humanist Porcellio Pandoni of his friend from Ancona, who was also present in
Ferrara when a pedestal for an equestrian monument to Niccolò III d’Este
called the Arco del Cavallo was erected.55 Ciriaco d’Ancona must have been a
major connoisseur of this particular building type during the first half of the
15th century, able to decipher or suggest the meaning and patron of particular
antique arches.
The ideas that Ciriaco transmitted about antiquity were used by Onofrio de
la Cava and Pietro da Milano, the two artists responsible for Alfonso’s arch.56
Onofrio, an engineer and specialist in hydraulics from the Campanian town of
Cava dei Tirreni, worked in Dubrovnik from 1437 until his return to Naples in
1443.57 Within the little maritime republic, he was responsible for the realiza-
tion of the public aqueduct and two fountains,58 but his major architectural
work was the project for the reconstruction of the Rectors’ palace.59 His closest
collaborator in Dubrovnik, Pietro di Martino da Milano, began working on the
Castel Nuovo after Alfonso made a request to the Dubrovnik Senate in 1452.
Pietro had been active in the Adriatic town at least from 1432, and it was cer-
tainly due to his former collaborator, Onofrio della Cava, that he was invited to
work in Naples.60 Nada Grujić’s recent analysis of the rebuilding of the Rectors’
renesanse u umjetnosti Hrvatske, eds. Jasenka Gudelj and Predrag Marković. Zagreb:
Institut za povijest umjetnosti, 2008, p. 429, and Gianfranco Paci, “Ciriaco d’Ancona e la
scoperta dell’antichita in area adriatica,” in Ciriaco d’Ancona e il suo tempo. Ancona:
Canonici, 2002, p. 129.
55 Ciriaco Pizzicoli. Kyriaci Anconitani Itinerarum, ed. Lorenzo Melhus. Bologna: Forni, 1969,
pp. 14–15. See also Patrizia Bossi, “L’Itinerarium di Ciriaco Anconetano,” in Ciriaco
d’Ancona e il suo tempo, p. 177.
56 Ciriaco was well connected to local humanist circles: he greeted Marino di Michele de’
Resti (Marin Restić), an envoy and humanist from Dubrovnik, during his 1440 Anconetan
mission with a classical Latin lauda that survives under the name Anconitana illiyricaque
laus et Anconitanorum Raguseorum foedus.
57 On Onofrio, see Adriano Ghisetti Giavarna, “Onofrio di Giordano,” in Gli ultimi indipen-
denti: Architetti del gotico nel Mediterraneo tra XV e XVI secolo, eds. Emanuela Garofalo
and Marco Rosario Nobile. Palermo: Caracol, 2007, pp. 45–52, where Onofrio’s role is
reduced to engineer and entrepreneur.
58 Renata Novak Klemenčič, “Dubrovniška Velika fontana,” in Zbornik za umetnostno zgodo-
vino 39 (2003): 57–91, and Relja Seferović and Mara Stojan, “The Miracle of Water:
Prologomena to the Early Renaissance Aqueduct of Dubrovnik,” Anali HAZU u Dubrovniku
11 (2007): 49–84.
59 Nada Grujić, “Palais des Recteurs, Dubrovnik,” in La Renaissance en Croatie, pp. 227–229;
Nada Grujić, “Onofrio di Giordano della Cava i Knežev dvor u Dubrovniku,” in Renesansa
i renesanse u umjetnosti Hrvatske, pp. 9–50.
60 Fisković, “Les arts figuratifs,” p. 159.
The King of Naples Emulates Salvia Postuma? 449
palace after the fire of 1435 reveals the means of communication between
patrons and master builders and the organization of the building site, as well
as important typological and stylistic innovations introduced by Onofrio’s
project.61 In 1439, Onofrio de la Cava, in the role of official architect of the
Republic of Dubrovnik, presented a wooden model for the palace, which was
referred to throughout the building process. Documents describing the tasks
of local stonecutters reveal the existence of a series of drawings describing the
more complex elements (windows, balconies) that supplemented the model.
Onofrio is regularly quoted as the designer and master builder, responsible for
managing the site, while Pietro da Milano is noted as second in command,
responsible for the design of certain decorative pieces but also for the actual
carving of more complex elements, such as biforas and quadriforas (two-light
and four-light windows) and a large staircase. The palace designed by Onofrio
was a rectangular building with a central courtyard surrounded by L-shaped
portico, while its main façade was organized on a tripartite principle, with a
round-arched portico on the ground floor. Large pilasters and their classical
bases belonging to the same phase indicate Onofrio’s familiarity with Roman
architecture. The capital with the carved figure of Esculapius by Pietro di
Martino eloquently connects the site of power with the reconstruction of the
foundation myth of Dubrovnik, which identified with Epidaurus, the ancient
doctor’s legendary place of origin.62 More classical references are found in
Onofrio’s slightly earlier project for the Dubrovnik aqueduct and its fountains:
the large fountain is a centrally planned domed structure, ornamented with
freestanding columns, and the polygonal basin of the small one is decorated
with putti (Fig. 9). The aqueduct, almost 8 miles long (12 kilometers), with its
well-conceived covered canals and reservoirs, resembles structures described
by Vitruvius, again suggesting Onofrio’s involvement in the transmission of the
knowledge, which in this case involved ancient hydraulics.63 On both the pal-
ace and the large fountain inscriptions in a classical style publicly and elo-
quently defined the town as “Epidaurea Ragusea,” governed as virtuously as a
Roman republic, while Onofrio is identified as ARCHITECTO MVNICIPES
PARTHENOPEO, his name spelled in roman capital letters (Fig. 10). The text of
the inscriptions was composed by Ciriaco during his stay in Dubrovnik in the
winter of 1443–1444 and paid for by the Dubrovnik Senate, while the actual
Fig. 10 Inscription honoring Onofrio de la Cava, large fountain, Dubrovnik (photo by the
author).
