Bramante's Hetruscan Tempietto

Author(s): Ingrid Rowland

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 51/52 (2006/2007), pp. 225-238
Published by: University of Michigan Press for the American Academy in Rome
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 BRAMANTFS HETRUSCAN TEMPIETTO

IngridRowland, Notre Dame University

Shortly before the year 1502, Their Most Catholic Majesties, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella
of Castile, decided to commission a new shrine inRome , through the agency of theirpowerful
Roman representative Cardinal Bernardino Carvajal. They meant for this shrine to be setwithin
the cloisters of the Spanish Franciscan complex of San Pietro inMontorio. Strikingly situated on
the green slopes of theJaniculum hill, San Pietro inMontorio had become one of fifteenth-century
Rome's most attractive landmarks, reached by the graceful new Ponte Sisto, the bridge opened by
Pope Sixtus IV in 1474.1 Now, under the papacy of a Spaniard, Alexander VI Borgia, Ferdinand
and Isabella had all themore reason tomake their own contribution to the Spanish monastery.
The attractions of San Pietro inMontorio's site,moreover, went well beyond its splendid view
of Rome. According to what is now assumed to be a longstanding Roman tradition, theM?ns
Aureus, the "golden mountain" (so named for its yellow volcanic rock) was the very place of St.
Peter's crucifixion. As it turns out, however, the tradition is a relatively new one, firstpresented in
an essay by the humanist Maffeo Vegio in themid-fifteenth century.
Christian tradition nurtured no doubts about the time and general place of St. Peter's death. He
had been crucified inRome, by order of the emperor Nero, who pinned blame for the catastrophic
fire of A.D. 64 on a new religious group, the followers of "Chrestos," as theRoman historian Tacitus
calls them.Nero himself famously pulled out his lyre to sing about the sack of Troy as the cityblazed
around him and declared threedays of ceremonial games when he claimed to have found the culprits
who reduced ten of the city's fourteen regions to smoldering ruin. To accommodate the festival's
chariot races, he refurbished a circus built by the emperor Caligula into the hill known as theM?ns
Vaticanus, and there, in between gladiatorial combats, beast hunts, and chariot competitions, he
executed Christians by crucifying them in the circus. He crucified some in odd positions; others he
bathed in pitch and ignited as human torches to light the games after sundown. The tradition that
St. Peter had suffered and died among the Christians killed in the Circus ofNero was virtually as
old as Christianity itself.2
Maffeo Vegio, however, had other ideas about the real place of Peter's crucifixion.He based his
argument on a Latin phrase that earlier historians had used to describe it: interduas metas, "between
twometae" a description thatprobably meant "along the spine of theCircus ofNero."
Vegio, how
ever, lived in an era of livelydebate both about theLatin language and about its specific applications
to thehistorical sites ofRome. The meaning of interduas metas, as he well knew,
depended on which

Special thanks to Jack Freiberg and my two anonymous tion to the Tempietto can be found by Stefano Borsi (1989).
readers for supplying valuable information, factual and Bruschi Denker-Nesselrath
1967, 463-527; 1990, 17-19.
bibliographical.
2Fagiolo 1986,202; Borsi 1989, 253.
1
See most recently Freiberg 2005. A good general introduc

MAAR 51/52,2006/2007
226 INGRID ROWLAND

of several possible definitions one gave to theword meta, aword that could signifyseveral different
kinds of objects.3 In antiquity it could refer to all the kinds of uprights studded along the Spinae of
circuses, including obelisks, and it applied as well to freestanding uprights like the fanciful tombs
of the ancient Romans.4 By the fifteenthcentury its applications had extended to include theCastel
Sant'Angelo, to a ruined ancient fountain by theArch of Constantine (theMeta Sudans, or "sweating
met a"), and to the pyramidal tombs erected by two ancient Romans who had once been caught up
in the city's pervasive Egyptomania. One of these tombs, the so-called meta of Romulus, had stood
next to theVatican until itwas demolished in the 1490s tomake room for a boulevard (ironically,
itsdestroyer, the Spanish pope Alexander VI Borgia, was himself a great admirer of ancient Egypt).5
The meta ofRemus still stands today,better known as thePyramid ofGaius Cestius after theRoman
officialwho was buried there in 12 B.c.6The spine of theCircus ofNero must also have been marked
at each end by pillars, metae, and in the center by an immense Egyptian obelisk, the same one that
now marks the center of St. Peter's Square, and this, too, could be considered a meta.
Maffeo Vegio could no longer see themetae that once stood along the spine of the Circus of
Nero; by the fourth century A.D., the ancient racetrack had been incorporated into the foundations
for St. Peter's Basilica. With the exception of theVatican obelisk, all of Rome's Egyptian obelisks
had toppled, and most of them lay buried underground; these metae, too, were largely invisible.
The metae of Romulus and Remus, on the other hand, loomed over theRoman landscape, impres
sive ancient Roman structures that dated, as Vegio and his contemporaries recognized, from nearly
the same era as the Apostles. It is understandable why he might associate St. Peter's crucifixion
interduas metas with these two imposing monuments; theywere the best-known metae infifteenth
century Rome.

