Ara Pacis Augustae

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A

Ades, Dawn et. al., ed.
Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators 1930-45.
London: Hayward Gallery, 1995.
Esp. pp. 130-136.

 

Aldrete, Gegory S.
Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

This is the first in-depth study of floods in ancient Rome, including how they affected the development of areas such as the Campus Martius and the damage caused to Rome’s architecture. This is a wide-ranging study not only on the physical characteristics and effects of floods but also a chapter on “Roman Attitudes toward Floods”.
For purpose of this web site, it is useful that the author has provided topographical and flood maps of Rome during the reign of Augustus. Seven of these maps are reproduced on this web site.

 

Allen, Joel
Hostages and Hostage-taking in the Roman Empire.
Cambridge University Press, 2006.

A detailed presentation of the evidence for hostages in the Roman Empire, citing over 200 text passages in documents. Allen supposts previous authors in identifying two of the children on the Ara Pacis processional friezes as foreign hostages. Further, he writes that “the differences in clothing are significant enough to conclude that they come from opposite geographical extremes, with the southeastern child [on the south side frieze] wearing eastern dress and the northeastern one [on the north side frieze] appearing as a ‘barbarian’ of western Europe” (p. 106). Although it is not necessary for his argument, Allen even suggests possible specific identifications for the children. The final chapter beautifully contrasts the Augustus’s Ara Pacis with Trajan’s victory column. The book contains 11 small black-white illustrations, 4 of the Ara Pacis processional friezes.

 

Andaloro, M, ed.
La Teoria del Restauro nel Novecentro da Riegl a Brandi; atti del convegno Internazionale di Studi, Viterbo 12-15 November 2003.
Florence, 2006.

 

Anderson, Wayne
The Ara Pacis of Augustus and Mussolini: An Archeological Mystery.
Geneva and Boston: Èditions Fabriart, 2003.

This is a challenging book to annotate. The author is so rash in his condemnation of interpretations with which he does not agree that one may be tempted to dismiss his objections out-of-hand. But it is healthy to have accepted opinions called into question and, as all scholars acknowledge, secure documentation for the Ara Pacis is scarce indeed. Thus, all interpretations are to some extend hypothetical and it is healthy that they be reexamined by professionals from other disciplines. In this ambitious, provocative book, there are no fewer than 16 chapters, dealing, in varying degrees, with most aspects of the altar. The chapter titles themselves indicate the provocative nature of the book:  “The Mysterious Dimensions”, “The Author’s Case”, “The Problematic Entrances”, “The Unknown Artisans”, “The Truth About Venus”, etc.

As a practicing architect, Anderson took careful measurements of the altar on site, noting discrepancies with previous publications. Several of his drawing (10 reproduced on this web site) are original and informative. He provides the best available discussions of “The Problematic Entrances” (chapter 9) and “The Four-square Plan” (chapter 10). Many of his revisions are daring and of course problematic. Anderson believes that “the altar, or part of what we see today, was in that location before the enshrining walls were built” (p. 81). He even proposes that “the enshrining walls of the Ara Pacis date to the Tiberian principate” (p. 80). There are 100 small, weak, but well-chosen comparative illustrations.

10 of the author's informative drwings are reproduced on this web site.

 

Andriani, Carmen
“Richard meier, la fine del moderno”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007. Pp. 119-122.

 

de Angelis Bertolotti, Romano
“Materiali dell' Ara Pacis presso il Museo Nazionale Romano".
Römische Mitteilungen.
Vol. 92 (1985), pp. 221-234.

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Angeloni, Diego
“Museum of the Ara Pacis”.
Sguardi.
No. 19/07 (2007 July 25).
On the web at
http://www.sguardi.info/index.php?id=218,1240,0,0,1,0&highlight=Angeloni

A thoughtful, early review of Meier’s building which concludes that the museum as container and supplier of services is a success but that its urban image is not. Angeloni writes that “the architect, rather than change his characteristic style, proposes for the historic centre spotless smooth surfaces completely alien to the logic not only of the surroundings, but of all Rome. Apart from the white stereometry of the whole, what is displeasing is above all a gauchness of mere size. The building stands out, on its own, in an authoritarian way in a piazza that, even if rich in stratification, was till now still quite ‘temperate’.

 

“L’Ara Pacis Augustae nei filmati dell’Archivo Storico dell’Istituto Luce”
Engramma, no.83 (Sept. 2010).
http://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=531

This website makes available 7 short newsreels and films on the Ara Pacis plus 2 on related subjects.
In translation:
“December 1, 1937 – The transport of fragments of the Ara Pacis in Rome by the will of the Duce at the two thousandth anniversary of Augustus”
“March 16, 1938 – The Minister Bottai and the governor of Rome visiting the restiration of the fragments of the Ara Pacis Augustus”
“March 30, 1938 – The King visited the state of the ongoing work of Augustus, the Ara Pacis”
“September 23, 1938 – The inauguration of the Ara pacis in new townplan”
“June 25, 1940 – Air Protection. “Work for the Protection of works of art of the Capital”
“December 15, 1970 – The Ara Pacis in Rome after restoration”
“February 17, 1954 – Anniversary of the Reconciliation”
Related videos
“July 21, 1937 – Rome, Italy. Preparations for the exhibition of the Roman Augustus”
“September 29, 1937 – Rome. The exhibition of the Roman Augustus”.

 

Ara Pacis Browser
Listed and annotated under Köln: Universität zu Köln; Archäologisches Institut; Forschungsarchiv für Antike Plastik.

 

"Ara Pacis: "l'iscrizione con  le Res Gestae Augusti nell'allestimento Morpurgo (1938)".
galleria a cura del Centro studi Architettura Civiltà e Tradizione del Classico.
Engramma, no. 58, July/August 2007.
On the web through Engramma.

 

"Ara Pacis restituta. Recenti pubblicazioni dull'Ara Pacis e il suo nuovo Museo".
a cura della redazione di "Engramma", no. 58, July-August 2007.
On the web through Engramma.

 

Architettiroma
2003 March 19.
“Ara Pacis: Il cantiere delle polemiche opinione di Vittorio Sgarbi”.
http://www.architettiroma.it/archivo.aspx?id=3439  (23 February 2009).
Architettiroma
2004 Aprill 10.
“Il cantiere Ara Pacis ed una provocazone”.
http://www.architettiroma.it/archivio.aspx?id=5351  (23 February 2009)
Architettiroma
2009 Jan. 18.
“Un ‘ritocco’ alla teca di Meier?”
http://www.architettiroma.it/archweb/notizie/10879.aspx   (23 February 2009)

 

Archne: Photographs of Classical Antiquities
Listed and annotated under Köln: Universität zu Köln; Archäologisches Institut; Forschungsarchiv für Antike Plastik.

 

Archivo Centrale di Stato (ACS).
A key source for recent scholarly research.

 

ARTstor
Includes a few good quality color photographs by Scott Gilchrist, Archivision, showing the Ara Pacis inside the 1938 pavilion, important because we can no longer see the monument as it was for decades seen, studied, and described by scholars.
Includes about 40 excellent photographs of the outside, and a few inside, of the new Museo dell’Ara Pacis, taken in 2008 by Ralph  Lieberman, Williams College.
Nearly all of the remaining ca.500 photos are low quality, highly repetitive images from the collection of the University of Caliifornia, San Diego.

 

A.S. Rip. V
Commune di Roma. Archivo storico della V Ripartizione.
Sistemazione dell’Ara Pacis, 1937.
Titolo 9, classe 5/4, fasciocoo 18.
Ref. Rossini, 2007, p. 134.

 

"Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments"
Adopted by the First International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Histroic Monuments, Athens 1931.
Available on the web from ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites.
In this landmark charter, in addition to the many general recommnedations, a few specific statements are of special relevance for later decisions and policies in Rome and as a context for treatment of the Ara Pacis Augustae.
"The experts hear various communications concerning the use of modern materials for the consolidation of ancient monuments. They approved the judicious use of all the resources at the disposal of modern technique and more especially of reinforced concrete."
"They specified that this work of consolidation should whenever possible be concealed in order that the aspect and character of the restored monument may be preserved."
"In the case of ruins, scrupulous conservation is necessary, and steps should be taken to reinstate any original fragments that may be recovered (anastylosis), whenever this is possible; the new material used for this purpose should in all cases be recognizable. When the preservation of ruins brought to light in the course of excavation is found to be impossible, the Conference recommends that they be buried, accuarte records being of course taken before filling-in operations are undertaken."
"With regard to other monuments, the experts unanimously agreed that, before any consolidation or partial restoration is undertaken, a thorough analysis shoud be made of the defects and the nature of the decay of these monuments. They recognized that each case needed to be treated individually."

 

Augustus
Res Gestae Divi Augusti
Listed and annotated under Res Gestae Divi Augusti.

 

Aveta, A.
La Carta Italiana del Restauro (1932).
Republished in Carte, Risoluzioni e documenti per la Conservazione ed il Restauro. 
Pisa, 2006, pp. 123-146.

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B

Baldini, Umberto
Teoria del Restauro e Unità di Metodologia.
Florence: Nardini Editore-Centro Internazionale del Libro, 1978.

 

Bankel, Hansgeorg, Paolo Liverani, et. al.
I colori del bianco:  policromia nella scultura antica.
Musei Vaticani: Collana di Studi e Documentazione (De Luca editori d’arte) 1.
Rome: De Luca Editore 2004.

 

Barini, Concepta
Res Gesta Divi Augusti, ex Monumentis Ancyrano, Antiocheno, Apolloniensi.
Scriptores Greci et Latini; Academiae Lynceorum editi.
Roma: Typis Regiae Officinae Polygraphicae, 1937.

Scholarly edition of the Res Gestae based on the three surviving ancient copies in Latin and Greek, carved into monuments in present-day Turkey. This edition had been promoted by Mussolini and was used for the 1938-39 inscription carved into the east wall of the Morpurgo fascist pavilion. Bibliography including list of previous editions of the Res Gestae (pp.xiii-xvi). Useful indexes and concordances of Latin and Greek terms. 14 gray-scale photos of the ancient, marble, Latin insciptions and 6 of the Greek.
Photographs of the 1938-39 wall (restored) with Res Gestae inscription are available on this website.

 

Bartman, Elizabeth
"Cataloguing Roman Portraits: four new studies."
JRA, Vol.7: 339-344.

Bartman, Elizabeth
Portraits of Livia: Imaging the Imperial Woman in Augustan Rome.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

A remarkably comprehesive, detailed study of representations of Livia in Roman sculpture. The author emphasizes the range of representations and the development of a new type of imagery for Livia and other Imperial women, all within the socio-political context of the time. There are nearly 200 high-quality black-white illustrations of Livia and an extensive descriptive catalogue, a major contribution. Barton provides a valuable description of the vibrant colors of clothing worn by Roman women (p.44). Her discussion of the complexity of what constitutes a portrait type should be read by anyone pursuing identification of any figure on the Ara Pacis (pp. 9-10).

Five pages, including 4 illustrations, are devoted to the Ara Pacis Augustae, with numerous contextual references elsewhere in the book. Bartman writes that “as far as we know from the preserved examples, historical reliefs did not depict recognizable mortal women until the Ara Pacis Augustae”. “For the first time women and children were seen as active participants in a public religious ceremony, involved as the near equals of their male partners. By mingling the priests, senators, and members of the Julio-Claudian clan together, the frieze designers brought into the public realm a social institution – the family – that had traditionally been confined to the private sphere” (p. 88).

Photos of a cast of a famous portrait head of Livia are available on this website.
Photos of a distingsuished woman on the south side processional frieze, thought by scholar to be Livia or Julia, are available on this website.

 

Bartoli, Pietro Santi
Admiranda Romanarum antiquitatum ac veteris sculpturae vestigia: anaglyphico opere elaborata ex marmoreis exemplaribus quae Romae adhuc extant in Capitolio, aedibus hortisque virorum principum ad antiquam elegantiam.
Rome: Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, 1693 (2nd ed.).

Publication of 2 engravings by Giovanni Pietro Bartoli, representing 2 sections of the original south processional frieze of the Ara Pacis. At that time they were walled into  the terrace wall of the Villa Medici and not yet recognized as coming from the Ara Pacis Augustae. Highly detailed images but not exact and including a few areas of imaginative reconstruction.

 

Barton, Tamsyn
Augustus and Capricorn: Astrological Polyvalency and Imperial Rhetoric".
Journal of Roman Studies.
Vol. 85 (1995), pp. 33-51.

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Beard, M. and J. Henderson.
Classical Art: From Greece to Rome.
Oxford and New York, 2001.

 

Bellanca, C.
"Il restauro scientifico: spigolature all’interno del rapporto Gustavo Giovannoni-Antonio Muñoz".
Gustavo Giovannoni: riflessioni agli albori del XXI secolo: giornata di studio dedicata a Gaetano Miarelli Mariani (1928-2002).
Ed. Maria Piera Sette and Gaetano Miarelli Mariani.
Rome: Bonsignori, 2005.

 

Benton, T.
“The Afterlife of Inscriptions: Reusing, Rediscovery, Reinventing, and Revitalizing Ancient Inscriptions”.
Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement 75.
Ed. A. E. Cooley.
London: Institute of Classic Studies, 2000. Pp. 163-192.

 

Berczelly, L.
“Ilia and the Divine Twins: A Reconsideration of Two Relief Panels from the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Acta ad archaeologiam et atrium historiam pentinentia (ActaAArtHist)
Vol. 5 (1985), pp. 89-149.

Betti, Fabio; Angela Maria D'Amelio, Rossella Leone, and Anita Margiotta.
Mausoleo di Augusto, Demolizioni e Scavi: Fotografie 1928/1941.
Roma Capitale: Assessorato alle Politiche Culturali e Centro Storico, Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali.
Roma: Comune di Roma; Milano: Electa, 2011.

This book is a magnificent production. A large format book (pages 11 x 9 1/4 ins.), it includes over 300 high quality images, most clear, lightly toned historic photographs, presumably commissioned by the government. About 20 are full page plus 2 double page. In addition ther are over 60 small images, mostly of drawings and prints, also with detailed captions.

As the title indicates, the book is about the Mausoleum of Augustus, especially the previous history and demolition, under Mussolini, of the buildings constructed on and around the Mausoleum. There is only one image of the Ara Pacis (fragments) and no images of or discussion of the 1938 pavilion; but the entire book provides rich context for the newly reconstucted monument and its pavilion. Moreover, the 1829 map (fig.4), 1915 perspective drawing (fig.1), and 1934 aerial photograph (fig.7) of the immediate area all show the narrow strip of houses fronting on the Via di Ripetta, the site for the 1938 pavilion and later 2006 museum and show that as yet there was no road on the Tiber side of this row of buildings.

Of the book's 4 essays plus introductions, the most relevant as context for the Ara Pacis and its new pavilion is the excellent (trans.) "Documentary Chronicle of Changes in the Urban Area Surrouding the Augusteo (1932-1942)", by Angela Maria D'Amelio, pp. 15-19.

 

Bianchi Bandinelli, R.
Rome: The Center of Power: Roman Art to AD 200-400.
Trans. P. Green
London, 1970 (first Italian edition Roma, L'Arte Romana nel Centro del Potere; Rome, 1969).

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Billows, R.
“The Religious Procession of the Ara Pacis Augustae: Augustus’
Supplicatio in 13 B.C.”
Journal of Roman  Archaeology.
Vol. 6 (1993), pp. 80-92.

 

Black, Hubert Scott
Augustan Propaganda and the Ara Pacis Augustae.
Athens: University of Georgia, M.A. Thesis, 1985.

 

Boatwright, Mary Taliaferro
Hadrian and the City of Rome.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Includes a description of Hadrian's raising of the ground level all across the northern Campus Martius, partly as part of his attempt to regulate the Tiber River. Boatwright also calls attention to Hadrian's restoration of buildings  by Augustus and Agrippa and of the park-like character of the area near the Ara Pacis in an attempt to associate himself with Augustus and the Imperial cult. Especially useful for the physical history of the Ara Pacis is the author's detailed account of changes in the size and shape of the the new protective wall and staircases leading down to the east and west fronts, based partly on dated stamps on the bricks (pp. 66-72, 266).

 

Boito, Camillo
"I restauri in architettura".
Questioni pratiche di belle arti, restauri, concorsi, legislazione, professione,  insegnamento.
Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1893.
English translation available on the web through JStor.

"Camillo Boito (1936-1914) was one of the founding figures of modern Italian conservation, yet his writings on conservation were never translated into English [until 2009, in the publication cited below, from  which this annotation is quoted] and he is little known outside his native country. In this key text . . . Boito lays out a theory of conservation that rejects the dualism between the stylistic restoration school of Viollet-Le-Duc and the pure conservation school of John Ruskin and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. The text is organized as a Socartic dialogue between preservationists, which exposes the absurdity of rigid adherence to either prerspective. From the dialectic, Boito's own approach emerges as a synthesis of elements from both schools. He summarizes his theory in seven points at the conclusion, advocating a critical philosophical approach that distinguishes between layers of intervention in order to present the historical structuring of buildings in their material authenticity. Boito's theory  recognizes that any intervention is necessarily based on value judgments. To that end he asked that perservationists question their own prejudices when handling the material remains of the past" (Editor's introduction to "Restoration in Architecture: First Dialogue", Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism; GSAPP, Columbia University; vol.6, no.1, Summer 2009, pp. 68-83).

 

Boito, Camillo
"I Restauratori".
Lecture given 7 June 1884, Turin.
Published Florence: G. Barbera, 1884.
Republished in Giuseppe La Monica, Ideologie e Prassi del Restauro con Antologia di Testi.
Palermo: Libreria Nuova Presenza, 1974; pp. 17-25.

"Considered the founder of the modern approach to restoration, Camillo Boito occupies an important place in any history of the subject. Between the extreme positions of Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc, Boito takes an intermediate path that was adopted by Giovannoni and by the Vienna School (Riegl, Dvorák) and later  codified at the International Congress of Athens (1931). Boito rejects the principle of stylistic unity in restoration, which, by 'deceitful falsification,' removes all traces of the passage of time. Instead, he proposes an approach to the monument as a document of art and history. Concened with the problem of authenticity, Boito advocates, in addition to the criterion of minimal intervention, principles that insist on the visibility of nonoriginal elements added during restoration and on scrupulous documentation". 
Annotation quoted from Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heitage, ed. Nicholas Stanley Price, M. Kirby Talley Jr., and Alessandra Meluxcco Vaccaro (LA: The Getty Conservation Institute, 1996),  p.460.

 

Boito, Camillo and Cesare Birignani
"Restoration in Architecture: First Dialogue".
Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism..
Vol.6, No.1 (Summer 2009), pp. 68-83.
English translation of pages 3-67 of Questioni pratiche di belle arti, restauri, concorsi, legislazione, professione,  insegnamento, 1893, listed above.
Available on the web through JStor.

 

Bonelli, Renato
"Restoration and Conservation: Principles of Architectural and Urban Restoration and Conservation".  
Encyclopedia of World Art.
Vol. 12, col. 194-197.
New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 196.;

 

Booth, A.
“Venus of the Ara Pacis”.
Latomus.
Vol. 25 (1966), pp. 873-879.

 

Borbein, Adolf H.
“Die Ara Pacis Augustae: Geschichtliche Wirklichkeit und Programm”.
Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts (Jdl).
Vol. 90 (1975), pp. 242-266

Major publication describing the relationship of the Ara Pacis Augustae to previous Greek art especially related Greek altar types.

 

Borbein, Adolf H.
“Zur Geschichte der Wertschätzung und Verwendung von Gisabgüssen antiker Skulpturen (insbesondere in Deutschland und in Berlin)”.
Les moulages de sculptures antiques et l’histoire de l’archéologie. Actes du colloque international Paris, 24 octobre 1997.
Ed. Henri Lavangne and Francois Queyrel.
Generva, 2000. Pp. 29-43.
English translation by Bernard Fischer,
“On the History of the Appraisal and Use of Plaster Casts of Ancient Sculpture (especially in Germany and in Berlin)”.
Available on the web through the Digital Sculpture Project at:
http://www.digitalsculpture.org/casts/borbein/index.html

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Bordignon, Giula
Ara Pacis Augustae.
Introduction by Paul Zanker.
Venezia: Cafoscarina, 2010.

This is a first-rate, comprehensive introduction to the Ara Pacis Augustae, touching on all aspect of the monument and closely related material. A 133 page paperback, handsomely produced, with over 100 small but good quality photographs and diagrams, about half of the Ara Pacis and about half of closely related material.

The text is so thorough, balanced and clearly written that any serious objections would be out of place. In such a brief text, it is understandable that the author does not mention some of the differing opinions and recent changes in scholarship. For example, in her 4-page section on the "Horologium Augusti", with the often reproduced drawing from Buchner (1976), Bordignon does not mention that most scholars no longer support the existence of the vast sundial diagrammed in Buchner's drawing, believing that only the meridian described by Pliny (and quoted by Bordignon) ever existed. For a discussion of this issue with comparative maps and diagrams, see the page "Meridian vs. Horologium-Solarium" on this website.

The introduction by Paul Zanker is separately listed and annotated on this website under Zanker, Paul, "Introduzione", 2010.

 

Bordignon, Giula
“Bello Gloria Maior Eris”. Alcuni riferimenti formali e ideologici per l’Ara Pacis Augustae.
Engramma, no.75 (Oct.-Nov. 2009).
On the web through Engramma.

The author argues that it was necessary for the Ara Pacis to relate to the major, famous previous models, especially the Pergamon Altar and Parthenon. Bordignon argues that while the creators of the Ara Pacis selected and combined aspects of these models in a variety of ways, rather than copying, the Ara Pacis gained stature and meaning by establishing continuity with these prestigious monuments.

 

Börker, C.
“Neuattisches und Pergamenisches an den Ara-Pacis-Ranken.”
Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts  (Jdl ).
 Vol. 88 (1973), pp. 283-317.

 

Boschung, Dietrich
Die Bildnisse des Augustus.
Das Römische Herrscherbild. pt.1, vol .2.
Berlin: Gebrüder Mann Verlag, 1993.
252 pp., 239 b/w ills., 9 foldouts.

This is the comprehensive, scholarly catalogue of portraits of Augustus. Extensive scholarly text and detailed catalogue with 239 plates of gray-scale photographs. Most of these are of the highest professional quality, all finely reproduced. Most plates include 3 or 4 different views of the same portrait, usually straight front, back, and both profiles, a total of approximately 1000 photographs. This publication is a model of German scholarship.