plaques were installed in 1446 with certain changes, including the allusion to
the author’s name on the second one.
It is difficult to establish if Ciriaco d’Ancona met Onofrio in Dubrovnik,
since the Neapolitan master left Dubrovnik sometime in 1443, and the Ragusan
The King of Naples Emulates Salvia Postuma? 451
Senate pleaded with Alfonso without success for his return in 1454 and 1455.64
There is, however, a later inscription composed by Ciriaco and held by the
angelic figure of Sacra mens (sacred reason) in the courtyard of the Rectors’
palace, documenting a close collaboration between Ciriaco and Pietro, as it
was the latter who sculpted the figure based on the idea (but not the form)
introduced by the former.65 Although Pietro is considered to have been mainly
a sculptor, his tasks in Dubrovnik reveal a certain degree of architectural
knowledge: he designed some of the complex architectural elements for the
Rectors’ palace and covered the dome on Onofrio’s large fountain with stone
slabs from 1444 to 1446.66 One could argue that Ciriaco’s interests in antiquity
were complementary to those of Onofrio della Cava, whose architectural and
technical skills were deeply influenced by the southern Italian tradition of
building based on antique methods which local artists found agreeable, given
the continuity of using ancient materials and techniques along the eastern
Adriatic coast. In his works in Dubrovnik, Pietro di Martino was clearly draw-
ing on both Ciriaco’s “revival of antiquity” and Onofrio’s “tradition of antiq-
uity,” blending them into his Lombard training.
As mentioned earlier, Ciriaco cultivated strong connections with the
humanists at Alfonso’s court such as Panormita and Pontano, as well as with
those in the Paduan circle. Panormita was educated in the Paduan school of
Gasparino Barzizza (among other places), where he met Leon Battista Alberti.
The epitaph Panormita dedicated to Ciriaco’s mother testifies to a close per-
sonal relationship between the two humanists.67 Pontano’s Latin oration,
delivered in Padua immediately after the death of the condottiere Erasmo da
Narni il Gattamelata in 1443, was later inscribed on Gattamelata’s tomb inside
the Santo. The inscription embodied the praxis of collaboration between
humanist and artist that would later be applied in Dubrovnik.68
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Index
66, 68–72, 72n26, 74n31, 75, Francisco de Sibinico 287 Gilio (da Fabriano), Giovanni
76, 76n36, 77, 345, 345n53, Francis I 343, 363 Andrea 206
348n58, 351, 351n62, 352, Franks, the 61, 69, 72, Gilles, Pierre 350n60, 357,
373, 374n95, 410 73, 76 357n69, 359n73, 363,
Franz Josef, Emperor 25 364n81
Fabri (Schmid), Felix 294, Frederic II 173 Ginetti, Giovanni Francesco
295 Frederick II 249–251 (Cardinal) 257
Fano, arch of Augustus 447 Frederick II Gingibei 192
Farlati, Daniele 98, 108 Hohenstaufen 438 Giorgi (Đurđević) 277
Fatimid fortifications of Frederick III Habsburg 442 Giovanni Vavassore
Cairo 405 Fustat [Egyptian capital] 404, Andrea 192–193
Feliciano, Felice 128, 405, 411 Giovanni da Padova 130
128n34, 130–133, 130n40, Giovannino, Michele
131n41–43, 132n46 Galata (or Pera) 321, di 276
Fermo 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 339n38 Giustiniani, Andreolo 132
255–263, 256n20, 257, Galerius, Emperor of Giza 404
257n26, 259n33 Rome 90 Goa 145
Ferrante of Aragon Gallia et Hispania 90 Golden Gate 92, 104.