A hypothetical line drawn between themetae of Romulus and Remus crosses over the Janicu
lum,Rome's eighth hill,with the line's center pinpointing the site of San Pietro inMontorio. Vegio
therefore proposed that St. Peter might plausibly have been crucified on the Janiculum rather than
theM?ns Vaticanus. Of the two hills, moreover, itboasted a far longer tradition, one that reached
back to the origins of Rome itself.
The Janiculum, like the Vatican, lies across the Tiber from Rome's proverbial Seven Hills,
and in the early days of the Eternal City, that river crossing marked an ethnic as well as a civic
border. Rome, on the river's rightbank, had been settled by Latins and Sabines, who spoke related
languages and shared in a general level of culture. But the land across the riverbelonged until the
a
early fourth century B.c. to theEtruscans, awarlike, highly refined culture with distinct language
and strong connections to theNear East and to Carthage.7 From the late seventh century B.c. until
about 472 B.c., Rome itself was ruled by an a
Etruscan clan, the Tarquins, and pair of Etruscan
warlords: Servius Tullius (Macstrna inEtruscan) and Lars Porsenna. The latter staged his assault
on Rome from the Janiculum hill, the long outcrop just south of theM?ns Vaticanus?indeed,
were Roman place names not so minutely specific, theVatican itselfmight be regarded as a spur
of the Janiculum.8

3 7
Bruschi 1967,467; Borsi 1989,253; Fagiolo 1986,187-209; Holland 1961,232-233.
Fehl 1971.
8
Ancient sources forLars Porsenna's assault on Rome include
4
Fagiolo 1986,202. Livy, Ab urbe condita, 2.9-15, and Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom.
5.21-34, both ofwhich report that theEtruscan warlord was
5 a treaty
See Demus-Quatember 1974 and more recendy Guidoni eventually induced by theRomans' courage tomake
and Petrucci 1997. with them. Tac. Hist. 3.72.1 and Plin. HN34.139 both report
that Porsenna conquered Rome, a conclusion accepted by
6
Bruschi 1967,467, n. 10. modern historians; see Colonna 2001.
 BRAMANTE'SHETRUSCAN TEMPIETTO 227

Though later Roman historians artfully rearranged their archaic past, they always stressed
the Tiber's significance as the borderline of Etruria. The distinction showed, for example, in the
association of the ancient god Janus with the Janiculum hill, and the laterRomans explicitly identi
fied Janus as an Etruscan deity. The double face of Janus featured on Etruscan coins fromVolterra
and Roman coins fromRome, currency common enough to be exported throughout Italy and the
Mediterranean, and to be continually rediscovered by luckyhappenstance bymedieval, Renaissance,
and modern antiquarians.9
Janus, as Roman literaturemakes clear, was the god of doors?an ancient Roman doorman
was a janitor?and more generally of openings and closings?so that themonth of Janus, January,
opened the year.10In theRoman Forum, theTemple of Janus stood with itsdoors wide open except
on the rare occasions when the citywas at peace, a reminder that Janus, themost ancient of the

gods, had presided over aGolden Age of peace and harmony,when gods and mortals lived in peace
with theworld's creatures and with one another, long before that tale of progressive decline known
as history. Janus, for ancient Romans, was a nostalgic god, not least,
perhaps, because a significant
part of their own early history reminded them ofwhat they did to theEtruscans.11
None of our own historical insights, however, go very far toward explaining why a twelfth
century guidebook for pilgrims to Rome, the Graphia aurea urbis Romae, should have reported
that Janus was not simply a pagan god but theHebrew patriarch Noah, who had settled after the
Flood in Italy, choosing the heights of what would become the Janiculum, his own special hill.12
This strange syncretic tradition may reflect the fact that the Etruscans furnished Roman religion
with the equivalent of itsOld Testament; Etruscan ritual books were in use inRome until at least
the fourth century of theChristian era.13Furthermore, ancient tradition, fromHerodotus onward,
held thatEtruria, likeNoah, maintained close contacts with theNear East. There is, then, a kind
of hallucinatory logic to the tale ofNoah-Janus, and local traditionsmay already have developed in
earlyChristian times that connected Etruscan history to biblical history.14Although the reasons for
its invention in theMiddle Ages are now unclear, the tale ofNoah/Janus had created itsown
reality
in the twelfth century, a reality so persuasive that it stillhad its champions in the fifteenth.
The Spaniards who founded San Pietro inMontorio in the 1480s may simply have associated
the Janiculum with Maffeo Vegio's theory about St. Peter's crucifixion between twometae. But the
interventions of Cardinal Carvajal and Ferdinand and Isabella drew additional inspiration from the
revelations about Noah and Janus contained in a recent book, theCommentaria super
Opera Diver
sorumAuctorum de Antiquitatibus Loquentium, or Commentaries on theWorks Divers Authors
of
Who Speak about Antiquities, authored in 1498, by a Dominican friar,Giovanni Nanni ofViterbo,
who published in Latin as Iohannes Annius. For his Commentaries, in
particular, Nanni proudly
added his hometown to his title,becoming Iohannes Annius Viterbiensis; hence
English-speaking
scholars usually refer to him as Annius of Viterbo.15