 

Bowerstock, Glen W.
“The Pontificate of Augustus”.
Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and Hs Principate.
Ed. Kurt A. Raaflaub and Mark Toher.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Pp. 380-394.

Bowerstock stresses the importance of high priesthood for Augustus, the office of pontifex maximus, which he assumed 6 March 12 B.C. He also stresses the interdependence of the “solarium, Ara Pacis, the conquest of Egypt, [and] the days of Augustus’ conception and birth”, writing that “they were conceived as a whole; and the ideology that they represent is precise and interlocked” (pp. 387-388). Bowersock argues that the south frieze represents a reasonably accurate depiction of a procession “on the day that Augustus became pontifex maximus” (p. 392).

 

Boyer, F.
“Les antiques et le musée de portraits du Cardinal Ricci de Montepulciano”.
Comptes rendus de l"Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (CRAI).
1932, pp. 48ff.

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Brandi, Cesare (1906-1988)
“Il restauro dell'opera d'arte secondo l'istanza estetica o dell'artisticità”.
Bollottino dell'Istituto Centrale del Restauro.
Vol. 13 (1953), pp. 1-8.
Partial english translation by Gianni Ponti with Alessandra Melucco Vaccaro published in Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heitage, ed. Nicholas Stanley Price, M. Kirby Talley Jr., and Alessandra Meluxcco Vaccaro (LA: The Getty Conservation Institute, 1996,  pp. 377-378).

A seminal paper presenting new principals of conservation based on the primary importance of the aesthetics of the original work of art or monument.

 

Brandi, Cesare (1906-1988)
“Restoration and Conservation: General Problems”.
Encyclopedia of World Art.
Vol. 12, col. 179-184.
New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1966.

A clear summary of his philosophy of restoration and conservation by the most influencial 20th century Italian theorist  of conservation and restoration.

Brandi, Cesare (1906-1988)
Teoria del Restauro.
Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1963.
Reprint Turin: G. Einaudi, 1977.
A partial english translation by Gianni Ponti with Alessandra Melucco Vaccaro was published in Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heitage, ed. Nicholas Stanley Price, M. Kirby Talley Jr., and Alessandra Meluxcco Vaccaro (LA: The Getty Conservation Institute, 1996,  pp. 230-235, 339-341)

Brandi's classic volume on the restoration of art  by the most influencial 20th century Italian theorist  of conservation and restoration.

Brandolini, Sebastiano
Rome:  New Architecture.
Foreword by Mosé Ricci.
Milano:  Skira, 2008.

A survey of some 31 recent and projected new buildings and interiors, 9 in Rome Centre, 12 in Rome Semicentre, and 10 in Rome Outskirts. These put Meier’s 2006 Museo dell’Ara Pacis into a context missing in nearly all discussions of the building, which can be seen to be classic in design, respectful of its surroundings, and finely creafted. For the Ara Pacis Museum there is 1 page of text, 5 photographs, and 2 diagrams, and a large, foldout map locating the buildings. The 4-page foreword by Ricci and 11 page essay, “State and Church”, provide a intelligent, informed descriptions of the nature of previous Roman architecture and its relation to the new. In the last sentence of his foreword, Brandolini writes: “I would like to ask the newly elected mayor, Gianni Alemanno, to refrain from demolishing the white box protecting the Ara Pacis. He should respect the efforts of the present rather than thinking that the last valid moment of Roman architecture was EUR and the Città Universitaria, which by the way is in great need of restoration”. The color photographs and diagrams are of the highest professional quality.

 

Brilliant, Richard
“Review of Simon”.
The Art Bulletin.
Vol. 53 (1971), p. 111.

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Brilliant, Richard
“Review of  Simon, 1986; Hofter, 1988, and Zanker, 1988”.
The Art Bulletin.
Vol. 72 (June 1990), no.2, pp. 327-330.

 

Brilliant, Richard
Visual Narratives. Storytelling in Etruscan and Roman Art.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

 

Brinkman, V.
 “La ricerca sulla policromia nella sculptura antica.”
I colori del bianco.
Musei Vaticani.  Collana di studi e documentazione I. Roma, 2004. Pp. 29-40.

 

Brogi, Paolo
“Tra pedate e scalfitture già ‘segnata’ l’Ara Pacis”.
Corriere della Sera.
3 maggio 2006.

 

Brunt, P. A. and J. M. Moore, eds.
Res Gestae Divi Augusti: The Achievements of the Divine Augustus.
Oxford University Press, 1967.

 

Bruto, M. L. and C. Vannicola
“Strumenti e techniche di lavorazione dei marmi antichi”.
(ArchCl).
Vol. 42 (1990), pp. 287-324.

 

Buchner, Edmund
“Horologium Solarium Augusti”.
RM 1979, 1980 (repub. 1982).
Pages 355-373, plates 129-144.
In the 1982 reprint, pages 355-373 are also numbered pp. 57-80.

 

Buchner, Edmund
“Horologium Solarium Augusti”.
Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik.
Catalogue of the exhibit in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, June 7 – August 14, 1988.
Antikenmuseum Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
Berlin: Kulturstadt Europas; Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern,1988; pp. 240-245.

 

Buchner, Edmund
“Solarium Augusti und Ara Pacis”.
Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologishen Instiututs. Römische Abteilung (MDAI / RM).
Vol. 83 (1976), pp. 319-365 and plates 108-117.
In the 1982 reprint, these pages are number also pp. 7-55.
          

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Buchner, Edmund
Die Sonnenuhr des Augustus: Nachdruck aus RM 1976 und 1980 und Nachtrag über di Ausgrabung 1980/1981.
Mainz, 1982 (“incorporating articles in RM 83 (1976) 319-65 and 87 (1980) 354-73.
Verlag Philipp von Zaber, 1982.
New 1982 “Foreword”, p. 5.
New 1982 “Supplement”, pp. 78-80 and plates 1-6 on pp. .107-112.

In 1993 Bowersock wrote that “The assumption of a preparatory phase is now made absolutely certain by the phenomenal discoveries of the German Archaeological Institute in the vicinity of San Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome. The publication of the German excavations by Edmund Buchner has revealed the full extent of the hugh and complex sundial that was laid out in the Campus Martius . . . .  It is now clear not only that this monumental work was conceived at the same time as the Ara Pacis, but that the orientation of the altar itself was actually determined by the lines of the sundial” (Bowersock, “Pontificate of Augustus”, pp. 383-384).

In 2006 Rehak wrote that “For the present, therefore, we can accept Buchner’s basic reconstruction of the Horologium-Solarium as a vast planar sundial, constructed in such a manner as to create a programmatic relationship between itself and the Ara Pacis. We can also accept that the two monuments were aligned so that on August’s approximate birthday, the shadow of the gnomon would point toward the Altar of Peace” (Rehak, Imperium, “Chronology”).

Increasingly, scholars conclude that there is no evidence for the vast sundial or the alignment to coincide with Augustus’s birthday. Nevertheless, Buchner’s discovery of the Meridian is recognized as a significant contribution to our understanding of Augustus’s constructions on the Campus Martius. 

Four illustrations from Die Sonnenuhr are available on this website.

 

Budde, Ludwig
Ara Pacis Augustae: der Friedensaltar des Augustus.
Hannover: Tauros-Presse, 1957.

 

Buonomo, Ceclia
La Musealizzazione dell’Ara Pacis. Dalla teca di Morpurgo agli eventi di spettacolarizzione recente.
Dissertation. University of Pisa. 2010 July 18.
Author’s analytical summary available on the web at
http://etd.adm.unipi.it/theses/available/etd-06222010-145614/

The most informed study of the controversies surrounding the new Museo dell’Ara Pacis, including the reasons for the destruction of 1938 Morpurgo pavilion and arguments for and against the construction of the contemporary design of Richard Meier. Buonomo also discusses the use of the new museum for contemporary exhibitions and its public reception.

 

Burford, Alison
Crafsmen in Greek and Roman Society.
London: Thames and Hudson, 1972.

 

Büsing, H.
“Ranke und Figur an der Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Archäologischer Anzeiger, Beiblatt zum Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts  (AA).
Vol. 92 (1977), no. 2, pp. 247-257.

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C

Cafiero, M. L.
“Il restaro di alcuni relievi dell’Ara Pacis”
Bollettino dei Musei Comunali di Roma.
Vol. 5 (1991), pp. 91-98.

 

Cagiano de Azevedo, M.
“Conservazione e Restauro presso i Greci e i Romani”.
Bollettino dell'Istituto Centrale del Restauro.
Vols. 9-10 (1952), pp. 53-60.

Basic study of the restoration techniques and practices of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

 

Cagnetta, M.
“Il Mito di Augusto e la 'Rivoluzione Fascista”.
Quaderni di Storia.
1976, 3.

 

Calzecchi, C.
“Rapporti fra Soprintendeze ed Enti pubblici agli effetti della tutela
monumentale ”.
Le Arti.
I, f. II (December-January 1938-1939), pp. 137-143.

Camuffo, D. and A. Bernardi.
“A Deposition of Urban Pollution on the Ara Pacis, Rome”.
The Science of the Total Environment.
 Vols 189.190 (1996), pp. 235-0245.

The author cites damage to the Ara Pacis from pollution and writes that “the heavy traffic on the Lungotevere (a major traffic route in Rome) shook the casing of the Ara Pacis severely and caused environmental damage”.

 

Caneva, Giulia
“The Augustus Botanical Code; the Message of the Ara Pacis”.
Bocconea.
Palermo: Published under the auspices of OPTIMA by the Herbarium Mediterraneum Panormitanum”.
Vol. 23 (2009), pp. 63-77.

Following the publications of Pollini and others, Caneva describes ways in which the 6 acanthus reliefs on the Ara Pacis embody specific symbolic meanings in celebration of the Roman peace. She demonstrates in more detail than previous authors the botanical complexity of the vegetal reliefs and that they show “a careful knowledge of the plants’s world and a deep observation of Nature”. In support of her conclusions, Caneva includes an amazing list of some 70 vegetal types, which she has identified in the reliefs, a chart of the hierarchy of plants represented, and a diagram of the various habitates for the plants.

The author argues more than previous scholars that everything is orchestrated to serve the message to be conveyed. This includes not only the image of continuous metamorphosis but also a strict hierarchy in the positioning of plants and the treatment of terminal ends to suggest imminent development.

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Caneva, Giulia
Il Codice Botanico di Augusto; Roma – Ara Pacis; parlare al popolo attraverso le immagini della natura.
The Augustan Botanical Code; Rome – Ata Pacis; speaking to the people through the images of nature.
Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2010.

This is a major cross-disciplinary study of the scrolling acanthus friezes on the Ara Pacis. The author is Professor of Botany and plant ecology in the Department of Environmental Biology at the University of Rome Tre. Caneva divides her volume into 2 major parts, “the Botanical Alphabet” and “The Augustan Message”. In the botanical alphabet, she identifies and describes 80 some plants represented on the Ara Pacis, identifies their location in the Roman Empire, their symbolic meaning, and distribution on the scrolling acanthus friezes. In the section on the Augustan Message, the author describes “the compositional scheme of the language”, suggests alternative possibilities for the original colors in which the great floral friezes were painted, and provides an in-depth and far-reaching interpretation of their meaning for the Augustan world.  

In this extraordinary volume, there are 223 pages, nearly half filled with reasonably high quality color illustrations. On many of these pages there are 12 or more small color photographs comparing details of the Ara Pacis with photographs of flowers, berries, leaves, vines, foliage, bulbs, etc. There are also 15 or so pages diagramming the author’s suggestions for the design of the scrolling acanthus friezes and, in some cases, how they relate to the figural friezes above. In this ambitious study, Caneva provides significant information and ideas not previously available to scholars of the Ara Pacis, joined with interpretative readings that many classicists and art historians are likely to find overly speculative.

 

Cannizzaro, M. E. (Mariano Edoardo).  
"Ara Pacis Augustae".
Bollettino d'Arte del Ministero di P. Istruzione.
Vol. 10, No. 1 (October 1907), pp. 1-17.
Roma: E. Calzone, Editore,1907.
A copy at the Harvard College Library is avaiable on the web through Google books.

This essential article, by one of the key participants in the 1903 excavation of the Ara Pacis, was the second publication (after Pasqui 1903) to provide a description of the project. Cannizzaro first provides a brief history of the Ara Pacis and its gradual rediscovery, with references to previous scholars and publications. Of special importance, throughout his article Cannizzaro describes his reasons for questioning several previous accounts and interpretations and notes where his own is not secure or is hypothetical.

He then provides a thorough description, with measurements, of the results of the 1903 excavation, which established for the first time the overall form and size of the Ara Pacis Augustae. Here also Cannizzaro is notable in describing his reasoning and basis for his conclusions and interpretations.

In addition to 2 photographs of previously known fragments, the valuable illustrations include 4 photographs of portions of the Ara Pacis as seen in the excavated tunnels under the Palazzo Ottoboni (previously Palazzo Fiano); 2 ground plans and 2 cross-section elevation drawings recording portions explored during the recent excavation; and a pictorial drawing suggesting the original appearance of the Ara Pacis with an imaginary surrounding building.

There is a brief but insightful discussion of the related obelisk and Solarium Augusti.

Cannizzaro concludes that (trans. p.16.) "the minute study of all the pieces so far come to light and those that future excavations will find will allow us to safely . . . rebuild the monument". He argues that "these glorious marbles should not be left scattered . . . to adorn the walls of museums and galleries . . . but should all be reassembled . . . the most exalted throne in the civilized world . . .  to affirm faith in lasting peace".

 

Capurso, Gianluca
“Il Cantiere e la costruzione”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007; pp. 63-87.

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Carbonara, Giovanni
"La Philosophie de la Restauration en Italie".
Monuments Historique e la France. 
Vol.149 (January - February 1987), pp. 17-23.

An informed confrontation of the intense debates in Italy at the time regarding restoration and conservation. Carbonara builds on the  approach of Brandi, arguing that restoration and conservation should reveal the artistic qualities of the work of art.

 

Carbonara, Giovanni
La Reintegrazione dell'imagine: Problemi di Restauro dei Monuenti.
Rome: Bulzoni, 1976.

 

Carbonara, Giovanni
"Restauro fra Conservatione e Ripristino: Note sui più Attuali Orientamenti di Metodo".
Palladio.  Vol. 6 (1990), pp. 43-76.

In depth review of current theories and debates in restoration. Includes a critique of Brandi's theories.

Carradori, Francesco
Istruzione Elementare per gli Studiosi della Scultura,
ed. G. C. Sciolla.
Firenze, 1802; Treviso, 1979.
Exceptionally high quality images of the title page and all 17 original engravings are available on the web from the Bibliotheca Hertziana Fotothek, Rome.

English translation available as:
Elementary Instructions for Students of Sculpture.
Trans. Matti Kalevi Auvinen; preface Hugh Honour; introduction Paolo Bernardini.
Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002.

In this famous instruction book, the sculptor, restorer, and professor of sculpture at the Florence Academy from 1786 to 1821 provides an invaluable account of the tools and techniques used by ancient sculptors, well illustrated. Article 11, pages 40-42, is titled “Restoring Ancient Sculptures”. Plate 13, description p. 70, is titled “A demonstration of various stages of sculptures being restored, including the mechanical devices suited for these operations and ways to facilitate their use”. Although he does not mention it in this book, Carradori had been responsible for the restoration of 5 slabs that we now know to have been sections of the Ara Pacis processional friezes. This included the carving of entirely new heads for those missing from the original north side processional  frieze.

 

Carradori, Francesco
"Relazione del Restauro fatto dà me Francesco Carradori scultore, è da farsi nei noli Bassirilievi già spediti per la volta di Livorno per condursi in Firenze".
Report preserved in the Uffizi archives; published by Friedrich von Duhn as an addendum (pages 330-332) to his 1881 landmark article "Sopra alcuni bassirilievi che ornavano un monumento pubblico romano dell’epoca di Augusto”.
Annali dell’Instituto di corrispondenza archeologia (AICA/AnnInst/Ann.dell’ Inst.).Vol. 53 (1881), pp. 302-332, illustrations in Mon Inst II (1881), figs. 34-35.
Monumenti dell'Instituto di corrispondenza archeologico (Mon. dell’Inst). Vol. XI  tav. 34-36; tavv. d’agg. V, W.
Italian report as published by von Duhn available on the web through Google Books.
English translation available on this website.

In this invaluable report, Carradori describes in detail the restoration he was commissioned to carry out on pieces of a retinue in preparation for their transport to Florence. We now know these to have been sections of the processional reliefs from the Ara Pacis Augustae. Although this report appears to be undated, we know that the reliefs arrived at the Uffizi in 1781 so this report must have been written 1780 and perhaps 1781. Carradori writes that he found the reliefs broken into 6 pieces in a particularly sorry state. He notes types of damage, areas where previous cuttings and recarvings had been carried out, and heads completely missing. Of special interest, Carradori descibes his reasons for leaving some previously recarved areas without change, while performing various types of stabilization and restoration, including carving entirely new heads where missing. He states that he is prepared to carry out further work should such be requested.
The 2 illustrations are of line drawings, one of a pilaster, base, and adjoining acanthus relief, the other of fragments of an acanthus relief.

 

"Carta Italiana del Restaurauro 1932". 
Drafted by the Supreme Council of Antiquities and Fine Arts. Based on the structure and contents of the 1931 Athens Charter, to which the Italians were major contributors. This 1932 charter was also inspired by the work of Gustavo Giovannoni (1873-1947), often considered the most important theoretician of conservation in Italy between the 2 world wars.
Text of the document available on the web from the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici.

 

"Carta Italiana del Restaurauro 1972". 
(trans.) "Circular No. 117 of 6 April 1972 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
The Ministry of Education in order to achieve uniform criteria in specific activity of the Administration of Antiquities and Fine Arts in the field of conservation of artistic heritage, reworked, after consultation with the Council Of Antiquities and Fine Arts, the rules on the restoration. These rules . . . are preceded by a brief report and followed by four separate reports containing instructions for:
Annex a) "The preservation and restoration of antiquities";
Annex b) "The conduct of architectural restoration";
Annex c) "The execution of the restoration of painting and sculpture";
Annex d) "The protection of historic centers".
The reports are to be considered an integral documents the Charter itself."
Text of the document available on the web from the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici.

 

Carte, Risoluzioni e Documenti per la Conservazione ed il Restauro.
Pisa, 2006.

 

Castriota, David
The Ara Pacis Augustae and the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman Imperial Art.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

In this richly contextual book, the author developes the multiplicity of meanings conveyed by the Ara Pacis to the full range of Roman viewers. He developes the parallels between Augustan monumental art and contemporary poetry and rhetoric, and historical writing, and describes Hellenistic prototypes and the ways in which these were absorbed and reinterpreted in the Ara Pacis. Castriota provides a detailed review of the various approaches of previous scholarship, describing the contributions and limitations of each.

Although the author reviews interpretations of the 4 relief panels, the book focuses on the vegetal reliefs, convincingly redressing the imbalance in previous scholarship which has focused so heavily on the figurative reliefs that the powerful form and symbolism of the vegetal friezes and the ways in which they participate in the overall meaning of the altar have often been minimized.

There are nearly 100 small, black-white illustrations, nearly 2/3 of which are phtogoraphs taken by the author. Most are valuable close-up details of plants, insects, birds and other creatures on the Ara Pacis and other related Greek and Roman objects.

 

Cecchini, S.
"Corrado Ricci e il Restauro tra Testo, Immagine e Materia". 
La Teoria del Restauro nel Novecento da Riegl a Brandi.
Ed. M. Anadaloro.
Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Viterbo, 12-15 Novembre 2003.
Firenze, 2006, pp. 28-32.

 

Cederna, Antonio  
Mussilini Urbanista: Lo sventramento di Roma negli anni dei consenso.
Rome: Laterza, 1979.

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Centanni, Monica, and Maria Grazia Ciani
“Ara Pacis Augustae: le fonti letterarie”.
Engramma, no.58 (July-Aug. 2007).
On the web through Engramma.

 

Centanni, Monica, and Maria Grazia Ciani
“Fonti letterarie antiche sull’ara augustae”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007. Pp. 5-12.

 

Ceschi, Carlo
Teoria e Storia del Restauro.
Rome: Bulzoni, 1970.

A classic publication on the history and restoration of archtiecture in Italy and France.

 

Ciucci, Giorgio
Gli architetti e il fascismo Architettura e cità 1922-1944.
Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1989.

 

Claridge, Amanda
“Ara Pacis”.
Review of Conlin, The Artists of the Ara Pacis, 1997.
The Classical Review
Vol.49, no.2 (1999), pp. 528-530.
Available on the web through JStor at http://www.jstor.org/stable/714178

Claridge agrees with Conlin that conclusions about the Greek and Roman origins of the Ara Pacis sculptors requires further study. However, she judges Conlin’s main argument weak. Claridge writes that Conlin argues that the two processional friezes “were not carved by immigrant Greek sculptors (as most would probably assume) but by local Italians trained in a local Italian tradition, under some Greek influence”. Claridge calls attention to a variety of weak areas in the evidence provided.

 

Claridge, Amanda
“Late-antique Reworking of the Ara Pacis and Other Imperial Sculpture?”
Review of Hannestad, Tradition in Late Antique Sculpture, 1994.
Journal of Roman Archaeology.
Vol.10 (1997), pp.447-453.

The extent to which careful, informed peer-review is essential to the ongoing reexamination of scholarship is demonstrated by this review of Niels Hannestad’s bold 1994 book, Tradition in Late Antique Sculpture: Conservation, Modernisation, Production. Claridge rejects Hannestad’s claim that the Ara Pacis “has been reworked so heavily that the processional fiezes can hardly any longer be termed Augustan”. In the process, she provides an invaluable exploration of the diverse nature of Roman carving and careful reading of the forms and surfaces of the Ara Pacis reliefs. In her one agreement with Hannestad, Claridge notes that the carving of the pupils and irises on the processional frieze with Augsutus was quite possibly a later touching up.   

Most scholars today believe that the Ara Pacis was originally painted overall in fairly bright colors, so that few would now write that “all the sculpture on the Ara Pacis is likely to have  been enhanced with painted details” (p.450).

 

Claridge, Amanda
Rome: An Oxford Acheological Guide.
Oxford University Press, 2010 (1st ed. 1998).

