Reuse Value

Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine

Richard Brilliant, Dale Kinney, Richard Brilliant, Dale Kinney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317063780
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Medieval Art

This book offers a range of views on spolia and appropriation in art and architecture from fourth-century Rome to the late twentieth century. Using case studies from different historical moments and cultures, contributors test the limits of spolia as a critical category and seek to define its specific character in relation to other forms of artistic appropriation. Several authors explore the ethical issues raised by spoliation and their implications for the evaluation and interpretation of new work made with spolia. The contemporary fascination with spolia is part of a larger cultural preoccupation with reuse, recycling, appropriation and re-presentation in the Western world. All of these practices speak to a desire to make use of pre-existing artifacts (objects, images, expressions) for contemporary purposes. Several essays in this volume focus on the distinction between spolia and other forms of reused objects. While some authors prefer to elide such distinctions, others insist that spolia entail some form of taking, often violent, and a diminution of the source from which they are removed. The book opens with an essay by the scholar most responsible for the popularity of spolia studies in the later twentieth century, Arnold Esch, whose seminal article 'Spolien' was published in 1969. Subsequent essays treat late Roman antiquity, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Middle Ages, medieval and modern attitudes to spolia in Southern Asia, the Italian Renaissance, the European Enlightenment, modern America, and contemporary architecture and visual culture.

1

On the Reuse of Antiquity: The Perspectives of the Archaeologist and of the Historian

Arnold Esch

For a long time the subject of spolia was barely addressed. It was not that spolia were not noticed, but they were not deemed worthy of scholarly treatment. More precisely, attention was bestowed upon the spoliated ancient piece itself, but not upon its inclusion in a new, post-antique context; if the latter was observed at all, it was only polemically. For humanists the use of spolia was a damnable dismemberment and abasement of Antiquity; for the Church of the Counter-Reformation it was a damnable homage to paganism, and for the art historian it was, for a long time, a regrettable indication of the lack of individual creativity. Jacob Burckhardt still viewed it as such in his Cicerone.

Today these approaches have been superseded. Research into spolia has gained momentum since the 1950s, and since the 1980s it has increased at an almost explosive rate.1 At first, interest was devoted primarily to the reuse of structural elements in late antique and early Christian architecture, to the connection between the use of spolia and the imitation of Antiquity in the art of the high Middle Ages, and to the use (and imitation) of ancient gems in the medieval minor arts.2 Then the theme broke out of specialist circles, and the area of investigation was expanded – geographically, chronologically, and in terms of subject matter – through numerous case studies. Scholars analyzed the provenance and choice of spolia, inquired about the motives for the use of spolia, and introduced political-“ideological”, liturgical, and legal questions; they went further back into Antiquity and forward beyond the Middle Ages, attended to Byzantine spolia in Islamic architecture, and expanded the mineralogical understanding of objects through isotopic analyses; they addressed not only the role of decorated pieces as stylistic models and the degree of their appropriation, but also purely material recycling, such as the reuse of ancient bricks, and even the imitation of opus reticulatum.

Various disciplines have participated in this research, for “reuse” is by definition a subject that lies between disciplines. When reused, the treasure administered by classical archaeology falls under the aegis of others: historians and art historians. The transition from one field to another is fluid, and indeed was initially perceived as producing a “no-man’s-land between archaeology and art history”,3 which was entered only with hesitation. It is therefore all the more important to state precisely the role played by the various approaches and where the specific strengths of these different disciplines lie when they engage with the subject.

To begin, these disciplines direct their gazes in different directions. For the archaeologist, the spolium is a piece that was removed from Antiquity, whereas for the historian and the art historian (whose positions in this regard are quite close, and will thus not always be distinguished in the following remarks) the same piece was received from Antiquity. This leads to diverse methods and ways of posing the question.4 The archaeologist is inclined to bring the spolium back to its original home, as it were, and once more to complete the ancient monument that was “damaged” through spoliation. Art historians and historians, on the other hand, take an interest just in the new contexts and ask in what sense the use of spolia was actually the “appropriation” of Antiquity, or simple recycling, or something else altogether. For the removal from the original ancient context was as a rule complete. Removal destroyed the ancient context, so the spoliated piece had to find a new meaning, a new significance in a new context.

When one surveys the entire spectrum of reuse, it becomes clear that various perspectives are required in order to grasp and to penetrate the phenomenon of spolia.5 For, to name only the extremes, it reaches from the conversion of entire buildings to the pulverization of ancient sculptures for the production of lime.

The conversion of whole buildings is of equal interest to the archaeologist and to the historian. Simply by walling up its arcades, an ancient theater can be turned into a most beautiful and secure urban palace, and the family that occupied it is often known to the historian. Even a triumphal arch can be inhabited. But the different types of architecture have differing conversion-values: that of the temple is rather slight, not so much because it embodied the pagan in a particular fashion (in this respect the West had less fear of contagion than the fanatical East), but because its cella was conceived only for the divinity and priests, and did not offer enough room for a Christian community.6 Baths, on the other hand, had a relatively good chance of being reused, because they offered an entire sequence of configurations that were conceived as space and so could be reused as space. New uses preserve; only what later eras can appropriate has a chance of survival. This is still true today, incidentally: while musealization may preserve an abandoned building for a generation, conversion maintains it in perpetuity. Thus a typology of reusability and functional potential is simultaneously a typology of survival prospects.