9
See Crawford 1985, 43-74 and Wiseman 2004. (Zos. Historia nova 5.41); two centuries later, the Byzantine
writers Johannes Lydus [De divinatione) and [De
10 Procopius
The most original treatment of this deity is that of Hol hello Gothico, 8.21.61) still show acute awareness of Etruscan
land 1961. ritual books; see Camporeale 1992,109.

11 14
Papi 2001; Camporeale 1992. In a future article, I hope to explore the connections be
tween local Christian traditions and local Etruscan traditions
12
Jacks 1993,63-64. in the region known as Tuscia,
focusing especially on the
Romanesque churches of Viterbo and Tuscania.
13
Etruscan priests supposedly offered their services to the
toward off the invasion of Rome 15
pope by Alaric in A.D. 409 Annius's real name was Giovanni Nanni; he changed it,he
228 INGRID ROWLAND

A polished courtier,Annius had managed to insinuate himself into theVatican asMaster of the
Sacred Palace in 1493, a tide that identified him as official chief preacher to the Spanish pope. He
used thisposition to ensure that the substantial quarto volume of his Commentaries was printed in
Rome by the house of Eucharius Silber, officialprinter to theCuria and not coincidentally, therefore,
a firm specializing in thepublication of theological tractates.16Silber's Gothic typefacehelped to give
Annius's Commentaries the look of a respectable theological tome, and so did the book's dedication
toTheir Most Catholic Majesties, Ferdinand ofAragon and Isabella of Castile.17 In fact,however, the
pages of the sober-looking Commentaria, for all their superficial resemblance to those of theGutenberg
Bible, contained an audacious series of forged and doctored texts,by ancient authors ranging from
thewell-loved Roman poet Propertius towholly fictional figures likeMetasthenes thePersian.
Like the twelfth-centuryGraphia Aurea, the fifteenth-century Commentaries of Annius of
Viterbo begin with Noah's trip up the riverTiber on a raft, some hundred years after leaving his
Ark onMount Ararat as thewaters of the great Flood receded. As Annius ofViterbo tells the story,
the patriarch landed this new craft on the left bank of the Tiber at precisely the level of Rome,
disembarking somewhere between Trastevere and the Vatican. Soon he had changed his name
to Janus, introduced the natives to the cultivation of grapevines, established laws, founded cities
(Viterbo chief among them), and ensured that local religionwas rooted in trueHebrew prophecy.18
Transformed from aHebrew patriarch into an Etrusco-Roman god, Noah/Janus took on his special
association with doors, keys, and bridges, but Annius reported that he also created the ancient Ro
man priestly office of Pontifex Maximus, the powerful figurewhose mysterious titlemeant "Chief
was no wonder then,
Bridge Builder" (and the title "Supreme Pontiff" is still carried by the pope). It
Annius declared, that the image of Janus should have appeared on the earliest Roman coins, large

pieces of cast bronze with the image of a ship on the reverse; theywere amonument, theDominican

insisted, to theHebrew patriarch and his fateful raft, an evident foreshadowing of a new ship, the
symbolic ship of theChristian Church.19
Not all of this startling information was new; three centuries earlier, themedieval Graphia
Aurea, as noted above, had already trumpeted the association among Noah, Janus, and Rome.
Neither was all of Annius's information fabricated: he interspersed fabricated accounts of ancient
history and a handful of his own homemade Etruscan and Egyptian artifactswith discussions of
what were obviously genuine archaeological discoveries. He paid such close attention toEtruscan
script that?ironically?he was the first scholar since antiquity to read itwith any degree of suc
cess.20 Less honestly, and less helpfully for themany people he fooled over the decades, he also
insisted that Etruria wasthe ancient name for his native city,Viterbo. The names for the greater
land of theEtruscans and for theEtruscans themselves, he maintained, bore an initialH: Hetruria
was the true name of themagic kingdom founded by Noah/Janus, and Hetrusci the name of his
a useful set of distinctions.
pious people.21 For the present purposes, however, Annius has provided

for a Bible of the times when to

claimed, as a result of tracing his lineage back to theRoman easily be mistaken opened
a typical page."
emperor Antoninus Pius and their Etruscan forebears; see
see
Stephens 1979,51. On Annius and his scholarly method, 18
Stephens1979;Stephens1984;Ligota 1987;Danielsson1932; Stephens 1979,27-34.
1984; Grafton 1990, 54-68, 104-123; Bonucci
Fumagalli 19
Caporali 1981; Weiss 1962; Fumagalli 1980. Stephens 1979, 29-31.