The most up-to-date and possibly the best English-language guide to Rome. The Ara Pacis is described on pages 207-213 and closely related material on pages 214-217. Claridge provides an excellent groundplan of the entire Ara Pacis including the later, Hadrianic wall constructed to protect the monument from the rising ground level. The map including the original location of the Ara Pacis is the first to show the related obelisk and meridian without any indication of the previously supposed vast subdial, no longer accepted by many scholars.
Claridge's groundplan and map are is on this website.

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Coarelli, Filippo
Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide.
Trans. James J. Clauss and Daniel P. Harmon.
Illustrations adapted by J. Anthony Clauss and Pierre A. Mackay.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

“The text is a translation of an original manuscript provided by Fillippo Coarelli that includes updated and revised chapters from three of his books in the Guide archeologiche Laterza series (Rome and Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli S.p.A.): Roma (©1995 and 2003), Dintorni di Roma (©1993), an Italia Centrale (©1985)” (p.vi).”

An exceptionally informed and clearly presented archaeological guide to Rome, Ostia, and many other outlying areas. The section “Monuments on the Northern Campus Martius” includes a basic description of the Ara Pacis (pages 296-304, figs. 77-80).

 

Cohon, Robert
 “Forerunners of the scrollwork on the Ara Pacis Augustae made by a Western Asiatic workshop. Postscript: Reflections on the scrollwork of the Ara Pacis Augustae on a relief in The Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta”.  
Journal of Roman Archaeology.
Vol. 17 (2004), pp. 83-106.

 

Cohon, Robert
 “Form and Meaning: Scollwork on the Ara Pacis, Grostesquees in Furniture Design”.
Review of G. Sauron, L’Histoire végetalisée: Ornament et politique à Rome,  2000.
Journal of Roman Archaeology.
Vol. 15 (2002), 416-428.

 

Colini, A. M. and R. G. Giglioli
 “Relazione della prima Campagna di Scavo nel Mausoleo d'Augusto”.
Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Communale di Roma.
Vol. 54 (1926), 191-234.

 

Comune di Roma
Archivio storico della V Ripartizione, Sistemazione  dell’Ara Pacis 1937.
Titolo 9, classe 5/4, fascicolo 18

 

Conforti, Claudia
“Il Museo dell’ara pacis di richard meier, 1995-2006”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007. Pp. 104-109.

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Conlin, Diana Atnally
The Artists of the Ara Pacis: The Process of Hellenization in Roman Relief Sculpture.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
1997

Conlin demostrates that the carvers of the two processional friezes of the Ara Pacis were not anonymous Greek masters but rather Italian trained sculptors, influenced by both Greek and Etrusan-Roman stone carving practices. She bases her argumet on a wonderfully detailed examination of the “technical signatures left by chisel, drills, and other tools, along with the aesthetic preferences for anatomically unrealistic, structureless figures, and abbreviated details of form” (p. 103). Her argument depends primarily on comparison of the Ara Pacis processional reliefs with Roman funerary reliefs of the first century B.C. by Roman sculptors.

Conlin calls attention to the importance of restoration in altering the original appearance of the altar. She notes the post-WW II politicized attitudes that led to the denegration of Roman art and the dominance among scholars of a “Greek master theory”.

There are approximately 250 large, black-white photos on semi-gloss paper (all photographs are of the figurative reliefs). Almost 180 were taken by the author, including many rare, extreme close-ups, though these vary somewhat in clarity. On a number of these, the author has helpfully used arrows to point out details of chisel, scaper, rasp, and drill marks. About 6 photos, also of good overall qualty, are from the Deutsche Archäologisches Institut in Rome. Most notably, there are about 50 photographs of the highest professional quality, some 15 from the Forschungsarchv für Antike Plastik, Köln, and a remarkable 35 or so from Frau Gisela Fittschen-Badura, Köln.

For any study of the physical history of the Ara Pacis Augustae, this is a key publication.

 

Conlin, Diana Atnally
“The Large Processinal friezes on the Ara Pacis Augustae: Early Augustan Sculptural Style and Workshop Traditions”.
Ph.D. dissertation. Universityof Michigan,1993.

 

Conlin, Diana Atnally
 “The Reconstruction of Antonia Minor on the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Journal of Roman Archaeology (JRA).
Vol. 5 (1992), pp. 209-215.

Previous to the completion of her 1993 doctoral dissertation and publication of her major 1997 book (both listed above), Conlin published this meticulous study of the area of the south processional frieze of the Ara Pacis where panels 6 and 7 were incorrectly joined in the 1938 reconstruction, as still seen today in the Musee dell’Ara Pacis. She notes that lack of recognition of this incorrect join of an unidentified figure with Antonio minor has importance both for our understanding of the form of the monument and for our identification of the persons represented and their relationships to each other.

As evidence, Conlin provides an exemplary review of drawings, prints, and photographs of panels 6 and 7 at various times, noting changes made and when; a wonderful, step-by-step chronological account of the identifiable changes, and the sources for evidence in each case. As such, her article is a model demonstration of the importance of reconstructing the physical history of works of art.

Her article is illustrated with 7, carefully chosen images, 2 of the photographs taken by Conlin. These show changes to the upper portion of the join and to the lower portion. I consider the severe lack of continuity between the upper portions of figures sufficient to establish that these 2 slabs were not originally joined.
Photos of this incorrect join, most obvious when seen from the side, are available on this web site.

But the convincing claim that at least one additional male figure originally stood between the 2 figures now incorrectly joined depends on Conlin’s detailed examination of an original fragment near the base of the join. Her evaluation of the possible readings of this fragment should be read by everyone.
A high quality, zoomable detail of this essential marble fragment and plaster addition is available on this website.

Without recommending the procedure, Conlin notes that “certain vital information, such as the condition of the surface edges at the breaks [of individual panels] may be available if and only if the present reconstruction were disassembled for inspection”.  She and more recently other have also stressed the importance of studying correspondence, memos, and reports, that provide textual evidence for changes, and reasons for them, made during the urgent 1938 restoration. 

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Conti, Alessandro
Storia del Restauro e della Conservazone della Opere d'Arte.
Milan: Electra, 1973.

A  thorough history of restoration and conservation in Europe.

 

Cooley, Alison
Res Gesta Divi Augusti: Text, Translation and Commentary.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

This is a major recent translation into English of the Res Gestae Div Auguisti, with a 55 page introduction, 177 page commentary, and 20 page bibliography. The commentary includes highly clarifying observations including the basis for the translation and inscription.
A composite, panoramic photograph of the 1938-39 carved inscription (restored) on the exterior wall of the Museo dell'Ara Pacis is on this website.

 

Cozza, L.a  [Lucos]
”Ricomposizione di alcuni rilievi di Villa Medici”.
Bolletino d”Arte/BDA.
Vol. 43 (1958), pp.107-111.

An important account of the reliefs from the Ara Pacis and closely related reliefs installed in the exterior walls of the Villa Medici, Rome.

 

Crawford, John R.
“A Child Portrait of Drusus Junior on the Ara Pacis”.
American Journal of Archaeology.
Vol. 26, No. 3 (Jul.-Sept. 1922), pp. 307-315.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/497938

An early article valuable as a review of previous scholarship on the identification of figures on the 3 slabs farthest right on the south side processional frieze.  Crawford’s own suggestions, however, are no longer accepted by scholars. Crawford does helpfully call attention to the ways in which the identification of persons represented on the processional friezes, most notable the children, depend on the critical question of what ceremony is represented. Crawford discusses alternatively the ceremony of July 4, 13 B.C., celebrating the beginning of the monument, or the ceremony of Jan. 30, 9 B.C., when the altar was formally dedicated.

 

Curcio, Giovanna
“Scheletri e batteri”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007. Pp. 88-92.

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D

D'Agostino, A.
“Vicende collezionistiche di alcuni rilievi dell'Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Bollettino dei Musei Comunali di Roma (BMusRoma), Vol. 17 (2003), pp. 26-52.

 

Dal Co, Francesco
“Gli strati delle città”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007. Pp. 115-116.

 

D'Amelio, Angela Maria
“Cambiamenti dell'area urbana circostante l'Augusteo (1932-1942). Una cronaca documentaria".
Mausoleo di Augusto, Demolizioni e scav:, Fotografie 1928/1941.
Milano: Mandadori Electra S.p.A., 2011. Pp. 43-53.

 

de Angelis Bertolotti, Romana 
“Materiali dell’Ara Pacis presso il Museo Nazionale Romano”.
Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäelogischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung (Römischen Mittheilungen/Röm Mitt/RM).     
Vol. 92 (1985), pp. 221-236, plates 90-95.

By studying fragments that had been in storage for years at the Museo Nazionale Romano, Baths of Diocletian, de Angelis Bertolotti was able to indicate changes and additions to the small friezes on the sacrificial alter. This important study helped to initiate a reconsideration of the 1938 reconstruction of the Ara Pacis.

 

de Grummond, Nancy Thomson
“The Goddess of Peace on the Ara Pacis”.
American Journal of Archaeology: The Journal of the Archarological Institute of America (AJA).
Vol. 91 (1987), pp. 299-300.

 

de Grummond, Nancy Thomson
“Pax Augusta and the Horae on the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
American Journal of Archaeology: The Journal of the Archarological Institute of America (AJA).
Vol. 94, No.4 (1990), pp. 663-677.
Available on the web through JStor.

Extending her previous article in this same journal, de Grummond first describes the reasons for the various previous identifications of the central goddess on the so-called "Pax / Italia / Tellus / Venus" relief on the original east front of the Ara Pacis. De Grummond then describes reasons for prefering the identification "Pax Augusta". She also identifies the central goddess and the two on either side as "the three Horai (Horae), goddesses who brought justice and prosperity through the seasons."

 

Del Prete, Federico
Ara Pacis.
Editor: Flaminia Gennari Santori.
Translators: Charlotte Price, Marcella Uberti-Bona.
Photographs Federico del Prete.
Maire Engineering: Maire Tecnimont Group.
Rome: Punctum, 2006.
Italian and English text.

An oversize book of about 140 unnumbered pages, celebrating the design, construction, and opening of the Museo dell’Ara Pacis. Over half of the pages are full-page color photographs, some double-page. Especially useful are the high quality photos of the progressive stages of the construction of the museum. Excellent photos of the people involved. 20 or so photos of the Ara Pacis itself, mostly large but taken by flash at random angles.

The most valuable contribution of the book is the series of frank, summary, 1 or 2 page statements by major participants in the project, based on interviews, describing their various roles, contributions, and points of view:
Richard Meier, Architect
Gianni Bardazzi, Senior Vice President, Maire Tecnimont
Fabrizio di Amato, CEO, Maire Tecnimont
Luciano Grassi, Site Manager
Walter Veltroni, Mayor of Rome
Mario Manieri Ellia, Urban Planner
Fausto delle Chiaie, Artist
Eugenio La Rocca, Superintendant of Cultural Heritage, Rome
Orietta Rossini, Head of Ara Pacis Office, City of Rome
Federico del Prete, photographer, from an interview with Christiana Perrella

Available as a pdf linked from http://www.punctumpress.com/AraPacispx.html

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Dissel, Karl
Der Opferzug der Ara Pacis Augustae, nebst drei Tafeln.
Wissenschaftliche Beilage zum Jahresbericht des Wilhelm-Gymnasiums in Hamburg, Ostern, 1907; Prog. Nr. 914.
Hamburg: Lütcke & Wulff,1907.

A copy of this book, digitized by Google from a copy at the University of Wisconsin, but without the major foldout for plate 2, is available on the web through the HahtiTrust.

This was the first publication to include the remarkable 1904 drawing by Joseph Durm, a surprisingly convincing hypothetical reconstruction based on the limited evidence then available.
This and 2 major plates of photographs from this publication are reproduced on this website.

Doehne, Eric and Clifford A. Price
Stone Conservation: An Overview of Current Research.  
Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2010 (2nd ed.).

Although not dealing with specific stone objects, this is the most up-to-date, comprehensive review of all scientific aspects of stone conservation. Includes a 54 page bibliography of references and a 12-page list of useful references for 24 subjects.

 

Dolari, Simona [with Eufemia  Piizzi and Silvia Spinelli]
“Ara Pacis 1938. Storia di una anastilosi difficile”.
Con una rielaborazione dei grafici di restauro a cura di Eufemia Piizzi e Silvia Spinelli (laboratorio MeLa - Università Iuav di Venezia).
Engramma, no.75 (Oct.-Nov. 2009).
On the web through Engramma.

Through study of unpublished documents, Dolari has been able to describe with more specificity and detail than previous authors some of the decisions made in the 1938 reconstruction of the Ara Pacis. She reconstructs not only some of the specific decisions but also the primary political purpose and urgent conditions at the time. She provides the names and roles of some of the persons involved. Importantly, she calls attention to the evolving restoration theories at the time. Dolari carried the story forward, describing the major study and restoration carried out by Conservazione Beni Culturali (CBC) from 1982-1990. She notes, quite rightly, that, even today, those visiting the museum have little idea of the conditions under which the Ara Pacis was reconstructed, which she notes is an important chapter in the history of restoration and of the history of the 20th century. There are 8 important archival photos, several new. There are also 4 edited graphics from the Apple Iuav laboratory, though these do not seem to teach us anything new.

 

Dolari, Simona
“Riscoperta e Fortuna dei Rilievi dell’Ara Pacis nell’età della Rinascita”.
Engramma, no.88 (March 2011); previously no.75 (Oct.-Nov. 2009).
On the web at through Engramma.

The author first reviews evidence for the date at which the Ara Pacis was completely covered with earth and debris and gradually forgotten. She notes the lack of evidence that the monument was still partially visible after the mid-2nd century CE, the date usually referred to, but thinks it likely that it may have been partially visible for several centuries thereafter. Dolari reminds us that some of the tool marks now visible were first common during the reign of Hadrian (Emperor 117-138), when she think the monument (trans.) “most likely [underwent] a complete restoration, preservation, and reworking”.

Most of the article is devoted to a review of the evidence for the dates at which major fragments of the Ara Pacis were first rediscovered and collected. She reviews dates from letters and other docujents and most importantly the well-known 16th century drawings and prints of the Ara Pacis reliefs, which she describes with care. Other than correcting a few errors by previous scholars, the article contains no major discoveries. However, it intelligently claims that what is known about such things as the  importance of antiquarian collecting during the Renaissance suggests that portions of what we now identify as the Ara Pacis may have been known previous to our first documentary evidence.  

 

Doordan, Dennis P.
“Political Thinking: Design in Fascist Italy”.
Designing Modernnity: The Arts of Reform and Persuasion 1885-1945, ed. Wendy Kaplan.
NY: Thames & Hudson, 1995, pp. 225-255.

One of 10 essays in a volume accompanying an exhibition of some 260 objects form the Wolfsonian Museum, Miami Beach, Florida. Conceived broadly, this essay is nevertheless based on in-depth research and richly describes “the complex and multiple design strategies at work in the political culture of Fascism” (p.251). This provides revealing context for understanding Mussolini’s decision to have the Ara Pacis excavated and reconstructed as part of his new Piazzale Augusto Imperatore.

 

Dütschke, Hans  (1848-1928)
Antike Bildwerke in Oberitalien; III. Die Marmorbildwerke der Uffizien in Florenz. Leipzig: Wilh. Engelmann, 1878.

Available on the web through Haiti Trust Digital Library.

 

Dütschke, Hans  (1848-1928)
Ueber ein Römische Relief mit Darstellung der Familie des Augustus.
Hamburg, 1880.

Available on the web through Haiti Trust Digital Library.

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E

Eastmond, A. and P.C.N. Stewart
Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius.
Ehrenberg, V. and A. H. M. Jones, eds.
Oxford University Press, 1955.

 

Elsner, Jas
Art and the Roman Viewer: the Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Elsner, Jas
"Cult and Sculpture: Sacrifice in the Ara Pacis Augustae".
Journal of Roman Studies (JRS).
Vol. 81 (1991), pp. 50-61.
Available on the web through JStor.

Elsner, Jas
"Inventing Imperium: Text and the Propaganda of Monuments in Augustan Rome".
Art and Text in Roman Culture, ed. Jas´ Elsner.
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Esp. pp. 32-53.

 

Elsner, Jas´
Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text.
Princeton University Press, 2007.

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Engramma
No. 88, March 2011.
Publication of the The Center for the Study of Architecture, Civilization, and the Classical Tradition (Centro Studi Architettura Civiltà Tradizione del Classic) of the Iuav University of Venice, coordinated by Monica Centanni.
On the web at
http://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=38

This is an index with links to 9 scholarly papers and 4 additional items on the Ara Pacis. These were first presented at workshops and conferences held in Venice and Rome in 2007, 2009, and 2010.
 Several of these papers are based on outstanding archival research and include a few previously unpublished images.

Most of these papers call attention to the degree of hypothetical speculation in the 1938 reconstruction of the Ara Pacis (carried our within a few months under extreme pressure to produce an impressive, seemingly complete monument), not fully understood even by many current scholars, who proceed to interpret imagery and design as if they are writing about the original Ara Pacis. These papers ask for a thorough, critical, reinvestigation of all aspects of the Ara Pacis to establish what is reliable evidence and the ways in which the monument is and is not based on this.

The following papers and items are separately listed and annotated in this bibliography:
Bordignon, Giula
"Bello Gloria Maior Eris". Alcuni riferimenti formali e ideologici per l'Ara Pacis Augustae".
Centanni, Monica; Maria Grazia Ciani
"Ara Pacis Augustae: le fonti letterarie".
Dolari, Simona (with Eufemia Piizzi and Silvia Spinelli)
"Ara Pacis 1938. Storia di una anastilosi difficile".
Dolari, Simona
"Riscoperta e Fortuna dei Rilievi dell'Ara Pacis nell'età della Rinascita".
Malachin, Filippo
"Ricomposizione Architettonica dell'Ara Pacis".
Pietà, Giacomo Dalla
"Le Res Gestae Augusti e l'Ara Pacis".
di Roccolino, Giacomo Calandra
"Ara Pacis Augustae: le fonti numismatiche".
"L'Ara Pacis Augustae nei filmati dell'Archivio Storio Istituto Luce".
Redazione di Engramma  
"Riferimenti diretti all'Ara Pacis Augustae nelle fonti letterarie e iconografiche antiche". 
Galleria a cura del Centro studi Architettura Cività e Tradizione del Classico

Etlin, Richard A.
Modernism in Italian Architecture 1890-1940.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.

 

Ewald, Björn C. and Caros F. Noren´a, eds.
The Emperor and Rome: Space, Representation, and Ritual.
Yale Classical Studies Vol. XXXV.
Cambridge University Press, 2010.

A  major, up-to-date anthology with chapters by 11 scholars, introduction and 36 page bibliography. Most of the  essays were first presented at a 3-day conference at Yale University in September 2005. The 43 page introduction by the editors should be read by everyone. On the first page they write:
"This is a golden age for scholarship on the city of Rome. Four developments have converged to produce this watershed moment. First, an intensive program of excavation and restoration in Rome has uncovered new structures and cast new light on old ones . . . . Second, the sixth and final volume of the Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae (LTUR) was published in 2000. . . . Third, the dawn of the twenty-first century has witnesed the rapid proliferation of digital technologies for the study of Rome. . . . And fourth, the monumental topography and urban history of Rome have now been fully incorporated into the "mainstream" histories of ancient Rome."

The following chapters are separately listed and annotated in this web bibliography:
Fittschen, Klaus, "The Portraits of Roman Emperors and their Families".
Mayer, Emmanuel, "Propoganda, staged applause, or local politics? Public monuments from Augustus to Septimius Severus".

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F

Falasca-Zamponi
Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

 

Favro, Diane
“The Animated Boundaries of Ancient Rome”.
Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Boston, August 23-26, 2003; Common Ground: Archaeology, Art, Science, and Humanities.
Carol C. Mattusch, A.A. Donohue, and Amy Brauer, eds.
Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2006, pp. 191-195.

 

Favro, Diane
“Reading the Augustan City”.
Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, ed.Peter J. Holliday.
Cambridge University Press, 1993; pp. 230-257.

 

Favro, Diane
The Urban Image of Augustan Rome.
Cambridge univrsity Press, 1996.

This is a rich contextual study of the evolving urban fabric of ancient Rome, "the motives for urban intervention, methods for implementation, and the socio-political context of the Augustan period, as well as broader design issues such as formal urban strategies and definitions of urban imagery" (p.i). Although the description of the Ara Pacis Augustae itself at the end of the book is brief, the ways in which Romans and others viewed their city over time, especially during the reign of Augustus, provides essential context for understanding the monument.

Following a chapter on the concept of "an urban image", the book is organized chronologically from Republican Rome to the death of Augustus. There are two useful chronological lists, one of "Buildings in Rome Associated with Triumphs, Ovatios, Victories, and Related Events, 44 B.C.-A.D. 14" (pp. 83-86), the other of "Selected Dates for Temple Dedications and Concurrent Events in the Augustan Age " (pp. 237-242).

There are a total of 116 small black-white photos and diagrams, including 10 diagrams of the entire city of Rome at various stages. For the Ara Pacis there are 5 standard small scale photos of the monument and model and 3 diagrams of the Ara Pacis area.

 

Felice, Andrea
“Fidelity and Technique of Plaster Casts”.
English translation by Bernard Frischer, Dec. 2009.
Available on the web through the Digital Sculpture Project at:
http://www.digitalsculpture.org/casts/felice/index.html

 

Fittschen, Klaus
 “The Portraits of Roman Emperors and the Families: Controversial positions and unresolved problems”.
The Emperor and Rome: Space, Representation , and Ritual.
Ed. Björn C. Ewald and Carlos F. Noren´a.
Yale Claassical Studies Vol. XXXV.
Cambridge University Press, 2010; pp.221-246.

In the conclusion to his penetrating study of the portraits of Roman emperors and their familes, Fittschen writes: "by far the most important requisite for future progress in the field consists, in my opnion, in the continuation and, as far as possible, intensification of the practice of presenting and making accessible the monuments. I have outlined the importance of this several times before, (78) but I do not have the impression that the appeal has been heeded by all scholars of Roman portraiture. There are, in my opinion, too many publications that illustrate the monuments without the necessary level of comprehensiveness, or that only present the most-reproduced aspects. (79)

78. See especially Fittschen 1978: 134 ff; but see, too, Smith 1998: 92.
79. I have elsewhere pointed out that portraits must be photographed and documented in such a way that they are useful for scholarly research. I would not have needed to make this suggestion again were the demand not repeatedly made that Roman portraits be documented visually as they were seen in antiquity, namely from below (Bartman 1994: 343; most recently, Winkes 2002-03: 610)."