A step away from the reuse of whole buildings is the reuse of architectural pieces. In the early Middle Ages, the spoliated pieces were often put together crudely, without any feeling for proportions or harmony, rather as a child might pile his building blocks one atop the other. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, on the other hand, reuse was discriminating and sophisticated. Greater attention was paid to quality, suitable dimensions, and the uniformity of ancient materials: in the interior, matching capitals, and on the exterior, on the portal, presentable cornices. If the spolium was not long enough, it was occasionally supplemented, and its cymatia extended by a faithful imitation (Fig. 1.1). (This immediately raises the question to what degree the appearance of the spolia might have affected the style of contemporary sculptors.) There was a precision in the use of spolia, in the sense that they were not situated haphazardly but at points of emphasis: on the portal, the apse, or the campanile.7

These architectural elements were not simply picked up in loco from the nearest ruin; they were also procured at great distances. This is an important consideration, because it illuminates pretensions to quality and choice in the reuse of Antiquity. Some patrons did not want just any spolia; they had to be spolia from Rome. Some wanted porphyry columns, which were not so easy to find in their own surroundings. From the high cost of transport we can determine how much these elements were worth to them. While the archaeologist learns the provenance of spolia from stylistic features and their exact dimensions (and in this way finds pieces of the macellum of Pozzuoli in the cathedral of Salerno, or elements from Rome in the cathedral of Pisa),8 the trade in ancient pieces and their transport can also be followed in written sources: in literary texts (for example, by Suger of St-Denis, who desired Roman spolia9), but also in documents with which the historian is more conversant, such as contracts, account books, and customs registers.

Fig. 1.1 Bevagna, San Michele, door jamb with imitation of antique cymatium: ovolo, Lesbian cyma, bead-and-reel, from which other ornaments develop

Thus while the archaeologist will once more (in his imagination) bring the kidnapped pieces back to their original location and reintegrate them into an ancient monument, the historian is intrigued precisely by their distance, spatial and conceptual, from their original site and function. Why did the spolia have to come from Rome, and not, more conveniently, from the immediate vicinity? Why transport a colossal ancient column at great cost, instead of building a Romanesque pier? Why claim that Venice was built entirely from the stones of Troy? For the historian, omnivore that he is, even this curious spolia-legend is important, because it leads him deep into the foundation myths of Italian cities.

Architectural elements were not only reused in structural contexts, but also as isolated decorative pieces.10 The capital was not only reused analogously, as a capital, but also, hollowed out, as a baptismal font or a stoup, as a reliquary, or as a fountain. Hollowed out, the column shaft became a saint’s tomb or a bishop’s throne; in Crusader castles, multiple columns are packed so tightly against one another that their flutings interlock like cogwheels. The sarcophagus was used not only as a sarcophagus, but also as a reliquary (and in this fashion often as the base of an altar), as the trough of a fountain, and so on. The Middle Ages always looked upon antiquities with a gaze that was at once admiring and also exploitative.

Thus, in the reuse of the rich legacy of Antiquity, imagination knew no bounds. The plenitude of ancient pieces and new functions makes it necessary to consider them from various perspectives. The archaeologist, for example, might inquire after the range of pieces, the art historian after their new placement, and the historian after the motives for reuse, each employing his unique and specific approach and competency, but in such a way that, in the end, the results can be patched together to create a whole.

In any case, reuse transforms the ancient piece from an antiquarian object into an historical one, which must therefore be understood historically. If a spolium were liberated from a medieval church and brought into a museum, it would no longer be a spolium, but would return to the exclusive purview of the archaeologist; it would no longer belong to the “afterlife” of Antiquity. For reuse grants life, both in the sense of survival (an individual capital that is not reused will perish) and in the sense of afterlife. Reused, Antiquity lives on, assimilated into a new context; it continues to speak to people, and continues to exert its agency.

This has not always been acknowledged. Encountering spolia, some archaeologists felt anger and scorn for such uncomprehending and insolent appropriation of Antiquity by the Middle Ages, and perhaps a few of them itched to roll back the historical process, to tear down spolia-churches and to produce Antiquity once more. In fact, it would not be difficult to rebuild the Temple of Athena by disassembling the Venetian kastro of Paros, an orgy of spolia (Fig. 1.2), or to rebuild the ancient funerary monument now integrated into the triumphal arch built for Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia in Civita Castellana (Fig. 1.3).

Fig. 1.2 Paros, Venetian kastro, the bastion under the chapel

Fig. 1.3 Civita Castellana, pieces of a Roman tomb reused in the arch of Rodrigo Borgia (t...