20
16Barbieril983. Stephens 1979, 155-176.

17 21
See Stephens 1979, 16: "From the distance of a few feet a Annius 1512, lvi(r); lxxi(r).
copy of, say, Josse Bade's edition [of theAntiquities] might
 BRAMANTE'SHETRUSCAN TEMPIETTO 229

The words Hetruria and Hetruscan, as we shall use them here, clearly refer to the fantasticworld
of Annius; Etruria and Etruscan will stand for the land and people of ancient Tuscany as they are
understood by scholars today.
Annius sCommentaries of 1498 resurrected the old medieval Noah legend with shameless inge
nuity. Bolstered by documents and artifacts,both real and fabricated, he revealed that theGolden
Age kingdom ruled by Janus/Noah was none other thanHetruria, and theHetruscan language,
which was usually written from right to left,simply showed itsdescent fromNoah's Hebrew; itwas
a variety ofAramaic, the colloquial Hebrew ofRoman times.22The legendaryHetruscan piety could
thus be revealed as Israel's faith in its patriarchs and itsGod transplanted to Italian soil,making
Hetruscan religion a closer approximation to revealed Christian truth than the pagan cults ofGreece
and Rome, which knew theHetruscans' special wisdom only at second hand. Annius detailed the
ways inwhich the attributes of Janus all seemed to square with the location and attributes of the
papacy: his keys,which identified him with doorways, prefigured the keys of St. Peter. His temple's
symbolic connection with peace prefigured the pax christiana, the Christian "peace that passeth
all understanding." His choice to settle opposite Rome on the leftbank of theTiber prefigured St.
Peter's association with theVatican, and because Janus was the firstPontifex Maximus, he was also,
in effect, the firstpope, and Peter his successor.23
No matter what P. T. Barnum famously said about the birthrate of suckers, the extent towhich
the forger ofViterbo succeeded in passing off his goods in highly placed European circles is fairly
remarkable (orwas remarkable, until a book called The Da Vinci Code began to send tourists all
over Europe searching for theHoly Grail on evidence far flimsier than anymustered by Annius of
Viterbo).24 Flattery, however, has always proven a magical potion by which to lend credibility to
uninhibited impostors. Annius salted his Commentaries with flatteringreferences to Spain aswell as
toHetruria, suggesting that the Spanish pope Alexander VI Borgia must have had Egyptian ancestry
and that Ferdinand and Isabella were descended
fromHercules. These intimationsworked as ef
fectively on His Holiness and Their Most Catholic Majesties as his Hetruscan travelogues worked
on the good burghers ofViterbo and Rome.
Thus Hetruria
throve in the last years of the fifteenth century through the preachings and writ
ings of Annius of Viterbo, Master of the Sacred Palace, but also through a spokesman who may
have been stillmore eloquent thanAnnius himself: theAugustinian friarEgidio Antonini, another
golden-tongued preacher from the ancient Etruscan town ofViterbo.25When Annius died in 1502,
Egidio da Viterbo (as Antonini was usually known) was already well established as one of Italy's
most eloquent and influentialmen, perfectly primed to take up theHetruscan banner for another
thirtyyears.26Cardinal Carvajal must have known them both, perhaps known themwell; Egidio da
Viterbo enjoyed extremely close connections with Spanish Naples and even resided there for some
time,while Annius, of course, had openly cultivated Spanish patronage.27 In any event, in 1502,
neither the cardinal, the Spanish pope, nor Their Most Catholic Majesties could have been unaware
that the site of San Pietro inMontorio had suddenly and publicly been investedwith considerable
Hetruscan significance.

22
Stephens 1979, 176-194. Egidio's official correspondence by O'Reilly 1992, and his

23 private correspondence by Voci Roth 1990 and De Meijer

See O'Malley 1972. 1984, 1988.