 

Fittschen, Klaus
 “Review of H. B. Wiggers and M. Wegner, Macrinus bis Balbinus" (Berlin, 1971).
GGA 230: pp.133-153.

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Foresta, Simone
 “I fregi con pocessione dell’ Ara Pacis Augustae: osservazioni  sull’attuale ricostruzione”.
Bullettino  della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma (BullCom), vol.103 (2002), pp. 43-66

PDF available on the web from Academia.edu.

A major contribution to our understanding of the 1938 reconstruction of the Ara Pacis, requiring that we revisit aspects of previous interpretations. Based partly on careful study of drawings made previous to the 1938 reconstruction, Foresta has shown that the slabs on both north and south side processional friezes, as we see them now, have slabs either incorrectly joined or incorrectly spaced. In new diagrams, he suggests convincing realignments. 21 important illustrations including 6 superb reproductions of early drawings.

 

Foresta, Simone
“La Policromia dell'Ara Pacis Augustae: Osservazioni dulla Storia dell'Arte Romana”.
Colore e Colorminetria, Contributi Multidisciplnari. Vol. VIII A.
Ed. Maurizio Rossi and Andrea Siniscalco.
Maggioli Editore, 2012; pp. 689-695.

Proceedings of the Eighth Conference of Color.
Università di Bologna, 13-14 September 2012.

PDF available on the web throuugh Academia.edu.

This article makes a major contribution to our understanding of color on the Ara Pacis Augustae and indeed to the use of color and the meaning of polychromy on Augustan monuments.

Foresta begins with a chronological review of previous scholarly observations and interpretations of color on Roman monuments, especially those that describe the Ara Pacis. These include those of Von Duhn 1879 and 1881; Petersen 1894 and 1902; Wickoff 1895; Courbaud 1899; Strong 1907; Pasqui 1903; Ducati 1920 and 1925; Sieveking 1925; Brendel 1935-1936; Bandinelli 1936; Siena 1935; Mustilli 1938; and Moretti 1948. This provides a most revealing account of changing approaches in the archaeology of ancient monuments.

Foresta notes not only these author’s specific observation but even more importantly the dramatically changing scholarly debate regarding the relation between Greek and Roman art and the use of and meaning of color in their art and culture. He concludes that we must go beyond the simple recognition and description of polychromy to a more complete reading of the meaning of color images in public art.

 

Foresta, Simone
 “La Policromia dell'Ara Pacis e i Colori del Campus Marzio Settentrionale”.
Colore e Colorminetria, Contributi Multidisciplnari. Vol. VII A.
Collana Quaderni di Ottica e Fotonica n. 20.
Ed. Maurizio Rossi.
Maggioli Editore, 2011; pp. 333-340.

Proceedings of the Seventh National Conference of Color.
Sapienza Università di Roma, 15-16 September 2011.

PDF available on the web throuugh Academia.edu.

This 8 page article, with extensive text on each of 7 pages, elaborates the meaning of polychrome on the Ara Pacis Augustae more broadly than any previous publication. In the first section, the author carefully recounts the evidence for colored pigments on the monument, the color of each and its location. In the following sections, Foresta describes the associative meanings of the large, park-like Northern Campus Martius, on which the Ara Pacis Augustae and other major monuments of Augustus were located. Here he provides quotes from Strabo, Suetonius, and especially Virgil to show the significant similarities between the northern Campus Martius and the Elysian Fields. He notes that the marble Augustan buildings stood on the green carpet of the Northern Camous Martius just as the figurative reliefs on the Ara Pacis stood on the larger base of the lush green acanthi reliefs. Foresta convincingly argues the "value of color not only within the narrow confines of the decoration of the altar but more broadly within the complex system of topographcial references in the area".

There are 3 illustrations including one of the color reconstruction of the exterior walls of the Ara Pacis as realized by S. Borghini and R. Carlani.

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G

Galinsky, Karl
“The Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Making Classical Art: Process and Practice.
Ed, Roger Ling.
Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus Pub. Ltd., 2000.
Chapter 9, pp. 141-154, including 10 small, gray-scale illustrations.

This and the comparble section in Galinsky, 1996, are arguably the best brief descriptions of the Ara Pacis. The texts are nearly identical, with a few upgrades in this 2000 chapter. Both are remarkably enlightening in calling attention to the overall concepts that make the Ara Pacis a masterpiece of Augustan design. “Both on the technical level and in terms of overall conceptualiziation and artistry, the Ara Pacis is a paradigm of the marriage of Greek and Roman”. Galinsky writes that “the function of the Ara Pacis is enhanced by its combination of sophistication in design and concept with accessibility for a non-elite populace”. “There was an exquisite balance between stylizatuon and informality”;  “it appealed to a variety of people and sensibilities”. “The structure and function of the building exhibit the same qualities of dynamic tension between formal variety and unified conceptualizaton”. “The challenge undertaken by the artists was to convey the many dimensions and associations of the Augustan peace”. Each of these concepts is concisely illustrated.

Galinsky, Karl
Augustan Culture: An Interpretative Introduction.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996.

The author describes his book as a “synoptic study of the main aspects of Augustan culture” aiming “to present a unified . . . overview of Augustan culture in its various manifestations.” In his preface, he warns us that “the scholarship on virtually all the subjects treated here is controversial” and stresses that “Augustan culture, and especially the arts, architecture, and poetry, were a sophisticated and cosmopolitan blend of many traditions”.

The chapter on “Art and Architecture” includes 8 pages of text and 5 of illustrations on the Ara Pacis and there are references within other sections of the book. The value for anyone studying the Ara Pacis is the rich, multifaceted, comprehensive context the book provides. Galinsky puts several key concepts especially well. He calls attention to the “dynamic tension” in the altar “between formal variety and unified conceptualization”. He stresses that the monument was created with an “intentional multiplicity of meanings” and that it “solicits the viewers’ participation rather than suffocating it with the massive onslaught of frozen neoclassical forms”.

 

Galinsky, Karl
“Venus in a Relief of the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
American Journal of Archaeology (AJA).
Vol. 70 (1966), pp. 223-243.
Available on the web through JStor.

 

Galinsky, Karl
“Venus, Polysemy, and the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
American Journal of Archaeology (AJA).
Vol. 96 (1992), pp. 457-475.
Available on the web through JStor. 

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Gardthausen, Viktor Emil (1843-1925)
Der Altar des Kaiserfriedens: Ara Pacis Augustae;
mit drei abbildungen und zwei tafeln.
Leipzig: Verlag von Veit & Comp., 1908.
A pdf of a copy at the Widener Library, Harvard, is avaiable on the web through Google book

The frontispiece consists of 2 high quality, full-page photos of the left and right slabs of the Aeneas relief, and 4 small photographs of processional reliefs from plate 6 of Petersen. On p.10, there is a proposed floor plan of the enclosing precinct wall.

 

Gardthausen, Viktor Emil
Augustus und seine Zei.
Leipzig: B. G. Teuber,1896.
Vol.1, pp. 499, 838-861; vol. 2, pp. 494 ff.

 

Gargano,. Maurizio
“ Un nuovo museuo per l’ara pacis augustae: esperienza quotidiana e forme di una  città”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007. Pp. 111-114.

 

Gatti, Guglielmo (1905-1981)
Ara Pacis Augustae. Criteri seguiti durante la ricostruzione (1937-1938) e proposte di modifiche.
Unpublished typescript no. 11727, dated May 2,1949, to Salvatore Aurigemma, Soprintendente dei Beni Archeoloigici del Lazio.
Rome: Archivio Centrale dello Stato.
Carte Gatti, 17, F. 24. 

This important document should be studied for insights into the approaches taken to the reconstruction of the Ara Pacis Augustae, forced by the extreme time pressure for completion.

 

Gatti, Guglielmo (1905-1981)
“Ara Pacis Augustae: Le Vicende”.
Ara Pacis Augustae, ed. Pino Stampini.
Dibattiti rotariani, rivista monografica del Rotary club Roma Sud.
Vol. 3, nos. 5-6 (1970) pp. 31-57.
Direttore responsable Alberto Pugliese.
Rome: Edizioni del Tritone, 1970.   

This is a first-hand account of the Ara Pacis Augustae and its 1938 pavilion from 1937 to 1970, written by one of Italy’s most distinguished scholar archaeologist-draghtsman. Guglielmo Gatti (1905-1981) was Moretti’s principal collaborator in the 1937-38 excavation and reconstruction of the monument in its new location and later Superintendent of Museum, Galleries, Monuments and Excavations of the City of Rome, making this is a uniquely informed account of these years.

Following a survey of the pre-1937 history of the Ara Pacis Augustae, Gatti provides a careful description of the 1937-38 excavation, its discoveries, and comments on the reconstruction of the monument. He then describes the construction of the 1938 pavilion and changes to the Ara Pacis and pavilion during and after the Second World War. There is an especially informative description of the physical problems caused by the hurried and low quality construction of the pavilion and of the debates surrounding possible solutions.

Gatti writes that “three possible solutions remained in consideration: modifying the pavilion, moving the Ara Pacis to the Mausoleum of Augustus (in a reconstructed hall instead of the old “Augusteo”), relocating the monument to a hall of the Baths of Diocletian.”

(trans. Max Maller) “Time passed; not a single one of the three solutions emerged as the Minister of Public Education's preference . . . .  Thousands of visitors continued to visit, admire and study the Ara Pacis, disregarding the obviously provisional conditions of the pavilion, which nevertheless continued to demand necessary maintenance.”

“Just last year [1969], after the Minister of Public Education declared his intent to refuse the relocation of the Ara Pacis, the comune proposed the refurbishment of the pavilion with the stipulation for new windows between the pillars, according to the original designs of Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo, for the purposes of providing visibility of the monument outside the building and shielding it from smog—since many justified concerns had been raised against keeping the Ara Pacis out in the open air. And one could indeed say that it had been kept in the open air, which had allowed for unrelenting clouds of dust to be blown on to the precious monument through the magnificent windowless façade above the temporary wall unit.”

“Quite unexpectedly, while the comune was fine-tuning the project and raising funds for its realization, the Mayor of Rome received a generous offer of assistance from Mr. Carlo d’Amelio, Governor of the 188th District of the International Rotary Club. The Club would provide, at its own expense, with additional contributions from an assortment of banks, agencies, institutions, associations and individuals, for the refurbishment of the Ara Pacis pavilion.”
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . .  .  .  .
“The municipal government greeted the offer joyfully during their proceedings on April 24, 1970 . . .  Work began punctually on July 6, 1970 and was brought to completion by October 10.”

“In this manner, the complex affair of the Ara Pacis Augustae, recorded exhaustively above, can finally be considered complete.”   
(trans. Max Maller)

Ten large, high quality black-white reproductions as part of article plus 6 additional immediately following. These provide the most informative photographs of the interior of the pavilion with Ara Pacis from 1940 to 1970. Three of these are reproducd on this website.

 

Gatti, Guglielmo (1905-1981)
Carte Gatti.
Archivio Centrale dello Stato.

Folders (carte) and notebooks by Giuseppe, Edoardo and Guglielmo Gatti, including documentation of the archaeological excavation and finds in the City of Rome and suburbs.

 

Gatti, Guglielmo (1905-1981)
“Il Mausoleo di Augusto, studio di ricostruzione”.
Capitolium, vol. 10, (1934), pp. 457-464.

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Gatti, Guglielmo (1905-1981)
“Nuove Observazioni sul Mausoleo di Augusto”
Estrato da L’Urbe, Anno III, N. 8 – Agosto 1938 – XVI,
pp. 33-49 (pp. 1-17). Includes mention of the Ara Pacis.

 

Gatti, Guglielmo (1905-1981)
“Si Puo Valoizzare Il Mausoleo di Augusto?”
Amor di Roma.
Roma:  Arte della Stampa, 1956; pp.173-178.
Republished in Gatti, Topografia ed Edilizia di Roma Antica, 1989, listed and annotated below.

In this important 6-page article, Gatti proposes the enhancement of the Mausoleum of Augustus by converting it into a large Museo Augusteo. In addition he proposes that the Ara Pacis Augustae eventually be installed in the Mausoleum at the center of a large, well-lit central hall, 30 meters in diameter and 12 meters high, invisible from the outside. He argues for the appropriateness of the Mausoleum as the home for the Ara Pacis "on which the major part of the personages buried in the cell below are figured".

Gatti includes 3 of his drawings of the Mausoleum.
Figure 1 is a pictorial drawing of the exterior, main south front.
Figure 2 is a diagram-plan of Gatti’s recommendation for the restoration of the Mausoleum, with the Ara Pacis placed at the center of a large, circular central room, and with the 12 encircling compartments restored for eventual use as exhibition rooms.
Figure 3 shows 2 cross-section drawings of the Mausoleum: "above, the current state; below, with the reconstruction of missing parts to be used as exhibition halls related to  the Mausoleum, at the center the hall of the Ara Pacis".
These 3 drawings are reproduced on this website.

 

Gatti, Guglielmo (1905-1981) 
Topografia ed Edilizia di Roma Antica.
Ristampa anastatica di tutti gli articoli di Guglielmo Gatti.
Studi e Materiali del Museo della Civiltà Romana n. 13.
Pubblicato a cura della Ripartizione del Comune di Roma.
Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1989.

An impressive anthology of Guglielmo Gatti’s articles, demonstrating again his major contributions to our understanding of the Piazza Augusto Imperatore, Mausoleum, Ara Pacis, and 1938 pavilion. There are serviceable gray-scale illustration. Articles relevant to the Ara Pacis include:

"Il Mausoleo di Augusto: studio di ricostruzione”, pp. 25-32,
Estratto dalla Rivista “Capitolium n. 9 – Settembre 1934 – XII, pp. 1-8.

“Nuove Observazioni sul Mausoleo di Augusto”
Estrato da L’Urbe, Anno III, N. 8 – Agosto 1938 – XVI,
pp. 33-49 (pp. 1-17). Includes mention of the Ara Pacis.

“Si Puo Valorizzare il Mausoleum di Augusto?”
Estratto da Te Roma Sequor,  1956. 
pp. 51-56  (no original pages given).

Listed and annotated  above as first published:
Gatti, Giglielmo; "Si Puo Valoizzare Il Mausoeo di Augusto?”; Amor di Roma. Roma:  Arte della Stampa, 1956; pp.173-178.

Ghirardo, Diane
Italy: Modern Architecture in History.
London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2013; pp. 193-195.

A survey of Italian architecture from the late 19th century to 2010. The author restates the valid criticisms of the 2006 Museo dell'Ara Pacis, designed by Richard Meier, such as the lack of ramps to allow more direct viewing of the processional friezes and the steel and opaque glass sunshades that throw so-called "zebra  stripes" when their is intense sun on sections of the monument.  Unfortunately, more like a newspaper critic than an architectural historian, she takes an aggressive position throughout: "Meier indeed scrawled his name triumphantly on a travertine slab near the entrance". The lack of a single observation mentioning any of the succeses of the new building calls her objective judgment into question. Ghirardo criticises the "function" of the new building, nowhere mentioning that it achieves its main function with the highest world-class standards, the preservation of the Ara Pacis from the extreme urban pollution which was the main reason for the new building. There is no mention of the flowing exterior staircase or fountain, both popular gathering places for the public. She writes that Rome did not need the building enlarged into a small museum with its own auditorium, without noting the major success of its contemporary exhibitions and public programs. One small black-white photo by the author including a detail of the Valentino exhibition and  corner of the monument.

 

Gianighian, Giorgio
"Italy".
Policy and Law in Heritage Conservation.
ed. Robert Pickard.
London & New York: Spon Press, 2001; pp. 184-206.

 

Giglioli, Giulio Quirino
"Per il secondo millenario di Augusto".
Atti del 2 Congresso Nazionale di Studi Romani.
Vol. 1, pp. 277-280.
Roma 1931.

"Giulio Quirino Giglioli presented a paper that put forward the idea of an extensive programme of celebrations to commemorate ["the celebration of the 2000-year anniversary of Augustus' birth"]. . . . "The symbolic centrepiece of the celebraton involved, first, the reconfiguration of the area around the decaying Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome (including the restoration of the monument itself) . . . and, second, the reconstruction of Ara Pacis."  (Kallis, 2011, pp. 812-813).

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Giovanni, Gustavo
Il Restauro dei Monumenti.
Rome: Cremonese, 1943.

A philosophical argument for the primary documentary value of the monument.

 

Giovannoni, Gustavo (1873-1947)
"Città vecchia ed edilizia nuova", 1913.

The most important of his many influencial essays on urban development and the diversity of the historic city center. Throughout his career, Giovannoni promoted the significance of Italy's artistic and historic heritage and the importance of its conservation.

Giovannoni, Gustavo (1873-1947)
"La Conferenza Internazionale di Atene per il Restauro dei Monumenti".
Bollettino d’arte del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione.
1931, 204.

Giovannoni, Gustavo (1873-1947)
Il restauro dei monumenti.
Rome, 1946.

 

Giovannoni, Gustavo (1873-1947)
Vecchie citta' ed edilizia nuova.
Torino, 1931 (2nd ed. 1995).

Steven W. Semes clearly describes the importance of this book in the history of Italian restoration: "Giovannoni believed that the historic centers of the great European cities could be adapted to modern life without destroying their architectural character, not by the massive demolitions required by the model of Hausmann's Paris, but by what he called diradamento—a thinning out or pruning of the urban fabric, as one cares for a forest by clearing underbrush and trimming the trees. . . .
Giovannoni was a consistent critic of the Mussolini regime's clearance operations, in which thousands of medieval and Renaissance buildings were destroyed. . . . His public opposition aroused the anger of the Duce, a risky thing to do under Fascist rule. In 1945, as the Second World War was ending, Giovannoni wrote with a poignant sense that his brave defense of the historic city was not embraced by the rising generation of Modernist architects and designers, who sought to supplant the building traditions of Italy with the Modern Movement ideas imported from abroad."
Semes essay posted on the web Feb. 6, 2012.

 

Gizzi, S.
“Tra università e istituzioni di tutela: Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo, Furio Fasolo e Bruno Maria Apollonj-Ghetti”.
La facoltà di architettura dell’università “La Sapienza” dalle origini al Duemila. Discipline, docenti, studenti; a cura V. Fianchetti Pardo ed.
Rome, 2001. Pp. 411 ff.

 

Gobbi, Cecilia
“Storia delle esposizionni dell’Ara Pacis”.
Bollettino dei Musei Comunali di Roma (BMusRoma), ns. 17 (2003), pp.53-78.

 

Gori, Anton Francesco
Inscriptiones antiquae in Etruriae urbibus exstantes.
Florence, 1727.    3 vols

Includes an engraving which is the earliest known image of the Pax / Italia / Tellus / Venus relief panel. The panel had been redicovered and unearthed in 1568. This print shows that many of the restorations to the relief as we see it today were carried out between 1568 and 1727.  A photo of this engraving with caption is on this website.

 

Gregatti, Vittorio
“Un Tassello della tradizione moderna”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007.  P.123.

 

Gregory, A. P.
“Powerful Images: Responses to Portraits and the Political Use of Images in Rome”.
Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 7 (1994), pp. 80-99.

Grossman, Janet Burnett; Jerry Podany, and Marion True, eds.
History of Restoration of Ancient Stone Sculptures.
Papers delivered at a symposium organized by the Department of Antiquities and Antiquities Conseravtion of the J. Paul Getty Museum and held at the Museum 25-27 October 2001.
Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003.

A publication of 20 papers from an immensely productive conference that dealt broadly with the derestoration and rerestoration of ancient sculpture. A series of case studies were presented by conservators, curators, art historians and other experts from Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and the US. There are over 100 small but high quality gray-scale photos and 15 excellent color plates. The subject is of immense importance and was followed up by a second conference held at the Getty March 2003, “Re-Restoring Ancient Stone Sculpture”.
The introduction by Jerry Podany is seperately listed and annotated in this web bibliography.
The only paper that dealt directly with the Ara Pacis Augustae was Giovanna Martellotti's "Reconstructive Restorations of Roman Sculptures: Three Case Studies", separately listed and annotated in this web bibliography. Illustrations of 8 details of the Ara Pacis from this paper, with the author’s quotes, are reproduced on the web site.  

 

Guizzi, F.
Augusto, La Politica della Memoria.
Rome, 1999.

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H

Hanell, K.
“Das Opfer des Augustus an der Ara Pacis”.
Opuscula Romana (OpRom)
Vol. 2 (1960), pp. 31-123.

 

Hannestad, Niels
“Late Antique Reworking of the Ara Pacis?”
Journal of Roman Archaeology (JRA)
Vol. 13 (1999), pp. 311-318.
Available on the web from the Journal of Roman Archaeology.

Following the 1994 publication of his own Tradition in Late Antique Sculpture and Claridge’s 1997 critical review and Conlin’s 1997 book, Artists of the Ara Pacis, Hannestad “return[s] to some of the disputed points”. He presents persuasive evidence that much the 2 processional friezes were reworked in antiquity, some extensively. By describing these as “restored to death”, Hannestad argues for much more extensive recarving of the original south processional frieze with Augstus than other scholars have claimed.

The article consists of 5 pages of text and 6 carefully chosen, high-quality gray-scale photographs. Using these, Hannestad describes several heads in which the faces are now flatter and more smoothly carved than the hair, which is full bodied, roughly weathered, and oddly protrudes over the faces below. Hannested claims that these indicate antique reworking of the faces while leaving the hair in its original but weathered form. The different degrees of weathering between hair and face in some of the heads convinces Hannestad that a long span of time had passed between the original carving and the later refreshing.

Hannestad also notes, convincingly, that there is an extreme contrast between the surviving surface of the exterior scrolling acanthus friezes and garlands on the interior walls in comparison with the more roughly carved surfaces of the figural sculpture, as we see it today. His concluding sentence that “only the floral parts, the scrolls and the garlands, give a true impression of the original Augustan masterpiece” depends on our interpretation of the term “true impression” but clearly takes a more extreme position than other scholars.

For the strongest rejection of Hannestad’s position, see Amanda Claridge, “Late-antique Reworking of the Ara Pacis and Other Imperial Sculpture?”, Journal of Roman Archaelogy, Vol. 10 (1997), pp. 447-453.