(Ferdinand I, son of Gallipoli 171 See also Porta Aurea
Alfonso V) 433, 435 Garbo, Sultanate of 281, 282 Gondola (Gundulić) 277
Ferrara 116, 448 Garda Lake 130, 132, Gonzaga, family 130, 136
Arco di cavallo 448 133, 138 Gonzaga, Federico 136
Fez 173, 173n35 Gataldis, Galganus de 277 Gonzaga, Francesco 136
Filangeri di Candia, Gattamelata, Erasmo da Gonzaga, Ludovico II 133,
Roberto 435 Narni il 451 135, 136
Filarete (Antonio Gaul 89 Gozze (Gućetić) 277
Averlino) 168, 170 Gazi Hüsrev Beg 344, Gozze, Georgius 296
Filippo, Dominico di 272 348n58 Gozze, Vladislav 292
Fischer von Erlach, Genoa 213, 216, 218, 219, Grand Council, the
Johann Bernhard 94–95, 221, 221n25, 224, 226, [Dubrovnik] 283n39,
109, 110 234, 242 287n53, 289, 291, 296
Fisković, Cvito 299n82 Genova 161n17. See also Grazzini, Nello 135
Fisković, Igor 305 Genoa Great Mosque of
Flavius Josephus 123, 124, Gentile Bellini 68, 203–205, Damascus 422
134 203n67 Greco-Roman 314, 352
Antiquitates gentis Croaticae 320 Greco-Venetian 341
Judaicae 123 George of Šibenik (Giorgio Greenhalgh, Michael 359n71,
Florence 161, 163, 447 da Sebenico). See Juraj 360, 363n80, 365n84
fondaco 339, 339n38 Dalmatinac Grgur 54
Fondaco dei Turchi (in Germanicus 249 Gruž 270, 296
Venice) 61 al-Ghawri, Sultan, mosque Grujić, Nada 448,
Fortis, Alberto 11, 11n15, 12, of 415, 417 448n59
105, 107, 158, 158n11, 171 Ghiberti, Lorenzo 199 Guarini, Battista 130
Fra Carnevale 170, 173, 177 Ghiselin de Busbecq, Guarini, Guarino
Francesc Eiximenis 201 Ogier 321, 321n14 Veronese 439
Francesco di Giorgio Gibbon, Edward 81, Guarino Veronese 129, 130
Martini 168, 170, 174, 187, 103–106, 108, 109 Gubbio 166
187n10, 189 Gigantomachy 241 Gwilt, Joseph 79–80, 108
462 index
Uskok corsairs, pirates 65, 122–129, 122n, 125n26, Wickhoff, Franz 22, 36, 37,
73, 74, 320n10, 344, 129n35 42, 54
344n50, 345n52, 347, vilāyet 318, 344 Williams Lehmann,
347n56 Višegrad 328n25, 328 Phyllis 30, 127,
Üsküdar mosque Vitruvius, Marcus Pollio 80, 127n29
complex 322 85, 89, 98, 104–106, 109, Winckelmann, Johann
153, 153n5, 339, 427 Joachim 106, 110
Valley of the Kings 402 Vlachs (Morlacchi) 67 Woodhouselee, Alexander
Valturio, Roberto 127 Voje, Ignacij 277, 283n41 Fraser Tytler, Lord 90,
Van 332 Vojnović, Lujo 270 90n23, 99n41, 110
Vasari, Giorgio 14, 160 Volcio (Volčić), Andrea 283 Woodhull, Margaret 426,
Venetian Empire 313 Volcio (Volčić), Iuan 277, 430
Venetian Republic 318, 353 283 Wood, Robert 99
Veneto 129, 427 Vrana 322, 323n16, 330n29
Venice 4, 11, 12, 21, 156, 160, Vrančić, Antun 319, 319n8, “Yanvan, the Latin
160n16, 163, 163n19, 320 chronicler” 64
165–168, 166n25, 167n27, Vrelo 289
168n29, 171, 173n35, 175, Vrijesna glavica 289 Zachariadou,
239, 429, 431, 433, 435 Vrnik 396 Elizabeth 340, 341n41
gate of the Arsenale/ Vukčić-Kosača, Duke Zadar (Zara) 11, 30, 31, 43,
Arsenale gate 426, Stjepan 286, 320 45, 56, 61–63, 72–75, 160,
435 172, 174, 271n8, 272, 278,
Ventimiglia 165 Wailly, Charles de 88 280, 284n44, 319, 342, 345,
Ventura da, Almerico 166 al-Walid I 422 373, 447
Vernon, Francis 92–93, 108 Wallenstein 249, 250 Arch of Melia
Verona 119, 128, 447 Wanstead House, Essex 100 Anania 447
Arch of Gavii 427 waqf 322n15, 330n29 and Monastery of Saint
rosso di Verona 160, 163 n30, 330, 333n31, 338n37, Grisogonus 447
San Zeno 119, 120n9, 338 Zara. See Zadar
124, 130 waqfiyya 20, 322n15, 323, Zay, Franz 319, 319n8, 320
Veronese, Paolo 167, 173 326n19 Zecca 160
Via Appia, the 340 Warner, Richard 83, Zelić, Danko 305
Via Egnatia 333, 333n32, 83n12, 110 Zeno, Caterino 325
340, 341, 343, 369 Weiss, Roberto 357n69, Zeno, Pietro 134
Viaggio in Dalmazia 158, 358, 358n71 Zeri, Federico 166, 171
158n11 western Balkan Zeus 241
Vickers, Michael 8, 115, 116, peninsula 90 Zoppo, Marco 131
116n6, 118–120, 118n6, Wheler, George 93–95, 110 Župa 277, 297