24
Weiss 1962.
260'Malleyl968, 7-8; Rowland 1987.

23 27
O'Malley 1968; Martin 1992. See also the editions of Fiorentino 1884.
230 INGRID ROWLAND

With a perception that seems characteristic of this shrewd

diplomat, Carvajal let his choice of
architects for such an importantHispano-Hetruscan commission fall to a recent arrival inRome,
Donato Bramante, a middle-aged architect who had simply pulled up stakes inMilan and come
south in about 1500 to study the ancient ruins at his own expense.28 An accomplished reciter of
Dante, a lutenist, and a writer in vernacular, Bramante also had a quick, visceral grasp of architec
tural symbolism, and this combination of visual and verbal acuity quickly caught the attention of
potential patrons inRome.29 He had already been spotted, for example, by thepowerful Neapolitan
cardinal Oliviero Carafa, forwhom Bramante designed a cloister for theAugustinian monastery of
Santa Maria della Pace as early as 1500 or 1501; itwas completed in 1504.30
Nor did Bramante restrict his study to the ruins alone. His subsequent work shows him to
have been an observant reader of fifteenth-centuryRome's most important architectural treatise,
theDe Re Aedificatoria composed by Leone Battista Alberti in about 1450, when Alberti served in
theRoman Curia under Pope Nicholas V.31 Bramante, indeed, seems to have found a great affinity
with that other talented transplant toRome.
Remarkably for awork penned amid the burst ofGrecophilia that accompanied the last throes
of the Byzantine Empire, Alberti s treatise acknowledged not Greece but Etruria as the cradle of
classical style, and not only in architecture but in sculpture as well:

The statue is thoughttohave originated alongwith religion,and is said to have been invented
by the Etruscans. (7.16)32

Thus three typesof capital had been established and incorporated into thevocabulary of the
experienced architect:theDoric (thoughI have discovered thatthiswas already inuse inancient
Etruria), theDoric, then the Ionic, and theCorinthian. (7.6)33

The firstto found a temple in Italywas, I think,Father Janus; that iswhy the ancientswould
say a prayer to thegod Janus before theysacrificed. (7.2)34

Furthermore, the Etruscans, praised by the ancient Romans for their religio?what we might call
piety?were to his mind the first to have set down guidelines for temple construction (6.3).35
Finally, Alberti claimed that: "The ancients, especially the Etruscans, preferred to use vast,
squared stones for theirwalls" (7.2).36 By this he meant citywalls, ofwhich spectacular examples
are still extant today inCortona, Bolsena, Falerii Veteres, Perugia, and Volterra.

28 34
The circumstances of Bramante's trip to Rome are de Alberti 1966, 541: Primos templorum conditores fuisse
scribed inGiorgio Vasari sLife of the artist; see Bruschi 1967, comperio lanum patrem in Italia, ideoque veteres assuesse in
xxix; Pedretti 2001; Valtieri 2001. sacrificiis perpetuo praefari Iano deo.

29 35
Rowland 1998,105-108,170-175. Alberti 1966, 455-457: Nam, quom in Italia vetus haberet
hospitium ars aedificatoria praesertim apud Etruscos, quorum
30
Bruschi 1967,245-290; Borsi 1989,225-229. praeter ilia regum miracula, quae leguntur, labyrinthi et
sepulchrorum, pervetusta etprobatissima extant litteris tradita
12-14. vetus Etruria
31Borsil989, templorum aedificandorum monimenta, quibus
utebatur; quom?inquam?vetus haberet hospicium in Italia,
32
Alberti 1966, 655: statuarum inverttores Etruscos fuisse quomque intelligent tantopere expeti sese, visa est ars haec
praedicant. See Borsi 1985, 36; Morolli 1985b. pro viribus praestare.

33 36
Alberti 1966, 565: Tria igitur capitulorum genera inventa Alberti 1966, 539: Moenibus veteres, praesertim populi
sunt, quae peritorum usus reciperet: doricum?tametsi hoc Etruriae, quadratum eundemque vastissimum lapidem pro
usu fuisse comperio?
ipsum apud vetustissimos Etruscos in bavere.
doricum inquam, ionicum et corinthium.
 BRAMANTE'SHETRUSCAN TEMPIETTO 231