 

Hannestad, Niels
Roman Art and Imperial Policy.
Aarhus: Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1986.
Previously published as Jutland Archaeological Society Publications, Vol. 19 (1986).

A much revised and expanded version of the author’s 1976 book, Romersk kunst som propananda – Aspekter af kunstens brug og function I det romerske Samfund. Hannestad’s aim is “to elucidate the form and functon of state art and propaganda in Rome in the Republican and Imperial periods”. He gives special attention to coins, which he writes comprise “perhaps the most important single source materal for elucidating the political economic and social history of the Roman empire”.

Chapter 2 of the book’s 7 chapters is titled ”The Augustan Principate”, which includes a 13 page section on “The Ara Pacis Augustae”. This is an informative, fairly standard description of the 2 processional friezes and the 4 figurative relief panels. Although the author describes the vegetal reliefs as “easily the  finest executed  during the Roman period”, he provides no discussion of its form and function as state propagada.

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Hannestad, Niels
Tradition in Late Antique Sculpture: Conservation,  Modernisation, Production.
Acta Jutlandica, Vol. 69, No. 2.
Humanities Series 69.
Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1994.

A major publication for study of the physical history of the Ara Pacis. Hannestad’s book “takes as its starting-point the fact that much Roman sculpture was reworked in a later period” (p.5). In Part 1, “Conservation & Modernization – Some Case Studies”, some 35 pages are devoted to the Ara Pacis, including 32 gray-scale photographs, small but almost all of high quality. He describes the various reasons for which marble sculpture was reworked, emphasizing reworking “because of wear or weathering or when the style was considered sufficiently outmoded to require alteration”. Hannestad describes, in careful detail with accompanying detail photographs, the characteristics of the various tools and surface treatments, attempting to identify unrestored areas and to date the various reworkings. Through comparison with a variety of dated marble examples, he concludes that the evidence points strongly to a thorough restoration carried out in the late Tetrarchic-early Constantinian period”, (p.66), around 300 and the early 4th century, planned and begun most likely by Maxentius. He writes that, for the most part, “the team that carried out the restoration of the Ara Pacis was . . . concerned not to violate the style of the Augustan moment” (p.62).

The extent to which the surface of the marble reliefs of the Ara Pacis retain their original carving is, of course, essential to our reading of those reliefs. It is well known that the expression and thus the meaning of most of the figures on the original North side processional frieze has been significantly altered by the substitution of entirely new faces and major recarving of others. But scholars disagree about the extent to which this is true of the original south processional frieze with Augustus.

 

Haselberger, Lothar
“A debate on the Horologium of Augustus: controversy and clarifications, with responses by P. J. Heslin and M. Schütz and additional remarks by R. Hannah and G. Alföldy.”
Journal of Roman Archaeology.
Vol. 24 (2011), pp. 47-73.

 

Haselberger, Lothar, David Gilman Romano, et. al
“Mapping Augustan Rome”.
Journal of Roman Archaeology (JRA), Supplementary Series No.50.
Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2002.

 

Haselberger, Lothar and John Humphrey, eds.
Imaging Ancient Rome: Documentation-Visualization-Imagination.
Proceedings of the Third Williams Symposium on Classical Architecture held at the American Academy in Rome, the British School at Rome, and the Deutsches Arhäologisches Institut, Rome, on May 20-23, 2004.
Journal of Roman Archaeology (JRA), Supplementary Series, No. 61.
Portsmouth, Rhode Island, 2006
Title page and table of contents available at:
http://www.journalofromanarch.com/supplements/S61.pdf

This book, resulting from a four-day symposium held in Rome, May 2004, publishing 22 articles from the symposium. These explore wideranging approaches to reconsturcting ancient Rome and issues involved. A few papers describe previous attempts to visualize Rome, from  ancient times to the present. The majority of papers present recent approaches that make use of developing forms of digital imaging. Although it does not include any studies or illustrations of the Ara Pacis, the book presents promising approaches, especially in more precise and multifaceted mapping of Augustan Rome.

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Haselberger, Lothar, ed.
Urbem Adornare: Die Stadt Rom und ihre Gestaltumwandlung unter Augustus/Rome's Urban Metamorphosis under Augustus.
Journal of Roman Archaeology (JRA), Supplementary Series No.64.
Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2007.

Haug, A.
“Constituting the Past – Forming the Present: The Role of Material Culture in the Augustan Period”.
Journal of the History of Collections.
Vol. 13, no. 2 (2001), pp. 111-123.

 

Henning, MalmstroI
Title:  Ara Pacis and Virgil’s Aeneid
Malmö:  I. Iverson & co AB, 1963

Hesberg, Henner v.
“Das Mausoleum des Augustusi”.
Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik.
Catalogue of the exhibit in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, June 7 – August 14, 1988.
Antikenmuseum Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
Berlin: Kulturstadt Europas; Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern,1988; pp. 245-251.

 

Heslin, Peter
“Augustus, Domitian and the So-called Horologium Augusti”.
Journal of Roman Studies. Vol. 97 (2007), pp. 1-20.
Available on the web through JStor.

This article is a model of scholarship. Heslin corrects the commonly accepted misconception that there was a vast, fan-like sundial, commonly referred to as a horologium or solarium, on the Campus Martius. Although this idea had been debated previously, it became commonly accepted by scholars following the two major publications by Edmund Buchner in 1976 and 1979/80. Buchner claimed, and most scholars accepted, that a vast sundial had been constructed by Augustus at the time he erected the obelisk, the gnomon of the sundial, marking not only the length of the shadow cast at midday each day (which scholars still accept) but also the changing hours of the day and days of the year. Buchner also claimed that the obelisk was situated so that its shadow fell on the sarificial altar of the Ara Pacis at midday on

Heslin reviews carefully and systematically the meager, proposed evidence for these ideas, concluding, convincingly, that Buchner’s proposal was based entirely on a misreading of a statement in Pliny. Heslin is careful to separate these misinterpretations from Buchner’s valuable discovery of the meridian, the single  line on which was marked the length of the shadow each day.

 

Hofter, M, E. La Rocca, and H. G. Martin,eds.
Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik.
Berlin: Antike Museum, 1988.

Detailed exhibition catalogue with essays.

 

Holliday, Peter J.
The Fascination with the Past: John Henry Parker’s Photographs of Rome.
San Bernadino, California: University Art Gallery, California State University, 1991.

Catalogue of an exhibition of 50 photographs of Roman ruins taken in Rome between 1866 and 1879. The photographs were taken by Italian photographers, commissioned by Parker. The photographs were for sale and published in parts; the final catalogue of 2,200 plates published in 1879 as The Archaeology of Rome. Cat. no. 50.  In this 1991 exhibition (Parker No. 2978), on loan from the “Visual Arts Collections, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University”, is a photograph of the well-preserved left slab of the Numa/Aeneas relief of the Ara Pacis. At that time no remains of the Ara Pacis had been associated with the monument. Parker’s 1879 catalogue describes it as “fragment of sculpture on a Base, found in the Palazzo Fiano, and now in the courtyard of the same palace.”

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Holliday, Peter J.
“The Origins of Roman Historical relief Sculpture”.
Ph. D. dissertation, Yale Uiversity, 1983.

Holliday, Peter J.
“Time, History, and Ritual on the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
The Art Bulletin (ArtB).
Vol. 72, No. 4 (Dec. 1990), pp. 542-557.
Available on the web through jstor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045761

In his abstract, the author concludes that “the Altar’s imagery of the Golden Age . . . appealed to a significant component of the Roman populace” (one regrets to read, however, that this imagery has “usually been discussed as mere poetic allusion”) (p.542). Holliday develops his conclusion through an illuminating study of the ancient Romans’ cyclical conception of history and their fear of decline. He sees the Ara Pacis as an attempt to mark a turning point in Roman history and a significant moment in the establishment of a new golden age. He claims that this helps to explain the combination, on the altar, of “legendary scenes and symbolic images with representations of actual events;” also helping to explain “the contrasting sculptural traditions found in these reliefs” (p. 544). The figural reliefs are described in considerable detail. There are 11 mixed-quality, black-white photographs of the altar and 1 diagram.

 

Holloway, R. Ross
“Who’s Who on the Ara Pacis?”
Studi e Materiali (Studi in onore di Achille Adriani)
Vol. 6 (1984), pp. 625-628.

 

Hölscher, Toni
“Historische Reliefs”.
Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik: Eine Austellung im Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin 7. Juni-14. August 1988
Mainz: Phulipp von Zabern, 1988; pp. 351-400.

 

Hölscher, Toni
Römische Bildsprache als semantisches System.
(Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse 1987, 2).
Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1987.
English translation, The Language of Images in Roman Art,
Translated by A Snodgrass and A. Künzl-Snodgrass, with forward by
J. Elsner.
Cambridge University Press, 2004.

A seminal publication, exploring differences between literature and visual representatio and the ways in which sculptors and viewers were or were not aware of the messages conveyed in Roman art.

 

Howard, Seymour
Antiquity Restored: Essays on the Afterlife of the Antiique.
Bibliotheca artibus et historiae.
Vienna: IRSA, 1990.

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I

Insolera, Italo
Roma Fascista nelle Fotografie dell’Instituto Luce.
Rome: Editori Riuniti, Istituto Luce, 2001.

 

Insolera, Italo
Roma Moderna: Un secolo di storia urbanistica, 1879-1970.
Rome: Barri and Roma, 2001.

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J

no listing

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K

Kähler, Heinz
“Die Ara Pacis und die Augusteische Friedensidee”.
Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Institutes  (JdI).
Vol. 69 (1954), pp. 67-100.

 

Kähler, Heinz
“Die Front der Ara Pacis”
Neue Beiträge zur Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Bernard Schwittzer, ed. Reinhard Lullies.
Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1954; pp. 322-330, pls. 68-70.

Kähler’s drawing, suggesting the original size, placement, and figures on the friezes on the back of the sacrificial altar, is reproduced on this web site.

 

Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik.
Catalogue of the exhibit in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, June 7 – August 14, 1988.
Antikenmuseum Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
Berlin: Kulturstadt Europas; Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern,1988.

The following essays are separately listed in this web bibliography:
Buchner, Edmund, “Horologium Solarium Augusti”.
Herberg, Henner v., “Das Mausoleum des Augustusi”.
La Rocca, Eugenio, “Zur Einführung".
Settis, Salvatore, “Die Ara Pacis”.

 

Kallis, Aristotle
"'Framing' Romanità: The Celebrations for the Bimillenario Augusteo and the Augusteo-Ara Pacis Project".
Journal of Contemporary History.
Vol. 46, No. 4 (2011), pp. 809-831.

This article descirbes the multifaceted aspects of the 1937-38 fascist celebration of the 2000-year anniversary of the birth of Augustus, the Bimillenario Augusteo. Throughout, emphasis is on "the historical representation of fascism as the heir to the most glorious traditions of the Italian people" (page 811) and on "the transformation of fascist Italy during the 1930's into an imperial, militaristic and (aspiring) international power, with growing aspirations to be the political and cultural centre of a regenerated Europe and 'Western' civilization" (page 826).

While describing several of the other reconstructed ancient Roman structures and several newly built, the author gives primary attention to "the two architectural-urbanistic projects that were eventually fused into one: the reconfiguration of Augustus' Mausoleum and its surrounding zone; and the excavation and reconstruction of the Ara Pacis Roman temple" (page 812). Based on new research, he provides a detailed chronology of these two projects, decisions made and persons involved.

Kallis describes the reconstruction of the Ara Pacis Augustae as the more symbolic project because it involved a more major reclamation of the past and, most notably, the relocation of Augustan Rome in contemporary Rome. In describing the various options proposed for relocating the Ara Pacis, Kallis notes that Giuseppe Bottai, who was authorized by Mussolini to oversee the project, "wished the monument to be an intrgral part of a campaign to  bring the past back to life, not in a sterile environment of a traditional museum but out in the open, punctuating the vibrant landscape of the modern urban public realm" (page 827).

Based on extensive research of relevant documents, this is a most valuable contextual study. No illustrations. There are 83 up-to-date footnote references.

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Kampen, Natalie Boymel
Family Fictions in Roman Art.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009

This book is a wide-ranging examination of the ways in which the family was represented during the Roman Empire. The author describes the ways in which the family is a social construction, exploring the complex ways in which images of family expressed gender, relatioships within families, social position, and political aspirations.

Kampen refers several times to the processional friezes on the Ara Pacis, noting that they mark the beginning of the Roman tradition of representing imperial women, children, and men together on state monuments. Kempen notes the central role of Livia as wife and mother and her role in stabilizing and legitimizing the Augustan succession.

 

Keiser, Herbert Wolfgang
Das Meisterwerk: Ara Pacis Augustae: der Friedensaltar des Augsutus.
Hannover: Tauros-Presse, 1957.

 

Keller, Judith, and Kenneth A. Breisch,
A Victorian View of Ancient Rome. The Parker Collection of Historical Phoographs in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan; Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 1980.

Includes important essays by Keller and Breisch, describing Parker’s photographs of ancient Rome and his overall importance in 19th century intellectural life.

 

Kellum, Barbara A.
“What We See and What We Don’t See: Narrative Structures and the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Art History.
Vol. 17, No.1 (1994), pp. 26-45.

 

Kerr, Mintott
“Contexts for the Ara Pacis”.
Lecture for the Humanities110 course, required of all freshmen at Reed College.
12 February 1997.

Kington, Tom
"I just don't get modern art, says Italy's cultural minister" [Sandro Bondi].
The Guardian [London],12 August 2008.
(accessed 2012 Dec. 21).

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Kleiner, Diana E. E.
“From Brick to Marble: Augustus Assembles Rome”.
A video of a one-hour lecture by Professor Kleiner, given and recorded February 10, 2009, at Yale University, as part of a class on Roman Architecture.
The video is on the EffectiveClass web site, where it is described as “posted by alino on Mar 11th, 2010 in History”.

Kleiner present a half-hour introduction to the beginnings of marble architecture in Rome and an introduction to Augustus. She then describes 2 of Augustus major commissions in Rome, the Forum of Augustus (Forum Augustum) and the Ara Pacis Augustae. The final 20 minutes of the lecture describe the Ara Pacis Augustae, primarily the architectural design, but also to some extent the sculpture. Kleiner also discusses the redesign of the Piazza Augusto Imperatore under Mussolini and the 2006 Museo dell’Ara Pacis by Meier.

 

Kleiner, Diana E. E.
“The Great Friezes of the Ara Pacis Augustae: Greek sources, Roman derivatives, and Augustan Social Policy”.
Mélanges de l’École francaise de Rome, Antiquité (MélRome . MEFRA).
Vol. 90 (1978), pp. 753-785.
Available on the web through Persée.

Although this major article does not deal with the main subject of this web site, the complex and continuing physical history of the Ara Pacis, it made a most significant contribution to our understanding of the innovative imagery on the monument.

The first section presents a detailed comparison of the processional friezes on the Ara Pacis with those on the Parthenon. Kleiner reviews the important similarities but, more importantly, calls attention to the significant differences. Key to Kleiner’s article are her observations that:  “there is one significant difference that sets the Athenian and Roman friezes apart. The groups of the Panathenaic procession are segregated by sex”. “Furthermore, children are, almost without exception, absent from the Panathenaic procession”. “Nowhere in the Panathenaic frieze have children been combined with men and  women to form  integrated family groups such as may be found in the Ara Pacis” (pp. 755-756).

Kleiner notes that “The Parthenon is clearly the primary model, but I believe that other models were used for the all-important family groups of the Ara Pacis” (p. 756). “Family portraits similar to those on the Ara Pacis may be found on many of the extant Greek funerary stelai and those which postdate the Parthenon are also much closer in style to the Augustan groups than are the Partheneon frieizes” (p. 757). She presents a detailed reading of the interactions of people on the Ara Pacis friezes.

In her final section, Kleiner develops the essential connection between the representation of family groups on the Ara Pacis and the innovative social policies of Augustus, especially the aim of reversing the declining birthrate of the nobility and the danger which this presented of a decline of the entire imperial system.

 

Kleiner, Diana E. E.
“Pledges of Empire: The Ara Pacis and Donations of Rome”.
Listed and annotated below under Kleiner and Buxton.

 

Kleiner, Diana E. E.
“Private Portraiture in the Age of Augustus”.
The Age of Augustus, ed. Rolf Winkes.
Conference at Brown University, Providenc e, Rhode Island, 1982.
Archaeologia Transatlantica V.
Center for Old World Archaeology and Art, Brown University, and Institut Supérieur d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de L’Art, Collège Érasme, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 1985; pp. 107-138.

The author writes that “my purpose here is to examine Augustan private portraiture in order to measure both the impact of the new Augustan ideology on portraits made for non-imperial patrons and to establish which features of private portraiture in the age of Augustus are independent of upper class portraiture.” She begins by describing ways in which “some privately-commissioned marble reliefs with funerary portraits made in Rome in the closing years of the first century, were based directly on the two great friezes of the Ara Pacis Augustae”, demonstrating the impact of aristocratic art on that of the lower classes”. Kleiner relates many of these similarities to changes in Augustan society, such as the increased importance of Roman children.

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Kleiner, Diana E. E.
Roman Group Portraiture: The Funerary Reliefs of the Late Republican and Early Empire..
New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1977.
(Outstanding dissertations in the Fine Arts).

 

Kleiner, Diana E. E.
Roman Sculpture.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

A major, comprehensive “study of Roman monumental sculpture in its cultural, political, and social contexts”. There are 421 mixed quality, gray-scale illustrations, but including some outstanding, full-page photos. Chapter 2, “The Age of Augustus and the Birth of Imperial Art”, includes a 10 page section on the Ara Pacis Augustae including 12 medium quality gray-scale illustrations. This is a balanced description of the altar which, throughout the book, is related to other Roman sculpture. Especially informative is a 9 page section on “The Portraitue of Augustus”, including 9 photographs. Here, Kleiner describes 3 image types used for Augustus, each adjusted to the social and political message intended. These are termed the “Actium type”, “Primaporta type”, and “Forbes” or “Ara Pacis type”.

 

Kleiner, Diana E. E.
"Semblance and Storytelling in Augusta Rome"..
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus.
Ed. Karl Galinsky.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005; pp.197-233.

 

Kleiner, Diana E. E. and Bridget Buxton
“Pledges of Empire: The Ara Pacis and the Donations of Rome”.
American journal of Archaeology..
Vol. 112 (Jan. 2008), pp. 57-89.
Available on the web through JStor.

A major, comprehensive “study of Roman monumental sculpture in its cultural, political, and social contexts”. There are 421 mixed quality, gray-scale illustrations, but including some outstanding, full-page photos. Chapter 2, “The Age of Augustus and the Birth of Imperial Art”, includes a 10 page section on the Ara Pacis Augustae including 12 medium quality gray-scale illustrations. This is a balanced description of the altar which, throughout the book, is related to other Roman sculpture. Especially informative is a 9 page section on “The Portraitue of Augustus”, including 9 photographs. Here, Kleiner describes 3 image types used for Augustus, each adjusted to the social and political message intended. These are termed the “Actium type”, “Primaporta type”, and “Forbes” or “Ara Pacis type”.

 

Klemm, Alfred
“Die Sonne, der Obelisk und die Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Mainz: Max-Planck-Institut f¨ur Chemie (Otto-Hahn-Institut).
Z.Naturforsch, 58 (2003), pp.186 – 187.

 

Kockel, Valentin
Porträtreliefs stadtrömischer Grabbauten: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und zum Verständnis des spätrepublikanisch-frühkaiserzeitlichen Privatporträts.
Mainz am Rhein : P. von Zabern, 1993.

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Kockel, Valentin and Gode Krämer
“Ein verlorenes Fragment der Ara Pacis Augustae: Zu dem neu erworbenen Bild von Christian Berentz (1658-1722) in den Augsburger Kunstsammlungen".
Humanitas - Beiträge zur antiken Kulturgeschicte: Festschrift für Gunther Gottlieb zum 65. Geburtstag.
Herausgegeben von Pedro Barceló und Veit Rosenberger in Verbindung mit Volker Dotterweich.
Munich: Verlag Ernst Vögel, 2001. Pp. 107-137.
Available on the web through Academia.edu.

Building on his co-author's attribution of an outdoor still-life painting with fragment of Roman relief to Christian Berentz and its dating to about 1717, building also on Helmut Jung's identification of the sculptural fragment represented as a fragment of the Ara Pacis Augustae, Valentin Kockel develops the importance of the painting for a study of the history of the Ara Pacis. He identifies the location as the garden facade of the Villa Medici, Rome and notes that the drawing of 1774 by Joseph Wright of Derby shows that the fragment probably remained in the same location without significant change for at least 60 years. He presents evidence for thinking that the fragment represented was originally on the section of the inside wall of the Ara Pacis behind the Tellus relief, while noting the complex and sometimes conflicting evidence for the exact original location of this and other fragments and the difficullties caused by the gluing of bits and pieces of the original reliefs with concrete in the hurried 1938 reconstruction. (in correspondence Jan. 2013, Professor Kockel kindly informs me that Professor Carlo Gasparri, leading scholar on the history of the Villa Medici, has later informed him that the section of the Villa Medici represented was not the garden front but instead "a narrow passage between the southern aisle and the 'Terrazzza'".  Of course this does not affect the basic arguments of the article.)

There are 15 illustrations including color reproductions of the 2 paintings by Berentz, the drawing by Joseph Wright of Derby, and  2 photographs taken in 2000 by the author, Valentin Kockel, showing his discussed details of the Villa Medici garden facade.

 

Koeppel, G. M.
“Die historischen Reliefs der römischen Kaiserzeit, I: Stadtrömische Denkmäler unbekannter Bauzugehörigkeit aus augusterischer und julisch-claudischer Zeit”.
Bonner Jahrbücher des  Rheinischen Landsmuseums in Bonn und des Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande (BJb / BonJbb).
Vol.183 (1983), pp. 61-144.

 

Koeppel, G. M.
“Die historischen Reliefs der römischen Kaiserzeit, V: Ara Pacis Augustae. Teil I”.
Bonner Jahrbücher des  rheinischen Landsmuseums in Bonn und des Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande (BJb / BonJbb).
Vol. 187 (1987), pp. 101-157.

This is one of the primary pubiications for study of the Ara Pacis. Koeppel provides a systematic study of all the then-known changes to the monument and a comprehensive pre-1987 bibliography, including key issues such as the probably representation of the Ara Pacis Augustae on coins, which would be our only ancient Roman images of the monument.