Some sources for Alberti's contentions are easy to trace. Pliny the Elder's Natural History
(35.12) already credited theEtruscans with inventing sculpture, and Alberti, who boasted of Etrus
can ancestry himself, could hardly have been expected to resist agreement.37 In Alberti's own day,
moreover, something like an Etruscan Doric stylewas easily discernible among Rome's ruins, for a
Doric entablature surmounting Tuscan columns could then still be found on the Basilica Aemilia
in the Roman Forum.38 A similar but not identical motif continues to adorn the lower stories of
both the Colosseum and theTheater ofMarcellus and is now usually called "Roman Doric."39 It
seems likely,however, thatBramante associated this stylewith Alberti's remarks; the frieze from the
Basilica Aemilia was stripped from itsoriginal position in the early sixteenth century and placed on
a new palazzo near theVatican, commissioned by a cardinal, Adriano Castellesi, who came from
the proudly Etruscan city of Corneto (whose ancient name, Tarquinia, was revived in the twentieth
century). The architect for thatpalazzo has often been identified as Donato Bramante.40
Another form of ancient detailing, rustication, known from the Claudian Porta Praenestina in
Rome's citywall, must have seemed to supplyAlberti with an evocative version of Etruscan "squared
stone."41Hence, by the time Bramante arrived inRome and Etruria, thanks toAnnius of Viterbo,
had been newly transformed intoHetruria, the connections thatmight be made between the various
elements of a stout, vigorous Etruscan architectural style and theHetruscan papacy must have been
more than ripe fordiscovery. In his project for the Spanish monarchs, Bramante discovered them.
Bramante's deceptively tinybuilding, now known affectionately in an appropriately Albertian
vein as the "little temple," theTempietto, has long been noted as the first example ofDoric archi
tecture inRenaissance Rome (fig. I).42At thatdate, with Annius ofViterbo installed in theApostolic
Palace and Egidio da Viterbo's star in rapid ascent,we might take a closer look at how we regard this
Doric tholos.With itsmost Catholic patrons recently revealed by Annius ofViterbo's Commentaries
asHetruscan-connected descendants ofHercules, theirproject may be conveying another message
from itsperch on Janus/Noah's hill than the resuscitation ofHellenic classicism.
The unfluted columns, for example, are Tuscan (fig.2). Their shafts aremade of Egyptian gran
ite; theyare, in fact, reused ancient columns. Above, between thefirst triglyphsof theRoman Renais
sance, theDoric frieze bears insignia of the papacy in themetopes. Keys, of course, belong toJanus
as well as St. Peter and all popes, but many of the other implements depicted have explicitly
papal
or at least liturgical significance as well. Rather than a Doric Revival version of Vitruvius's round

temple, we might consider the Tempietto an Hetruscan Revival prototype for the architecture of
that new Golden Age which contemporary orators were so loudly proclaiming for papal Rome.43

37
Plin. HN 35.43.152: Sunt qui in Samo primos omnium Borsi 1989, cat. no. 20; Giavarina 1983.
plasticen invenisse Rhoecum et Theodorum tradantmulto ante
Bacchiadas Corintho pulsos, Damaratum vero ex eadem urhe 41Ackermanl983.
profugum, qui in Etruria Tarquinium regem populi Romani
42
gnuit, comitatos fictores Euchira, Diopum, Eugrammum; ah Pastor 1957, 637: "Quest'opera non rappresenta pi? una
Us Italiae traditamplasticen. 35.45.157: praeterea elaboratam pura e simplice imitazione di elementi antichi, ma e una crea
hancartem [plastices] Italiae etmaxime Etruriae; Vulcamf Veis zione affatto nuova, uscita talmente completa dallo spirito
accitum, cui locaret Tarquinius Priscus Jovis effigiem inCapito deH'antichit?, che dalla costruzione non si poteva arguire il
lio dicandum. About this passage, see von Vacano 1973. tempo della sua origine. Gli architetti corsero a studiare e
misurare il tempietto come se si trattasse di un monumento
38
For Bramante and classical column types, see Pagliara antico allora allora scoperto. II tempietto terminato nel
1986, 38-45; Denker-Nesselrath 1990, esp. 17-21; for the 1502 divide il Bramante lombardo dal romano; esso separa
Basilica Aemilia, Denker-Nesselrath 1990, 21. See also l'arte dei due secoli." See also G?nther 1992; Thoenes 2004;
Rosenthal 1964. Borsi 1989.

Morolli 1985a. 1972.

O'Malley
232 INGRID ROWLAND

The decorated metopes themselves, clearly derived in part from those that once adorned the
Basilica Aemilia, also pay homage to another ancient frieze depicting sacrificial implements (pre
served for centuries in the Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori leMura, it is now walled into the grand
staircase of the Palazzo dei Conservatori as part of the Capitoline Museums). This ancient frieze
was understood in the sixteenth century as a set of hieroglyphs and like Egyptian hieroglyphs was
believed to disclose deep religious truths through the universal language of images.44The sixteenth
century painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari reports thatBramante himself experimented with
hieroglyphic symbolism for theVatican Palace, inspired, as Vasari plausibly claims, by a clever if
corny fifteenth-centuryhieroglyphic frieze inViterbo.45

The fancytookBramante tomake, in a friezeon theouter facade of theBelvedere, some letters

after themanner of ancient hieroglyphs,representingthe name of the pope and his own, in
order to show his ingenuity,and he had begun thus: "JuliusII. Pont[ifex] Max[imus], having
caused a head inprofileofJuliusCaesar tobe made, and a bridgewith two arches,which signi
fiedJulis Il.Pont.', and an obeliskwith theCircusMaximus to represent 'Max'." At which the
pope laughed, and caused him tomake lettersin the ancientmanner, one braccio in height,
which are still there to thisday, saying thathe had copied this follyfroma door inViterbo.
There one Mastro Francesco, an architect, had placed his name, carved in the architrave, and
a Saint Francis [Francesco], an arch [arco], a roof [tetto], and a tower [torre],
represented by
which, interpreted in his own way, denoted "Maestro Francesco Architettore."

44Giehlow 45
1915;Gombrich 1972;CieriVia 1989;Curran Vasari 1966-1984, 4:79.
in press.
 BRAMANTE'SHETRUSCAN TEMPIETTO 233

The frieze fromViterbo can stillbe seen today in itsoriginal setting.46

By the early sixteenth century,when Bramante drew up his plans for Julius II, Mastro Fran
cesco's frieze could be seen as only the latest example of a longViterbese tradition.Hieroglyphs, as
Annius ofViterbo was all toowilling to remind his public, had long occupied an important place in
Hetruria, introduced to theHetruscans by a series ofwandering Egyptians: Osiris, Isis, and Egyptian
Hercules (according toAnnius, one of three separate heroes bearing thatname). As proof, Annius
drew attention to amarble stele discovered inViterbo, decorated with heroic heads and intricately
twining grapevines: this,he announced, was a work of Egyptian artisans, and what might look to
the untrained eye like itsdecorative elements were really important hieroglyphic inscriptions. (The
stele, now displayed in theMuseo Civico ofViterbo, is a pastiche made up of a medieval sculpted
grapevine and fifteenth-centuryheads, whose creator is universally believed now to be Annius of
Viterbo.) Itwould therefore have been eminently appropriate for the Tempietto to use Egyptian
columns and hieroglyphic images to explicate the significance of St. Peter, crucified between two
pyramids as themartyred heir toNoah/Janus as well as Jesus Christ.
The Tempietto's interior decoration continues the same themes developed on its exterior.
Above the elegant altar, a marble predella shows the upside-down crucifixion of St. Peter in low
relief (fig.3). Framed by strips of glass mosaic, the altar's antependium shows Noah's Ark directly
beneath an image of Peter enthroned, evidently as pope. To be sure, theArk is an ancient image of
the Church, but thisArk sits directly in linewith the carved images of Peter enthroned and Peter
crucified, and a hole in the floor of theTempietto puts these images in direct physical connection
with the putative site of the saint's crucifixion. Bramante thus uses every resource of geometry and
imagery to reinforce the association ofNoah's Ark with St. Peter in his specific role as founder of
theChurch ofRome. Indeed, the site of San Pietro inMontorio gave Spain a conspicuous foothold
inHetruria, both theHetruria of Annian fantasy and the physical, political, and
spiritual reality
thatHetruria represented, namely, the papal state. In a city rifewith local legends, many of them
conflicting, was
it not so very hard forFerdinand and Isabella, or Cardinal Carvajal, to believe that
St. Peter might have died crucified, not in the Circus of Nero but at a commanding spot on the
Janiculum's slopes named M?ns Aureus, theGolden Mountain.
One wonders how much of this papal symbolism the blazingly ambitious Carvajal may have
hoped to assume forhimself one day. Certainly upon the death of Alexander VI in 1503 he made a
Herculean effort to become pope at the conclave ofOctober. When the successful candidate, Pius
III Piccolomini, died after a reign of only twenty-six days, Carvajal renewed his campaign
during
the conclave ofDecember 1503.47On both occasions, however, he and the Spanish contingent came
up short; the Borgias had given the Sacred College all the Spanish hegemony it could bear for a
while. For that reason, and with the help of some well-placed bribes, the conclave of December
1503 elected another acute reader of artistic symbolism, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who had
installed himself for the proceedings underneath Perugino's fresco of theHanding of theKeys to
St. Peter in the Sistine Chapel and emerged shortly thereafter as Pope Julius II.
Under such swiftlychanging political circumstances, the dating of theTempietto is crucial for
the understanding of its symbolism. Two stones preserved in the building's crypt bear the dates
of 1500 and 1502, securely placing the commission within the reign of Alexander VI and hence
within the period of Spanish hegemony inRome.48 But Hetruria would survive both Annius, who

46 47
The friezeinViterbowas identified
andpublishedbyBen Pastor 1957,649.
tivoglio 1972. See also Gombrich 1972,102. My thanks to one
of my anonymous readers for the Bentivoglio reference. 48
Questions concerning the date and authenticity of the
234 INGRID ROWLAND

lit
Iii

F/g. 3. Donato Bramante, Tempietto, 1502, high altar (photo Samir Younes).