 

Koeppel, G. M.
“Die historischen Reliefs der römischen Kaiserzeit, V:  Ara Pacis Augustae. Teil 2”.
Bonner Jahrbücher des  rheinischen Landsmuseums in Bonn und des Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande (BJb / BonJbb).
Vol. 188 (1988), pp. 97-106.

Continuation of part 1, listed above.

 

Koeppel, G. M.
“Maximus Videtur Rex. The Collegium Pontificum on the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Archaeological News.
Vol. 14 (1985), pp. 17-22.     .

 

Koeppel, G. M.
 “The Role of Pictorial Models in the Creation of the Historical Relief during the Age of Augustus”.
The Age of Augustus, ed. Rolf Winkes.
Conference at Brown University, Providenc e, Rhode Island, 1982.
Archaeologia Transatlantica V.
Center for Old World Archaeology and Art, Brown University, and Institut Supérieur d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de L’Art, Collège Érasme, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 1985. Pp. 89-106.

The author argues that “the primary inspiration for the sculpted frieze of the Ara Pacis came not from sculpture but from painting”. Koeppel examines a selection of related reliefs and paintings, noting in detail ways in which closer models, for the Ara Pacis frieze reliefs, can be found in Etruscan painted funerary processions than in less influential Greek reliefs.

 

Koeppel, G. M.
 “The Third Man: Restoration Problems on the North Frieze of the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Journal of Roman Archaeology (JRA).
Vol. 5 (1992), pp .216-218.

In this brief article (1 ½ pages text plus 4 high-quality, gray-scale photos), the author presents meticulously observed evidence demonstrating that the slight separation between marble slabs II and III of the north side processional frieze, as we now see it, is too narrow, distorting the sequence of figures. Based on an important ca.1600 drawing in the Vatican, which records the 2 slabs before their late 18th century restoration, Koeppel shows that what Moretti had interpreted as the back and front of a single man should instead be seen as the back of one togated man in the foreground and the front of a second togated man in the background. Thus, additional space is required to accomodate the missing parts of the 2 figures.

Koeppel also calls attention to the prominent presentation of the Camillus with incense box and pitcher, shown in full frontal pose with no overlapping figure. He concludes that “it would seem that the Camillus is to be perceived as a prominent Roman, probably an important member of the large family of Augustus”.

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Köln: Universität zu Köln; Archäologisches Institut; Forschungsarchiv für Antike Plastik
Ara Pacis Browser
2005.
http://www.arachne.uni-koeln.de/arapacis/index.html

This web site provides a large selection of the highest professional quality, gray-scale images, drawn from the image database of Archne: Photographs of Classical Antiquities, a research archive of the Archaeological Institute of theUniversity of Cologne, plus some from the archives of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome.

This is the finest group of photographs of the Ara Pacis on the web or in print and as such deserves careful review. At first, the images appear to be clearly organized according to sections of the altar, with details available by clicking on sections of the reliefs and friezes. However, navigation is extremely challenging and it is difficult or impossible to tell when one has seen all the images of any one relief panel or frieze. Moreover, there is strange duplication and overlap. I can only estimate that there may be roughly 250 different images in all, but there may be many more.

But the images are so exceptional that it is worth whatever time and trouble it takes to browse the site and to search for whatever images one might want. Nearly all of the photographs are of extremely high, professional quality, taken close up with high quality lenses, and professionally lit so that detail is recorded on every surface. Especially for those attempting to identify which sections are original and to distinguish different types of restoration, surfaces, tool marks, etc., the quality of the photography and lighting is invaluable. The images can be opened at large size and high resolution, a remarkable resource.

As far as I can tell, there are only a few overall photographs of the monument or of the interior of the precinct wall or of the sacrifical altar. For scholarly documentation, it would be desirable to include the date of each photograph.

Other superb photographs of the Ara Pacis and related material are available on the Archne web site, listed below.

Archne: Photographs of Classical Antiquities (reseouce creator Reinhard Förtsch, Reinhard, Project Director, Universität zu Köln).
http://www.arachne.uni-koeln.de/

“Archne is the central Object database of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and the Archaeolgoical Institute of the Univeristy of Cologne, adminstered by Reinhard Foertsch.” This is by far the most extensive archive of digital photographs of Greek and Roman antiquities available on the web. On the Archne web site, only small images are available to visitors.

 

Korres, M.
“Restoration and Reconstruction Work on Monuments in Antiquity”.
La reintegrazione nel restauro dell’antico: la protezione del patrimonio dal rischio sismico.
Ed. M.M.S. Lagunes.
Rome, 1997,  pp. 197-208.

 

Kostof, Spiro
“The Emperor and the Duce: The Planning of Piazzale Augusto Imperatore in Rome”
Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics.
Ed. Henry A. Millon and Linda Nochlin.
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1978. Pp. 270-325.

This is the definitive study of the sequence of plans for the redesign of the Piazzale Augusto Imperatore, fully contxtualized within its evolving archaeological, architectural, and above all political context. The 35 photographs and 20 maps, ground plans, drawings and models, many previously unpubished, are invaluable in following the authors detailed account. Kostof describes the challenges posed by the awkward site, conflicting interests of the participants, and authoritarian control of Mussolini. He revealingly evaluates each of the proposed solutions. The last minute placement of the reconstructed Ara Pacis Augustae within its  new pavilion is shown to aggrevate the already unresolved design of the Piazzale. Kostof presents his fully researched data in a most readable and engrossing narrative.

 

Kostof, Spiro
The Third Rome, 1870-1950: Traffic and Glory.
An exhibition organized by the University Art Museum, Berkeley, in collaboration with the  Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale, Rome.
Berkeley: University of California: University Art Museum, 1973.

A comprehensively understood account of the planning history of Rome from 1879-1950, with separate accounts of major districts; based on extensive archival research. There are 3 extended essays by Kostoff, totaling some 70 pages. These include over 50 photographs and over 20 maps, some small but well-reproduced. Kostoff also provided lists of buildings demolished and moved and a bibliographical note. The Ara Pacis is not treated separately but is informed by the rich context of this book.

 

Kraus, Theodor
Die Ranken der Ara Pacis.
Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der augusteischen Ornamentik.
Deutsches Archäologisches Institut.
Berlin: Mann, 1953.

 

Kubitschek, W.
"Die Münzen der Ara Pacis".
Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Wien.
1902; pp. 153-164.

 

Kuttner, Ann L.
Dynasty and Empire in the Age of Augustus: The Case of the Boscoreale Cups.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

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L

La Carta Italiana del restauro del 1932.
Available on the web.

This was the first official Italian state directive for restoration in Italy. Issued by the Supreme Council of Antiquities and Fine Arts of the Ministry of Education. The directive specified the importance of using the most up-to-date technologies.

 

Lamp, Kathleen
“The Ara Pacis Augustae: Visual Rhetoric in Augustus’ Principate”.
Rhetoric Society Quarterly.
Vol. 39, No. 1 (Winter 2009), pp. 1-24.

The author provides the standard description of the Ara Pacis and calls the attention of "scholars of Rhetoric" to the multidimensional character of the rhetorical message; writing that "specific readings of the iconography target certain audiences ranging from urban plebs to Roman elites” and that “the Ara Pacis gives the Roman viewer a significant amount of agency in the process of constructing a narrative” (p. 13).

 

Lanciani, Rodolfo
Forma Urbis Romae.
Edizione Quasar, 1990, a half-size edition (1st ed. Milan, 1893-1901).

Rodollfo Amedeo Lanciani (1845-1929) is considered the leading authority of his time on the archaeology of ancient Rome. His most famous achievement was the creation of the Forma Urbis Romae, a topographical atlas of ancient Rome, published in separate sheets from 1893 to 1901. By 1878 Lanciani had been placed in charge of all excavations in Rome and had been appointed Professor of Roman Topography at the University of Rome. His atlas consisted of 46 separate plates, each 25 x 36 inches, mapping most of the ancient city of Rome at 1:1,000 scale (in 1990 a half-size edition was published by Edizione Quasar and distributed by the J. Paul Getty Museum). The atlas was printed with detailed color coding, distinguishing the republican, imperial, and modern city, and planned growth, and identifying water features such as rivers, fountains, sewers, etc. Varying lines and graphic marks were used to distinguish such things as foundations, cliffs, roads, and hypothetical reconstructions. The atlas is recognized as a major advance over previous maps in historical accuracy, detail, and precision.

Lanciani, Rodolfo
"Miscellanea Topografica".
Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma..
1891, pp. 217-222.

Lanciani, Rodolfo
Pagan and Chistian Rome.
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1892.

This was the first publication to include a photo of the Ara Pacis. When this book was published, Lanciani was the most informed authority on the archaeology of Ancient Rome. In his 1 page description of the Ara Pacis, he writes: “Twice its remains have been brought to light; once in 1554, when they were drawn by Giovanni Colonna, and again in 1859, when the present duke of Fiano was rebuilding the southern wing of the palace on the Via in Lucina. . . .  those of 1859 have been placed in the vestibule of the Palazzo Fiano. They are well worth a visit” (p.83).

Portions of chapter 2 are on the web at
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/
Roma/Rome/_Texts/Lanciani/LANPAC/2*.html

Lanciani, Rodolfo
The Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome: A Companion book for students and travelers.
London: MacMillan and Co., Ltd., 1897.

This is a gem of a book. Written by the leading authority of his time on the archaeology of ancient Rome, it was a major advance over all previous guidebooks to the ancient city and remains an impressive achievement even today. By 1878 Lanciani had been placed in charge of all excavations in Rome and had been appointed Professor of Roman Topography at the University of Rome. His scholarship in his book and elsewhere is noteable for it historical accuracy and detail. This book is not a translation but was written in clear English for the British publisher. Lanciani was fluent in English as well as Italian. The exemplary maps are based on up-to-date research, drawn especially for this publication.

For the Ara Pacis, this book includes the first map showing the correct location of the Ara Pacis and 2 of the earliest published photographs of any parts of the monument. Eight images from this book, including this map and photographs and 4 other fold-out maps in color, are available on this website.

 

Lanciani, Rodolfo
Storia degli Scavi di Roma e Notizie Intorno le Collezioni Romane di Antichità. Vol. IV.
Rome 1913.

 

La Rocca, Eugene, ed.
Ara Pacis Augustae: in occasione del restauro della fronte orientale.
Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1983

In this bibliography, the 2 halves of this landmark book are separately listed and annotated as:
La Rocca, Eugene, “Programma Figurativo dell’Ara Pacis Augustae”,
and:
Ruesch, Vivian, and Bruno Zanardi, “L’Intervento di Restauro della Fronte Orientale dell’Ara Pacis Augustae”.

 

La Rocca, Eugene, ed.
“Ara reditus Claudii. Linguaggio figurativo e simbologia nell’età di Claudio”.
La storia, la letteratura e l’arte da Augusto a Nerone.
Atti del Convegno dell’Accademia Virgiliana.
Mantua, 1990 (1992), pp. 35 ff.

 

La Rocca, Eugenio
“Arcus et arae Claudii”. 
Die Regierungszeit des Kaiser Claudius.
Mainz am Rhein, 1994, pp. 267 ff.

 

La Rocca, Eugenio
“The new museum: understanding, preserving and disseminating history”.
Un Museo per l’Ara Pacis: la storia, il progetto, I materiali.
Milan: Motta Architecture, 2007, p. 26.

Authoritative account of the history of the Ara Pacis and especially of decisions taken regarding the preservation of the Ara Pacis and construction of the new museum, by the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage of the Municipality of Rome.

 

La Rocca, Eugenio
“Pietas Augusta, ARA”.
Lexicon Topogaphicum Urbis Romae.
Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma.
Vol. 4, P-S, ed. Eva Margareta Steinby, pp. 87-89.
Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1999.

 

La Rocca, Eugenio
“Programma Figurativo dell’Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Ara Pacis Augustae: in occasione del restauro della fronte orientale.
Ed. Eugene La Rocca.
Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1983, pp. 9-60.

A detailed, systematic description of the Ara Pacis Augustae in 8 subsections. There is a 1 page bibliography, divided by topic: History of exacavation and general discussion; Relationship between the Ara Pacis, Altar of the Pietà in Athens, and hellenistic altars; Ornament; Religious aspects; Alexandrian tradition of the Tellus panel; and Political program of Augustan architecture. There are some 60 illustrations, including many important details. The photogaphs, all grey-scale, are not very sharp.

 

La Rocca, Eugenio
“Silenzio e compianto del morti nell'Ara Pacis".
Athens, 2002; pp. 269-313.

 

La Rocca, Eugenio
“Zur Einführung".
Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik.
Catalogue of the exhibit in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, June 7 – August 14, 1988.
Antikenmuseum Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
Berlin: Kulturstadt Europas; Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern,1988; pp. 13-23.

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Lavagnini, Bruno
“Nota Archeologica: Ara Pacis Augustae”
Estratto della Nuova Revista Storica, anno V, fasc. 1, 1921.
Citta di Castello: Casa Edtrice S. Lapi, 1921.

 

Lawn, N.
““Liberatina nobilitas: Images and Aspiration in the Art of the Augustales”.
Unpublished MA  dissertation
London: Courtauld Institute of Art, 2001.

 

Lazzaro, Claudia
“Forging a Visible Fascist Nation: Strategies for Fusing Past and Present”.
Donatello among the Blackshirts: History and Modernity in the Visual Culture of Fascist Italy, ed. Claudia Lazzaro and Roger J. Crum.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005; chap. 1, pp. 13-31, endnotes pp. 245-250.

A rich contextual study, showing how the forms of art and architecture were shaped to forge a new Italian national identity. In her section on "Liberating the Past", Lazzaro describes the 1938 reconstruction of the Ara Pacis, its fascist pavilion and context as part of the new Piazzale Augusto Impertatore. In keeping with her entire chapter, she writes "The aspects of the past most relevant to the present were selected from an infinite number, freeing them from later accretions (contexts and interpretations in this case), framing and monumentalizing them, and establishing their significance for the present" (p.21). The article includes 9 gray-scale photos, including 1 of the Piazzale Augusto Imperatore with the 1938 Ara Pacis pavilion.

 

Lazzaro, Claudia, and Roger Crum. eds.
Donatello among the Blackshirts: History and Modernity in the Visual Culture of Fascist Italy.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.

An anthology of 15 chapters by 13 authors, plus a “Chronology of Cultural and Political Events”. An excellent contextual account.

Separately listed and annotated in this bibliography are:
Lazzaro, Claudia; "Forging a Visible Fascist Nation: Strategies for Fusing Past and Present”.
Wilkins, Ann Thomas; "Augustus, Mussolini, and the Parallel Imagery of Empire".

Liberati Silverio, Anna Maria
"La Mostra Augustea della Romanità". 
Dalla mostra al museo: Dalla mostra archeologica del 1911 al Museo della Civiltà Romana.
Ed. Giuseppina Pisani Sartorio, et. al.
Venice: Marsilio, 1983; pp. 77-90.

 

Lindsay, W. M.
Sexti Pompei Festi de verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome.
Ed. W. M. Lindsay.
Leipzig, 1913. p. 148, 13-16, s.v. Minora Templa.

 

London, John
"The Uncertainty of Fascist Aesthetics: Political Ideology and Historical Reality".
Culture, Theory and Critique.
V ol. 42, No. 1 (1999), pp. 49-63.

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L’Orange, Hans Peter
“Ara Pacis Augustae. La zona floreale”.
ACTA ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia.
Oslo: Institutum Romanum Nervegiae.
Vol. 1 (1962), pp. 7-16.
Listed and annotated as "The Floral Zone of the Ara Pacis Augustae", in the next entry below, L’Orange, The Roman Empire: Art Forms and Civic Life. 1985.

 

L’Orange, Hans Peter
The Roman Empire: Art Forms and Civic Life.
New York: Rizzoli, 1985.
Published in Italy as L'impero Romano dal III al VI secolo: Forme artistiche e vita civile (Milan: Editoriale Jaca Book, 1985).
The "Introduction", "The Floral Zone of the Ara Pacis Augustae", "Appendix", and captions were translated into English by Donald Mills.

This book by the Norwegian scholar, Hans Peter L’Orange (1903-1983), founder and later director of the Norwegian Institute in Rome, was published 2 years after his death, primarily republishing a selection of previous articles by the author. There are 235 pages, over half of large, high quality illustrations, some in color, many added by the editors.

Although the book deals primarily with the transition from late Roman antiquity to the early Italian middle ages, 2 sections deal directly with the Ara Pacis Augustae. “The Floral Zone of the Ara Pacis Augustae”, pp. 211-228, includes 8 pages of large, high quality gray-scale illustrations, half of the Ara Pacis. L'Orange provides a careful description of the 6 scrolling acanthus reliefs, which he notes are based on the same, basic composition. He compares the treatment of these reliefs with previous examples in Greek painting and sculpture and with later examples in early Christian and Byzantine art, calling attention to the remarkable realism and dynamism of the Ara Pacis reliefs. He provides various examples of correspondences between the symbolic meaning of these images on the Ara Pacis and in the ancient Roman literature of Tibullus, Ovid, Horace, and Virgil. There are important comments on the design and meaning of the swans.

In stressing the powerful symbolism of the floral zones, L'Orange rejects descriptions of the vegetal reliefs as only intended for ornamentation, or that the designs derive from ceremonial carpets, or from the actual vegetation that grew around the sanctuary or on the  Campus Martius.

The “Appendix”, pp. 229-230, is a convincing refutation of the claim by Weinstock that the monument nearly all scholars accept as the monument referred to in ancient Roman documents as the “Ara Pacis Augusta” is not that monument (Stefan Weinstock, Journal of Roman Studies, Vol 50 (1960), pp. 44-58).  

Löwy, E.
“Bermerkungen zur Ara Pacis”.
Jaheshefte des Oesterreichischen Archäoloogischen Institutes.
Vol. 23 (1926).

Lugli, G.
“The Sundial of Emperor Augustus: Rise and Decline of a Hypothesis”.
Compendium: Journal of the North American Sundial Society.
Vol. 12, no. 3 (2005), pp. 13-27. 

 

Lugli, Giuseppe
“In attesa dell scavo dell' 'Ara Pacis Augustae":  considerazione generali sul monumento".
Capitolium.
Vol. 13 (1938), pp. 365-383.

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MacKendrick, Paul
The Mute Stones Speak: the Story of Archaeology in Italy.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1960.

A scholarly and highly readable book for a wide range of readers. The author presents a selective history of Italy based on archaeological evidence from neolithic to early Christian times; organized chronologically in 13 chapters, each with a brief bibliography. For non-specialists, descriptions of the types of evidence revealed through excavations and other archaoelogical study are highly informative.

In chapter 6, "Augustus: Buildings as Propaganda", more than half of the 27 pages and 9 of the 14 illustrations (weakly reprooduced) are devoted to the Ara Pacis. These include an important groundplan from Lugli, 1938, diagramming the "fragments discovered up to 1935", indicating which are complete blocks of the precinct wall, front to back, and which are shallow reliefs of the  front or back, sawn from the original blocks. MacKendrick instructively describes the extraordinarily challenging 1930s excavation of the Ara Pacis in some detail, noting that it was "one of the most difficult and delicate excavations ever made" (p.160). However, we now know that it was misleading to write that Moretti's work "led to the almost complete recovery and reconstruction of the altar and the historic frieze surrounding it" (p.156).

 

Maes, Frans W.
“The Sundial of Emperor Augustus: Rise and Decline of a Hypothesis”.
The Compendium: Journal of the North American Sundial Society. Vol. 12, no. 3 (2005), pp. 13-27. 

 

Malachin, Filippo
“Ricomposizione Architettonica dell’Ara Pacis”.
Engramma, no.75 (Oct.-Nov. 2009).
On the web through Engramma.

Following a chronological review of the evidence for the rediscovery of the Ara Pacis, Malachin carefully describes each of the tentative reconstruction drawings and the actual 1938 reconstruction.  What is especially informative is his description of the basis for each judgment. He concludes that the current state of the Ara Pacis is mistakenly accepted as a matter of fact and therefore urges that scholars conduct more thorough studies to determine what is Augustan and what is modern.

Malcovati, E.
Imperatoris Caesaris Aufusti, Operum Fragmenta.
Torino, [1921] 1944..

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Manacorda, Daniele
“Cento Anni di Ricerche Archeologische Italiane: Il Dibattito sul Metodo".
Quderni di Storia.
1982, 16, pp. 85-119.

 

Manacorda, Daniele
“Per un'Indagine sull'Archeologia Italiana durante il Ventennio Fascista".
Archeologia Medievale.
1982, 9, pp. 443-470.

 

Manacorda, Daniele and Renato Tamassia
Il Piccone del Regime.
Biblioteca di Archeologia.
Rome: Armando Curcio, 1985.

 

Martellotti, Giovanna
"Reconstructive Restorations of Roman Sculptures: Three Case Studies”, History of Restoration of Ancient Stone Sculptures; Papers from a Symposium, October 2001, ed. Janet Burnett Grossman, Jerry Podany, and Marion True (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003).

Martellotti described the restoration of 3 ancient Roman sculptures conserved by the Conservazione Beni Culturali (CBC), a private conservation group to which she belongs. Special attention is given to the importance of understanding previous restorations. There are 7 pages of text and endnotes on the Ara Pacis, reporting on a series of studies and treatments carried out by the CBC 1982-1990. This iincludes 8 detail, gray-scale photographs, informatively described. These 8 photographs with captions and brief texts are available on this web site.

 

Maugeri, Maria
"Il Transferimento a Firenze della Collezione Antiquaria di Villa Medici in Epoca Leopoldina".
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz.
Vol. 44, Nos. 2/3 (2000), pp. 306-334.
Available on the web through JStor.

 

Mayer, Emanuel
"Propaganda, staged applause, or local politics? Public monuments from Augustus to Septimius Severus".
The Emperor and Rome: Space, Representation , and Ritual.
Ed. Björn C. Ewald and Carlos F. Noren´a.
Yale Claassical Studies Vol. XXXV.
Cambridge University Press, 2010; pp.110-134.

A paper first presented at a 3-day conference at Yale University, September 2005. Mayer concludes that "an unwritten code of behavior played out to the mutual benefit of rulers and ruled and it is this interplay between the emperor and the different constituencies within his reach that is reflected on the monument in his honor. They applauded specific policies in a socially appropriate manner that probably helped reinforce existing patterns of political behavior" (p.134). He rejects the term propaganda when discussing state monuments, speaking insetad of a "culture of public praise" (p.111).