died in 1502 (allegedly in the equivalent of a straitjacket), and the Spanish pope, who succumbed
(probably) tomalaria in 1503.49
In 1506, Pope Julius II placed the cornerstone for a new St. Peter's Basilica to replace the
massive church erected by the emperor Constantine. The foundations for both the fourth-century

Tempietto's foundation stone (first raised by de Angelis pietto. My thanks to one of my anonymous readers for this
d'Ossat in a publication of 1966 and repeated by others), information.
and about the inscription in the crypt, were formulated
49
before its recent conservation. The marble tablet is now Annius's death in a madman's chains is noted in two
to the copy of his Antiquitates owned by the
accepted as original by Bruschi 2002,58, although whether marginalia
the inscription pertains to the foundation of the crypt chapel Biblioteca Hertziana inRome; see Rowland 1998,54 and 27
or the Tempietto proper is unclear to that author. Freiberg (hie vir bis insanivit etmortuus est in vinculis). For the death
2005 associates the foundation stone with the entire Tern of Alexander VI, see Pastor 1957,571-577.
 BRAMANTE'SHETRUSCAN TEMPIETTO 235

basilica and its sixteenth-century successor reston the remains ofNero's Circus in lasting homage to
the firstpope's crucifixion interduas metas, meaning themetae thatmarked the spine ofNero's race
track.As Pope Juliuswell knew, Vatican City's entire justification forbeing lay in that local memory
of Peter's martyrdom, and he was so devoted to itsphysical immediacy that he forbade Bramante
tomove theEgyptian obelisk that still stood upright on the site of the ancient Roman spina.
In the face of Julius's preoccupation with theVatican and itshistory, the Spanish commission at
San Pietro inMontorio presented a standing challenge to St. Peter's on matters of sacred topography.
Carvajal at leastwas perfecdy capable of defying even the implacable Julius,who in a quarter century
as cardinal had so far shown himself to be no great friend of Spain. But Bramante's participation is
another matter. From the very beginning of his papacy, Julius sought Bramante out, charging him
not only to rebuild theVatican Palace and St. Peter's but to reshape the entire city of Rome as a
testament to papal primacy. The architect, in turn, quickly revealed an imaginative megalomania
thatflourished in fullharmony with Julius's own. Itmakes more sense that this ravenously ambitious
designer have confided his fortunes to the powerful Neapolitan-Spanish contingent in the years
before 1503?precisely, that is, at themoment where theywere stillpowerful and when the future
pope Julius bided his time in self-imposed exile; on stylisticgrounds, too, the Tempietto, with its
low relief and tentativelydefined contours, can plausibly be seen as an earlywork.
Notably, however, Bramante's designs for the Belvedere courtyard of theVatican Palace, for
St. Peter's itself,and for the temporary tabernacle built over the high altar during construction of
the new basilica would all employ the same configuration of Tuscan column and Doric frieze as the
Tempietto, presumably combining thesemotifs to similar symbolic ends: namely, to celebrate the
Hetruscan character of theRoman papacy. (Juliusvetoed the hieroglyphs, which he thoughtwere
silly.) In each recasting of thispapal style,Bramante employed not the unfluted Doric of the ground
floors of the Colosseum and the Theater ofMarcellus but rather an explicit recapitulation of the
order preserved on the Basilica Aemilia, the building at the head of theVicus Tuscus. We might
understand it as papal Rome's vision of Etruscan?or Hetruscan?architecture.
In an immensely useful article of 1983, James Ackerman hinted at a link between what he called
the "Tuscan-rustic order" and the papacy, that combination of Tuscan column, Doric entablature,
and rusticated base that can be seen prefigured inBramante's Tempietto, the St. Peter's tabernacle,
the rusticated base of the unfinished papal Tribunals, and St. Peter's, and emerges fullydeveloped
for the first time in a fresco of 1514 by Bramante's relative, protege, and true heir,
Raphael, whose
Fire in theBorgo presents an idealized St. Peter's in the form of a Tuscan-Doric benediction
loggia
on a rusticated base.50 Ackerman's intuition thatTuscan columns and rustication a
signaled papal
style is but one of his short, extraordinary article's piercing insights.51It has been the point of the
present paper to show how the sixteenth-century reality of this formal conjunction resulted from
an active appropriation of history,
topography, local legend, pious belief, and forgery to create an
Hetruscan architecture forNoah's heir in theVatican.

Ackerman 1983. ing its first instance in the letter of Raphael to Pope Leo X;
the effect of this observation can be seen inDi Teodoro 1994;
51
Ackerman's footnote on the architectural orders in "The De Teodoro2003;Rowland 1994;Rowland 1998,223-227;
Tuscan/Rustic Orders" also begins to question the antiquity and Rowland 1999, passim.
of the term orders for the types of classical column,
pinpoint
 236 INGRID ROWLAND

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