In his section 3, "The many faces of Augustus", Mayer describes the ways in which the Ara Pacis "breathes a strong senatorial and even Republican ethos." He rejects the  many attempts to identify figures in the 2 processional friezes as specific members of Augustus's family, writing "It has been a favorite pastime of classical archaeologists to try to name individual family members whose faces are generally said to be idealized, but the attempt is futile. With the exception of Augustus' and Agrippa's heads, all portraits in the relief are generic" (p.121).

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Meier, Richard
Il Museo dell'Ara Pacis.
Milano: Mondadori Electra spa, 2007.

 

Meier, Richard
Foreword Alberto Campo Baeza, text Philip Jodidio, design Massimo Vignelli.
Richard Meier & Partners: Complete Works 1963-2008.
Köln: Taschen, 2008.

A huge, unwieldy volume, with two introductory essays and separate sections on 51 separate projects. Highly professional photographs throughout. All text in English, German, and French.

In his two brief paragraphs on the Ara Pacis Museum, the Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza descirbes the building as “a serene and silent piece, transparent and magnificently lit”. He writes, “With great integrity and skill, Meier has created a work that comfortably engages in dialogue with the historic city while at the same time exploiting to the full the important monument that presides over it’ (p. 10). In his long critical-chronological essay (p.28), the art historian Philip Jodidio, briefly defends Meier’s design for the Ara Pacis against the most damaging review by Nicolai Ouroussoff in the 25 Sept. 2006 New York Times.

 

Meissonnier, J.
“Un autel de la Paix à Lyon sous Néron: approche numismatique”.
Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Desporte.
Resúmenes de las Comunicaciones.
Madrid, 2003 (listed as in press).

 

Melucco Vaccaro, Alessandra
Archeologia e Restauro: Tradizione e Attualità.
Milan: Mondadori, 1989.

Major review of previous theories of restoration and conservation, including Brandi, related to current  issues and practices.

 

Meyer, Thomas
"Ara Pacis Museum Rome" in "Thomas Mayer - Archive":
http://tomasmayerarchive.de (then search for "Ara Pacis Museum"; accessed 2011 Nov. 6).

Magnificent collection of nearly 300, moderate-size photographs of the Ara Pacis Museum, including a few of the altar. All are of the highest professional quality.

                                                                

Michon,, E.
"Les Bas-reliefs Historiques".
Monuments et Mémoires de la Fondation Eugène Piot.
Vol. 17 (1910), pp. 157-263..

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Mlasowsky, Alexander
Ara Pacis: ein Staatsmonument des Augustus auf dem Marsfeld.
Kulturführer zur Geschichte und Archäologie.
Mainz: von Zabern, 2010.

 

Momigliano, A.
“The Peace of the Ara Pacis”.
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes.
Vol. 5 (1942), pp. 228-231.
Available on the web through JStor.

 

Morante, Francesco
“Storia del restauro architettonico”.
PDF  available on the web.

Very brief but useful summaries of the restoration theories of Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), John Ruskin (1819-1900), Camillo Boito (1836-1914), and Luca Beltrami (1854-1933). Also useful summaries of international and Italian restoration charters from 1931 to the present.

 

Moretti, Giuseppe (1876-1945)
L’Ara Pacis Augustae.
Ministero della Educazione Nazionale. Roma: Libreria dello Stato, 1939.
At the same time, translations were published in English,  trans. Veronica Priestley, and in German, trans. Ernst Hohenemser. With a few exceptions, the illustrations in later reprintings remain the same but are not as clear. A new 2007 edition includes a new 3 page introduction, “L’Ara Pacis Augustae di Giuseppe Moretti” by Eugenio la Rocca, and 8 additional illustrations, including 3 of the Meier architecture.

This is one of the series of guide books to museums and monuments in Italy, produced by the Ministry of National Education. This small paperback includes a brief but authoritative 14-page text by the distinguished archaeologist responsible for the 1937-38 excavation and reconstruction of the altar. His landmark, 2-volume publication did not appear until 1948, but this scholarly guide book is an invaluable record of Moretti’s understanding of the altar at the time of its reconstruction. The history of the monument and each part of the altar is critically described.  There are only brief comments on the importance of the altar in the history of Rome or the history of art. There are 27 plates of small gray-scale illustrations. Translations were published at the same time, an English translation by Veronica Priestley and a German translation by Ernst Hohenemser. With a few exceptions, the illustrations in later reprintings remain the same but are not as clear.

 

Moretti, Giuseppe (1876-1945)
L’Ara Pacis Augustae.
Rome: La Libreria dello Stato, 1948. 2 vols. (republished 2005 by the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato S.p.A.).

This is the fundamental study of the Ara Pacis, a de luxe, ca. 43 x 31 cm. (ca. 17 x 12 in.), 2 volume publication, by the archaeologist in charge of the 1937-1938 excavation and reconstruction of the monument. Although the volumes were published posthumously, Moretti had corrected the final proofs before he died in 1945.

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Moretti, Giuseppe (1876-1945)
“Fragmenti vecchi e nuovi del ‘Commentario dei Ludi Secolari”.
RendpontAcc.
Vols. 55-56 (1982-1984), pp. 361-379.

 

Moretti, Giuseppe (1876-1945)
“La ripresa dello scavo dell’Ara Pacis Augustae”. 
Not. Scav.
Ser. 6 , 13 (1937), pp. 37-44.

 

Moretti, Giuseppe (1876-1945)
“Lo scavo e la recostruzione dell’Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Capitolium.
Vol. 13, no. 10 (1938), pp. 479-490.

 

Morpurgo, V. (Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo, 1890-1966)
“La sistemazione Augustea”.
Capitolium.
Vol. 12 (1937),  pp. 145-158.

 

Morpurgo, V. (Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo, 1890-1966)
“La sistemazione della zona circostante l’Augusteo”.
Architecttura, (journal of the Sindacato Nazionale Fascista Architett).i
Directed by M. Piacentini.
Vol. XV, special number (1936), pp. 79-102.

 

Museo dell'Ara Pacis, Rome.
Touch screen with extensive, educational material, on display in the lower level of the Museo dell’Ara Pacis. The impressive text and imagery on this database even provides some information not available in Rossini’s excellent museum guidebook. Available in Italian, English, German, and French. Strazzula has wisely noted that a DVD-ROM of this database would allow interested persons to explore the material in more depth than is likely in the museum (Strazzula, 2009).
The museum guidebook is listed and annotated under the name of its author-museum director, Orietta Rossini.

A wide variety of information, videos, etc. is available on the museum website in Italian, English, Spanish, and French.

 

Un Museo per l’Ara Pacis: la storia, il progetto, I materiali.
Ed. Francesca Monza.
Photos Dario Tettamanzi, English trans. Irma Marcnaro.
Milano: Motta Architettura srl, 2007.

This is the most handsomely produced volume on the new Museo dell’Ara Pacis. It includes 30 magnificent professional color photographs (2 are double-page, measuring almost 28 x 56 cm, 11 x 22 inches). A few of these show the important, closely related ancient Roman sculpture in the lower level of the museum, as originally displayed, previous to being condensed to allow expansion of the space for contemporary exhibitions. Unfortunately, this also involved covering the spatially exhilarating opening in the floor of the grand hall (seen in these rare photos), which signaled to museum viewers the availability of the sculpture below and united it with the Ara Pacis.

There are photographs on nearly all of the 130 some pages. Especially valuable are a group of small photographs of construction in progress and superb ground plans, elevations and engineering details.

There are 2 brief accounts by Paola Favretto describing the Ara Pacis, its recovery and creation of the 1937 pavilion in which it was displayed. The main body of the text consists of 4 interviews: a brief but authoritative interview with Eugenio La Rocca, Superintendent of Cultural Heritage of the Comune of Rome; second a one page, standard interview with Richard Meier; third an informative interview with Dario Grasso and Larco Lozzi, directors of the work for the Office for the Historical City. The longest, titled “”Technologies for Art”, is an interview with Claudio Bazzea, head of the Bazzea Company, which constructed the new museum building.

 

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N

Nelis, Jan
"Constructing Fascist Identity: Benito Mussolini and the Myth of Romanità".
The Classical World.
Vol. 100, No. 4 (2007), pp. 391-415.

 

Nicolet, Claude
Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early  Roman Empire.
Trans. Hélène Leclerc.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991.
Originally  published as L'Inventaire du Mondo: Géographie et Politique aux Origines de L'Empire Romain. Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1988.
Also published as L'Inventario del Mondo: Géografia e Politica alle Origini dell'Impero Romano. Editori Laterza, 1989.

Very little directly on the Ara Pacis, but Nicolet provides a thorough, penetrating examination of the importance of physical space in Augustan Rome. This includes an in-depth analysis of the Res Gestae, situating the Ara Pacis physically and symbolically in Augustus’ concept of Rome and the Roman empire.

 

Nolan, Linda Ann
"Fixed Meaning: Restoration in Ancient Rome”.
Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Boston, August 23-26, 2003; Common Ground: Archaeology, Art, Science, and Humanities.
Carol C. Mattusch, A..A. Donohue, and Amy Brauer, eds.
Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2006, pp. 249-251.

 

Notaro, Anna
"Resurrecting an Imperial Past: Strategies of Self-Representation and 'Masquerade' in Fascist Rome (1934-38)".
The Hieroglyphics of Space: Reading and Experiencing the Modern Metropolis.
ed. Neil Leach.
London, 2001, pp. 59-69.

 

Notizie degli scavi di antichità 1923.
G. Scaccia-Scarafoni, G. Mancini.
“Scoperta di una lastra di marmo contente parte dei fasti Verulani”.
NSc., 1923, fasc. 4-6, pp. 194-206.

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Ouroussoff, Nicolai
“An Oracle of Modernism in Ancient Rome”.
The New York Times (25 Sept. 2006).
On the web at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/arts/design/25paci.html, (accessed 26 August 2009).

Because written by a respected American architectural critic not involved in Roman politics, this is the most damaging review of the Meier’s building to have been published. Ouroussoff does commend Meier’s treatment of the museum’s interior and the setting provided for the altar, and he praises some aspects of the exterior. However, he criticizes the building’s “self-important solemnity” and “oppressive weight”. His main criticism is focused on the building’s relationship to its Roman context, especially the museum’s surroundings. In particular, the reviewer sees a lack of respect for the two neighboring churches and the piazza, on which he finds Meier’s building unnecessarily imposes and screens.

 

Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) 43 BCE - CE 17/18
Fasti (The Festivals).
ca. 1-4 CE.

An elegiac poem following the Roman calendar, treating religious festivals, historical anniversaries, etc. Only the first 6 calendar books, January-June were completed. Several passages, quoted below, are thought to relate to the Ara Pacis Augustae. The prose translations below are taken from Ovid, Times and Reasons: a new translation of Fasti by Anne and Peter Wiseman (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Book I, January, lines 709-722
"The song iself has brought me to the altar of Peace. This will be the second day from the end of the month.
Be present, Peace, your neat hair wreathed with branches from Actium, and remain gentle in all the world. Provided enemies are missing, let the reason for a triumph be missing too. You will be for our leaders a glory greater than war.
May the soldier bear weapons only to keep weapons in check, and may nothing but a procession be sounded by the fierce trumpet. Both nearest and furthest, let the world dread Aeneas' descendants; may Rome be loved by any land that feared her not enough.
You priests, add incense to the flames at the rites of Peace, and let the white victim fall, its brow well soaked. Ask the gods, who incline towards pious prayers, that the house which guarantees her may last long years with Peace."

Book II, February, lines 57-67
"Where are they now, the temples that were dedicated to the goddess on those Kalends? They have fallen with the long passage of time.
The far-sighted care of our hallowed leader has seen to it that the rest of the temples should not suffer the same collapse and ruin; under him the shrines do not feel their advancing years. It isn't enough to bind men with his favours; he binds gods as well.
Builder of temples, holy restorer of temples, I pray the gods above may have concern for you in return. May the heavenly ones grant you the years you have granted them, and may they remain at their post to guard your house."

Book III, March, lines 881-882
When four times from then the heardsman has penned his well-fed kids, and four times the grass has whitened with fresh dew, it will be time to worship Janus, and with him gentle Concord and Roman Safety and the altar of Peace."

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Painter, Borden W.
Mussolini’s Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City.
NY: Palgrave, 2005.

Pages 71-77 are on Mussolini’s rebuilding of the Piazza Augusto Imperatore, including the Ara Pacis Augustae. Oddly, Painter does not mention the Ara Pacis in his chronology, which includes other listings for 1937 and 1938. Endnotes are on page 176.

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Pallarès, Joan Gómez
“Serpientes en el ara pacis de Augusto: una interpretación simbólica”
Faventia.
Vol. 28, nos.1-2 (2006), pp. 59-65.
Available on the web through Revistes Catalanes
amb Accés Obert (RACO)..

 

Pallottini, M.
“L’Ara Pacis e I suoi problemi artistici”.
Bollettino d’arte (Boll. d’arte; .Bd).
Vol. 32 (1938-39), pp. 162-172, 178.

 

Pallottino, Elizabeth
Architetti e Archeologi Costruttori d'Identità.
Rome: Carocci, 2008.

 

Palmer, Robert E. A.
Studies of the Northern Campus Martius in Ancient Rome.
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society: held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Vol. 80, Part 2, 1990.

This is a meticulous, scholarly study of the evidence for uses of the Campus Martius from the 1st century B.C.E. to the Christian era, drawing on a wide range of evidence such as texts, inscriptions, dedications, ceremonies, games, and structures. Section 2 begins with the “Votive Games for Augustus’ return”.

 

Palmer, Samuel Ball
A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome.
London: Oxford University Press, 1929.

Still a basic source. Because it was published before the extensive 1937-1938 excavation and reconstruction of the Ara Pacis, its use for the Ara Pacis is now primarily for recording the scholarly knowledge of the altar avaiable in the 1920s.

 

Palombi, Domenico
Rodolfo Lanciani: L'archeologia a Roma tra Ottocento e Novecento.
Problemi e ricerche di storia antica; 25.
Rom: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2006.

An intellectual biography of the scientific, academic, institutional, and political career of Rudolfo Amedeo Lanciani (1845-1929), the most prominent figure in the urban archaeology of Italy, most notably Rome, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Images from Lanciani's Ruins & Excavations of Ancient Rome: A Companion Book for Students and Travelers (London, 1897) are available on this website.

 

Panzanelli, Roberta, Eike D. Schmidt, Kenneth D.S. Lapatin, et. al.
The Color of Life: polychrome in sculpture from antiquity to the present.
Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute, 2008.

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Parker, John Henry
Catalogue of Historical Photographs.
London, 1879..

This was the final catalogue of 3,300 plates of photographs of ancient Roman ruins, taken in Rome between 1866 and 1879. Beginning in 1869, the photographs had been published in parts. These were mostly taken by Italian photographers on commission from the British amateur-scholar John Henry Parker (1806-1884). In 1868, Parker had founded the British and American Arcaheoligical Society in Rome and in 1870 was elected Director of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. His book, The Archaeology of Rome, was published in 1878.  Among the photographs in his 1879 Catalogue of Historical Portraits is at least one photograph of a section of the Ara Pacis, the well-preserved left section of the Numa/Aeneas relief. At that time no remains of the Ara Pacis had been associated with the monument. Parker’s catalogue describes it as “fragment of sculpture on a Base, found in the Palazzo Fiano, and now in the courtyard of the same palace.”

 

Pasqui, Angiolo 
"Per lo studio dell'Ara Pacis Augustae: Le origine e il concetta architetonico del monumento".
Studi Romani. Vol. 1 (1913), pp. 283-304.   

In this article, Pasqui urged resumption of the excavation of the Ara Pacis Augustae, which, against his urgings, had been suspended soon after begun in 1903.

 

Pasqui, Angiolo 
“Scavi dell’ Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità; Atti della R. Accademiadei Lincei. Vol 27 (1903),  pp. 549-574.

The first publication of the results of the 1903 excavation of the Ara Pacis Augustae, written by the director of the excavation, Angiolo Pasqui, who later became State Archaeologist (Director of the Ufficio Scavi della Direzione per la Antichità e Belle Arti).

 

Perna, Roberta-diane Judith
"Dea Roma" on the "Ara Pacis Augustae": An artistic symbol of the Roman just war tradition.
Union Institute, Ph.D Thesis, 1998.

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Perry, Ellen
“Review of Conlin, The Artists of the Ara Pacis”.
Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
Vol. 98

 

Petersen, E. (Eugen Adolf Hermann Petersen, 1836-1919)
“L'Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Mittheilungen des Kaiserlich Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, Roemische Abtheilung (Roemischen Mittheilungen / Roem. Mitt. / Mittheil. / RM), Vol. 9. Bullettino  dell' Imperiale Istituto Archeologico Germanico, Sezione Romana, Vol. 9. Rome: Von Loescher & Co., 1894; pp. 171-228.
Available on the web through the Open Library of the Internet Archive.

This 58-page article was the first extensive publication on the Ara Pacis Augustae. Written in Italian by a distinguished German archaeologist and published in the journal of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome, this is a meticulous study of the highest scholarly standards.

Petersen first reviews all previous publications on the Ara Pacis and history of the fragments discovered to date. He notes the contributions of the few previous authors, especially von Duhn, and credits verbal and material help he has received, especially in consultation with the architect Victor Rauscher. At the same time, he identifies the information and ideas he rejects, notably von Duhn’s “arbitrary and groundless” conjectures about the excessive size and architectural design of the monument. Petersen’s own proposals are based on careful examination of the physical evidence, especially detailed measurements and careful study of joins between fragments and slabs. He also bases his proposals on characteristics of the overall design as it emerged.

In the second half of the article, Petersen takes up the identification of figures, based on the “risky” evidence of coins, etc. and notes the symbolic meaning of many of the natural elements. He draws analogies with Pompeian frescoes and interior decoration of contemporary Roman houses. Of special importance, Petersen describes the faded but secure evidence of polychrome color on some of the fragments and concludes that the entire Ara Pacis  was originally painted.

Later in the article, Petersen takes up the overall interpretation of the monument, quoting ancient Roman authors, and writes (in translation): “We have here a very instructive example of how important it is to understand the original importance of any monument even when we seem to understand it at first glance” (p. 202-203).

There are 12 drawings, including 2 ground plans of his suggestion for the design of the surrounding precinct wall, with opening on only one front (figs. 3 and 11). Although his elevation drawing for the front façade (fig. 4) includes 2 reliefs no longer considered from the Ara Pacis, it and his elevation drawing for a complete side (fig. 2) both approximate closely the overall design as it is now reconstructed.

The entire article is a model of logical, progressive reasoning, noting the degree and nature of conjecture in each case.

Petersen, E. (Eugen Adolf Hermann Petersen, 1836-1919)
“Il fregio dell’Ara Pacis”.
Mittheilungen des Kaiserlich Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, Roemische Abtheilung (Roemischen Mittheilungen / Roem. Mitt. / Mittheil. / RM), Vol. 10. Bullettino  dell' Imperiale Istituto Archeologico Germanico, Sezione Romana, Vol. 10. Rome: Von Loescher & Co., 1895; pp. 138-146.

This 8-page article is a follow-up to the author's major article in the same journal the previous year.

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Petersen, E. (Eugen Adolf Hermann Petersen, 1836-1919)
Arch. Anz.
1903.

 

Petersen, E. (Eugen Adolf Hermann Petersen, 1836-1919), George Niemann (1841-1912).
“Ara Pacis Augustae, von Eugen Petersen, mit Zeichnungen von George Niemann”.
Sonderschriften des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Wien.
2 vols. Vol.1 Text, Vol.2 Drawings.
Wien: A. Hödler, 1902.

Petersen's 1902 publication consisted of a text volume with prints (pages 1-3 on this website) and an accompanying volume of photogravures (page 4 on this website). Together, they constituted the first books published on the Ara Pacis Augustae. Especially considering that it preceded the first excavation of the Ara Pacis (conducted partly by Petersen in 1903) this was a remarkable, landmark publication, including comprehensive visual documentation of all known aspects of the monument. The text volume includes detailed drawings of the surviving fragments and the first drawing proposing the overall form of the monument. The accompanying volume of photogravures includes the first published photographs of portions of the 2 processional friezes and of 2 figurative panels.

On this website, the text volume was scanned from Eugen [Adolf Hermann] Petersen, and George Niemann, Ara Pacis Augustae. mit zeichnungen von George Niewmann; VIII Lichtdrucktafeln in Besonderem Bande, 60 Abbildungen im Texte. Sonderschriften des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Wien, Band II. Wien: Alfred. Hödler, K. U. K. Hof- und Universitäts-Buchhändler, 1902. Reproduced with appreciation.

The text volume includes approximately 30 small images of related objects which are not reproduced on this web site. The complete  text volume is available on the web in various formats, including the copy from the Universitäts-Bibliothek Heidelberger, available on Europeana.

 

Petersen, E. (Eugen Adolf Hermann Petersen, 1836-1919)
Berlin. Philol. Wochen.
1910, pp. 690-697.

 

Petersen, E. (Eugen Adolf Hermann Petersen, 1836-1919)
Österr. Jahreshefte,
Vol. 9 (1906), pp 298-315.

 

Petersen, E. (Eugen Adolf Hermann Petersen, 1836-1919)
Roem. Mitt.
1903, pp. 164-176, 330-333.

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Pietà, Giacomo Dalla
“Le Res Gestae Augusti e l’Ara Pacis”.
Engramma, no.58 (July-Aug. 2007).
On the web through engramma.

The author first calls attention to parallels between the Res Gestae and the Ara Pacis. Primarily, the article present a brief review of the history of the various carved versions of the text of the Res Gesta and the preservation and rediscovery of the Latin and Greek versions in Galatia (Asia Minor).

Pignatti Morano, M, and P. Refice
“Ara Pacis Augustae. Le fasi della ricomposizione nei documenti dell’Archivio Centrale dello Stato”.
Roma. Aracheologia nel centro
Rome (1985), pp. 404 ff.

 

Platner, Samuel Ball; completed and revised by Thomas Ashby
A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome.
London: Oxford University Press, 1929 (pp. 30-32, “Ara Pacis Augustae”, pp. 332-335, “Mausoleum Augusti”).
Platner's entry is available on Bill Thayer’s website, hosted by the University of Chicago.

Valuable for describing what was known about the Ara Pacis shortly before Mussolini’s sponsored excavation and reconstruction of the altar and providing references to the limited bibliography at the time. Platner writes: “Systematic excavations in1903 under the palazzo . . . brought to light other remains of the monument, both architectural and decorative. The work was not finished, but carried far enough to permit of a reconstriction which is fairly accurate in its main features. . . . The altar itself was not found” (p.31).

 

Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secondus) 23 CE – 79 CE.
Natural History (Naturalis Historia).
ca. 77-79 CE.
Book XXXVI; 72, 73.

 

Plutarch
Life of Numa Pomilius
Numa 7.4

 

Podony, Jerry
“Lessons from the Past”.
History of Restoration of Ancient Stone Sculptures.
Ed. Janet Burnett Grossman, Jerry Podany, and Marion True.
Papers delivered at a symposium organized by the Department of Antiquities and Antiquities Conseravtion of the J. Paul Getty Museum and held at the Museum 25-27 October 2001.  
Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003; pp. 13-23.

As an introduction to the 20 papers in this symposium, Podany provides a brief account of the historical development of the restoration of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. Revealingly he writes "it is fair to say that we have only begun to understand the role that restorers have played over the centuries in both clarifying and distorting our knowledge and perception of antiquity. While they pieced together, added to, took away from, at times even invented the ancient fragments so enthusiastically embraced by the popular tastes of the sixteenth through nienteenth century, the restorers were also forming (and being formed by) the prevailing cultural and social fashions of their day." He concludes "What we do next in this continuum will depend on how thoroughly we have learned the lessons of the past, lessons that the authors of this volume have attempted to reveal".

 

Polito, E.
“Il meandro dall’arte greca ai monumenti augustei”.
Rivista dell'Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell'Arte (RIA).
57, 3rd series, XXV (2002), pp. 91-112.

 

Pollini, John
“The Acanthus of the Ara Pacis as an Apolline and Dionysiac Symbol of Anamorphosis, Anakyklosis, and Numen Mixtum”.
Von der Bauforschung zur Denkmalpflege.
Festschrift für Alois Machatschek zum 65. Gebuntstag.
Martin Kybelík and Mario Schwarz, eds., with a foreword by Walter Frodl.
Vienna: Phoibos-Verlag, 1993, pp. 182-217.

This article explores in depth the meaning of the acanthus plant represented on the Ara Pacis and elsewhere in Greek and Roman art. Pollini develops especially the many divine associations and relations to specific gods, relations to the Latin language and specific writings by Roman authors, and the larger symbols of renewal and rebirth. He calls attention to the visual importance of the acanthus in the floral friezes and panels and superbly describes their powerful complex design. There are clarifying descriptions of several features such as the swans.

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Pollini, John
“Ahenobardi, Appuleii, and Some Others on the Ara Pacis”.
American Journal of Archaeology.
Vol. 90 (Oct. 1986), pp. 453-460.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/506032

 

Pollini, John
“Frieden-durch-Sieg-Ideologie und die Ara Pacis Augustae. Bildrhetorik und die Schöpfung einer dynastischen Erzählweise".
Krieg  und Sieg. Narrative Wanddarstellungen von Altägypten bis ins Mittelalter. Internationales Kolloquium im Schloss Hainsdorf, Langenlois 29. 30 July 1997. Vienna, pp. 137-159.

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Pollini, John
“Man or God: Divine Assimilation and Imitation in the Late Republic and Early Prncipate”.
Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate.
ed. Kurt A. Raaflaub and Mark Toher.  pp. 334-363.
Berkeley: University of Californai Press, 1990.

 

Pollini, John
The Portraiture of Gaius and Lucius Caesar.
New York: Fordham University Press, 1987.

 

Pollini, John
Review article of Die Bildnisse des Augustus, by Dietrich Boschung
Art Bulletin (ArtB)
Vol. 81 (1999), pp. 723-735.

This extensive, in-depth review, with 93 endnotes and 14 small photos, constitutes a major article of its own, an examplar of intense scholarship. Indeed, the author notes that he is working on a book entitled The Image of Augustus: Art, Ideology, and the Rhetoric of Leadeship. Pollini describes Boschung’s volume as “a much needed, well-organzed, well-documented, well-argued typological study of the portraits of Augustus” (p.733). In addition to discussions of individual portrait and types, Pollini presents a thoughtful examination of various methodological issues raised by Boschung regarding Roman portraits, and a revealing section on “Variability and Assimilation in Portraiture”. There are 2 extensive discussions of the “old Forbes type” or “Ara Pacis type” of Augustan portraiture.

 

Pollini, John
Studies in Augustan “Historical” Reliefs
Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1978.
Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, no.7904581.

A thoroughly researched study of “reliefs of the Augustan age, particularly those works which commemorate or allude to events or situations of a historical nature” (p.1). Although discussing related works in other media also, the thesis concentrates on three well-preserved monuments: the statue of Augustus from Prima Porta, the Ara Pacis, and the Gamma Augustae.

Pollini emphasizes ways in which the Ara Pacis and Augustus’ other monuments allude to the unity of past, present, and future of the Roman state and of Augustus himself. He explains the different ways in which Augustus is represented in public and private monuments, the changing ways in which he is represented over time, and the importance of Ausgustus’ relationship to the gods. These allow the author to explore the varying societal and political motives.

Pollini makes several highly original suggestions, such as that the two processional reliefs “depict two sides of a single column of figures, not two separate files” (p.80). He was the first to identify the processional reliefs as “the ceremony of inauguratio of the place upon which the Altar of Peace was to be erected” (p.2), and thus to re-identify many of the participants represented, including the priestly colleges.

This thesis has serves as a basis for many following discussions of the Ara Pacis. There are extensive endnotes and bibliography, and 7 plates.

 

Pollitt, J. J.
The Art of Rome, c. 753 B.C. – A.D. 337: Sources and Documents.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983

 

Ponti, Ermanno, 1891-
Ara Pacis Augustae, origine – storia - significato.
Roma:  Vittorio Ferri, 1938.

 

Portella, Ivana della, photographs by Mark E. Smith
Subterranean Rome.
Trans. Caroline Higgitt.
Cologne: Könemann, 2000 (originally published 1999 in Italian by Arsenale Editrici, Venice).

Superb color photos.

 

Prete, Federico del
Listed under del Prete

 

Price, Nicholas Stanley, M. Kirby Talley Jr., and Alessandra Melucco Vaccaro, eds.
Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage.
Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 1996.

This is an outstanding selection of articles, brief sections of books, etc. dealing with the historical and philosophical background of debates in restoration and conservation. It deals with a wide range of types of art but focuses on the western tradition rather than engaging cultural heritage worldwide. There are selections from 42 publications and other sources, organized under topics such as "Original Intention of the Artist", "Restoration and Anti-Restoraton", and "The Role of Science and Technology". The original publications range from John Ruskin in 1843 to Marie Berducou in 1990. Selections from texts by 6 Italian scholars are here translated into English for the first time, including 3 sections from Brandi's 1963 classic Teoria del Restauro. The editors are to be commended for including brief but highly informative annotations for 21 items listed in the bibliography.

 

Pugliese, Alberto, direttore responsible; Pino Stampini, cura
Ara Pacis Augustae
diabattiti rotariani rivista monogafica del Rotary Club Roma Sud, Anno III, n. 5-6, 1970.

Published by the Rotary Club of South Rome, in cooperation with all the Rotary Clubs of Rome, which were leading supporters of the restoration of the Ara Pacis. There are 5 sections by 5 authors:
“Pax Romna” by Bonaventura Caloro
“Ara Pacis Augustae: Le Vicende” by Guglielmo Gatti
“Campo Marzio” by Maia Spengler
“Il Grande Perimetro di Cristallo e un’Attenzione alle Opere di Restauro” by Antonio Tranquilli
“Trasparenza e Fede” by Alberto Pugliese

The special value of this publication is the information provided about the 1937-38 restoration of the altar and the design and construction of the new pavilion to enclose it. This section was written by Guglelmo Gatti, one the principles involved in the restoration, and at time of writing Sovrintendente ai Musei, Gallerie, Monumenti e Scavi del Comune di Roma.  Also important is the information provided about the protection of the altar during World War II with protective wall and sacks of volcanic material, and their eventual removal in 1950, making the altar visible again after many years. Among the valuable illustrations are photographs of the newly restored altar and 1937-38 pavilion during a major 1969-70 restoration.

 

Purini, Franco
“Un’Architettura alla ricerca del suo luogo”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007.
Pp. 124-128.

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Racheli, Alberto M.
Restauro a Roma: 1870-1990: Architettura e città.
Venice: Marsilio, 1995.

 

Redazione di Engramma.
"LAra Pacis Augustae nei filmati dell'Archivio Storico Istituto Luce".
Engramma, no. 83, Sept. 2010.
On the web through Engramma.

 

Refice, Paola, and M. Pignatti Morano
"Ara Pacis Augustae: Le fasi della ricomposizione nei documenti dell'archivo centrale dello stato".
Roma: Archeologia nel Centro.
Ed. A. M. Bietti Sestieri, et. al.
Rome: De Luca, 1985; pp. 404-421.

Rehak, Paul
“Aeneas or Numa? Rethinking the Meaning of the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Art Bulletin (ArtB).
Vol.83, No.2 (2001), pp. 190-208.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177206

Following Weinstock’s challenge to the traditional interpretation of one of the famous relief panels on the Ara Pacis as Aeneas sacrificing, and the proposal of Eleni Eliades and Lawrence Richardson that the scene represented Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, Rehak published this comprehensive review of the evidence and argument in favor of Numa. Rehak points out serious problems with the traditional identification and the fact that the subject of Numa fits the iconography of the Ara Pacis at least as well as Aeneas. Many scholars have been persuaded by this revised identification of the scene. For all students and  scholars, this major article reminds us of the lack of ancient Roman written evidence describing the Ara Pacis and the necessarily provisional nature of not only our interpretations but also of the very identificaton of subjects.   
Images of this relief are on this website.

 

Rehak, Paul
“The Fourth Flamen of the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Journal of Roman Archaeology (JRA).
Vol. 14 (2001), pp. 284-288.

Preceeding the publication of his major 2006 book, Imperium and Cosmos, Rehak here presented a convincing argument that one of the flamen on the south side processional frieze of the Ara Pacis resulted from a last minute recarving of a previous non-flamen togas background figure. More important than the reinterpretation of this single figure, Rehak argues that “changes in the status of certain important individuals during the period [between 13 and 9 BCE] must have necessitated some alterations” to the original plan of the 2 processional friezes. He concludes that “the processions of the Ara Pacis do not represent a single ‘snashot’ of some historical moment, but rather an ideal conception of the close associates of Augustus in the aftermath of his return from the western provinces in the summer of 13”. There are 3 excellent gray-scale photographs, increasingly detailed.
These 4 flamen are visible from several angles in photos on this website.

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Rehak, Paul, ed. John G. Younger
Imperium and Cosmos: Augustus and the Northrrn Campus Martius.
Wisconsin  studies in classics.
Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
.Parts available on the web through Gioogle Books.

This is an extraordinarily useful book: balanced, fully informed, and clearly written. The author writes that “my focus in this book is on the Augustan transformation of a single geographic area of Rome, the Campus Martius, from a center of display and competition among the old Republican families into a kind of Augustan ‘theme park’ that evolved over time, celebrated his major achievements and prepared for his death and eventual deification” (p.xiii).

While all parts are seen in context of the whole, there are separate chapters on the Campus Martius, Ustrinum and Mausoleaum, Horologium-Solarium, and Ara Pacis Augustae. The 42 page chapter on the Ara Pacis Augustae provides a systematic, detailed review of each section of the altar, describing the multiple sources for and association of each element, and reviewing nearly all proposals for identifications of scenes and individuals, with extensive references. This chapter includes Rehak’s convincing re-identification and interpretation of the so-called ‘Sacrifice of Aeneas’ as “King Numa sacrificing” (pp.115-120).

The book includes an 8-page chronology of the Roman Empire from106 BCE to 68 CE. For everyone but classical specialists, it is invaluable that, in the 45 page list of works cited, the editor provides full names for professional journals. The dull black-white illustrations of the Ara Pacis are not adequate for the quality of the text. The caption to fig. 29 is incorrect.

 

Res Gestae Divi Augusti
There are many translations, in various languages, of this key document, several available on the web, easily accessed through a standard search. Especially notable are:

Res Gesta Divi Augusti: Text, Translation and Commentary.
Trans. Alison Cooley.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

This is a major recent translation into English of the Res Gestae Div Auguisti, with a 55 page introduction, 177 page commentary, and 20 page bibliography.  The commentary includes highly clarifying observations including the basis for the translation and inscription.

Res Gestae Divi Augusti: Ex Monumentis Ancyrano Antiocheno Apolloiensi.
Concepta Barini Recensvit.
Scriptores Graeci et Latini; IVSSV Beniti Mussolini, Consilio R. Academiae Lynceorum Editi.
Romae: Typis Regiae Officinae Polygraphicae, CIC IC CCC XXXVII (1937), XV a Fasc. Restit.

This is the translation, perhaps commissioned by Mussolini, used for the inscription carved onto the wall of Morpurgo’s 1938 pavilion, which remains today. There is a 12 page scholarly preface and bibliography and 20 gray-scale photos.

Res gestae divi Augusti
Comune di Roma; Zètema, Progretto Cultura.
Gangemi Editore, 2009.

A 13 1/2 x 12 inch 6 page, heavy-card foldout. On one side a continuous composite photo of the 1938-39 Res Gestae carved inscription, retained and restored as part of the new 2006 museum; and below it a translation in Italian and English. On the opposite side an informative description (largely from Rossini’s excellent 2006 museum guidebook) of the original document, its partial surviving copies, its 1938-39 carved inscrition in a wall of the fascist pavilion, and the 2003 restoration as part of the new Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 6 color photos of the Ara Pacis and new museum and 1 of a portrait head of Augustus.
A composite, panoramic photograph of this same carved inscription is on this website.

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Reumont, A. 
"Il Palazzo Fiano di Roma".
Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria.
VII (1884), pp. 549-554..

 

Rhyne, Charles 
"The Book Transformed".
Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation..
Vol. 29, Nos. 1-2 (March-June 2013), pp. 107-119.

Abstract: “This article considers the interplay of traditional academic art history book forms with the transformations of Web publication. Special attention is given to the increased number, size, type, and quality of images, and to the new opportunities this provides for scholarly research, interpretation, and presentation. This interplay is considered through an examination of an academic website focused on one major work of art, the Ara Pacis Augustae (Rome, Italy, 13–9 BCE). This site (http://www.reed.edu/ara-pacis/) was published by Charles Rhyne and Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, on April 15, 2011, and is used extensively by students, teachers, scholars, and the public worldwide.”
Includes 13 representative images from the website.

 

Richard Meier: Il Museo dell;Ara Pacis. 
Numerous authors as listed below. Photography Andrea Jemolo and others.
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007.

This is a magnificent, horizontal quarto volume, of about 140 pages, fine paper and printing. The 11 authoritative essays are joined with a bibliography and important list of credits for the many persons and firms responsible for the new museum. Most exception, however, is the extensive image documentation. There are some 130 color photographs, 21 full page, nearly all of the highest profiessional quality. Likewise, the 30 some architectural drawings top-drawer, though not reproduced large enough for the text to be legible without a magnifying glass. In addition, there are some 30 smaller, gray-scale, historical photos. Altogether, these provide a multifaceted picture of the 1938 Morpurgo pavilion and 2006 Meier museum, and the situation of the Ara Pacis within. One particular full-page color photograph, on page 45, is worth noting because it shows the exhilarating space previously connecting the lower level exhibit of ancient sculpture with the grand gallery space above. This glorious and instructive architectural moment is no longer visibile because covered in black to allow use of an expanded lower level space for modern and contemporary exhibitions. Because they also record views and events no longer available, of prime value are the photographs of the pavilion being destroyed and the museum being constructed, in all of its stages.

The following 11 informative essays are separately listed in this bibliography:
Centanni, Monica, and Maria Grazia Ciani. “Fonti letterarie antiche sull’ara augustae”.
Zanker, Paul. “La restitutio augustea e l’ara pacis”.
Capurso, Gianluca. “Il Cantiere e la costruzione”.
Curcio, Giovanna. “Scheletri e batteri”.
Rossini, Orietta. “’Ara Pacis in piazza augusto imperatore: da morpurgo a meier”.
Comforti, Claudia. “Il Museo dell’ara pacis di richard meier, 1995-2006”.
Gargano, Maurizio. “ Un nuovo museuo per l’ara pacis augustae: esperienza quotidiana e forme di una  città”.
Dal Co, Francesco, “Gli strati delle città”.
Andriani, Carmen. “Richard meier, la fine del moderno”.
Gregotti, Vittorio. “Un Tassello della tradizione moderna”.
Purini, Franco. “Un’Architettura alla ricerca del suo luogo”.
Veltroni, Walter. “Roma, l’antico e il moderno”.

 

Richard Meier Museums 1973/2006 
Preface Richard Meier; Introduction, “The Museum between Linearity and Chance Occurance”, by Germano Celant; Afterword Michael E. Shapiro.
New York: Rizzoli, 2006.

No doubt because the Ara Pacis museum was just completed, there are only 5 photographs, large and unsharp, astonishingly weak in comparison to the high professional quality of most of the other photographs in the book. There are 3 first-rate plans and 2 fine elevation drawings of the Ara Pacis. The text for the Ara Pacis is brief. Meier’s preface is his only published statement of the basic concepts underlying the design of his museums.

 

Riding, Alan
“Richard Meier’s New Home for the Ara Pacis, a Roman Treasure, Opens”. The New York Times (24 April 2006).
On the web at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/arts/design/24paci.html

An early, informative, unbiased account. Riding notes that, as of the opening weekend, the altar was available for public viewing for the first time in 7 years. He describes the Roman public’s response as “divided” and devotes most of his review to recounting the extreme political setting for the debate.

 

Ridley, Ronald T.
“Augusti manes volitant per aura: The Archaeology of Rome under the Fascists”.
Xenia, Vol. 2 (1986), pp. 19-40.

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Ridley, Ronald T.
The Emperor’s Restrospect: Augustus Res Gestae in Epigraphy, Historiography and Commentary.
Studia Hellenistica 39.
Leuven; Dudley Mass: Peeters, 2003.

This is a masterful scholarly study, the most detailed review of evidence for the Res Gestae and of scholarship about it. The author combines detailed descriptions with exacting, at time aggressive, evaluation of previous scholarly interpretations of the evidence.

In his introduction, Ridley writes that the most fundamental question is "the reliability of what [the Res Gestae] does record". "It is there that, in my vew, modern scholarship has revealed its gravest shortcomings. The overwhelming view of those who have confronted the question directly is that it was not possible for Augustus to lie, because the text was public and because there were so many contemparies who would have convincted him of mendacity. Such assertions can only be said to show a total lack of understandng of the nature of 'public' or 'official' sources, of the man who in this case was the author at the end of a career of nearly sixty years, and of the nature of Roman politics and society at the time of its publucation" (p.ix).

In addition to a brief introduction and summation, Ridley presents a series of 7 chapters titled: 1-The recovery of the Res Gestae; 2-The fate of the recovered text; 3-Parallel text; 4-Omissions detected by moderns; 5-Omission indicated by the text itself; 6-Difficult but defensible statements; 7-Lies.

Ridley lists, in chronological order, no fewer than 50 editions of the Res Gestae and provides an extensive general bibliography. There are 6 instructive maps, important for following the narrative of the Res Gestae, though unfortunately gray-scale and too small for detail..

 

Riemann, H.
Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (RE).
Ed. Pauly Wissowa.
Vol. 18, 2 (1942), 2082ff.

Excellent review of earlier scholarship on the Ara Pacis.

 

Riferimenti diretti all’Ara Pacis Augustae nelle fonti letterarie e iconografiche antiche.
Galleria a cura del Centro studi Architettura Civiltà e Tradizione del Classico.             
Engramma, no.58 (July-Aug. 2007).
On the web at through Engramma.

 

Rizzo, Giulio Emanuele
“Per la Ricostruzione dell” Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Capitolium.  Vol. 2, No. 8  (Nov. 1926), pp. 457-473.

This is a major article, recording information from the 1903 excavation not previously published. Rizzo notes that he worked almost every day in the excavations of 1903 and reviews the evidence found. The article includes the first published ground plan of the excavation, showing portions uncovered and the line at which the excavation was suspended. A number of important fragments recovered are illustrated for the first time in small but high quality photographs. Rizzo also includes the famous photograph of block III of the south processional frieze, including the figures of two flamines (fig. 13), photographed as discovered in the narrow passageway of the tunnel under the Via in Lucina, along the south side of the Piazza Fiano. This block was not excavated until 1937.
All of the illustrations in this article with captions are reproduced on this website.

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Roani, R,
"Sculture Antiche e Restauri Storici; Considerazioni sull'attivita di Francesco Carradori".
Atti dei Convegni Lincei.
Vol. 246 (2009), p.359-384.

 

Robathan Dorothy M.
The Monuments of Ancient Rome.
Roma: “L’Emma” di Bretschneider, 1950.

This is an informed introduction, including a few rare photographs.
2 of these are reproduced on this website.

 

Roccolino, Giacomo Calandra di
”Ara Pacis: fonti numismatiche”
Engramma, no.88 (March 2011); previously no.75 (Oct.-Nov. 2009).
On the web at through Engramma.

 

Rockwell, Peter
The Art of Stoneworking: A Reference Guide.
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
A copy of the entire volume at the Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library of the University of Virginia is vailable on the web through the Digital Sculpture Project at:
http://digitalsculpture.org/rockwell1.html

This is the most informative introduction yet published on all aspects of stone carving, directed not only to carvers but also to conservators, restorers, archaeologists, and art historians. This is a book of over 300 pages, dense with information by a practicing stone carver, but accessibly written. There are 4 sections on documentation. There are 80 exceptionally clear, instructive drawings, and 45 small gray-scale photos, a number expertly taken to show tool marks, etc.
The author writes: "An object carved in stone is the product of a long series of work processes, from the quarry where the stone is obtained thorugh various stages of transport and shaping, to the site where it is put into position. Each of these processes has its own techniques, involving tools, methods and traditions. .  .  .  .  It is possible for an experenced observer to see on the surface of any piece of stone the marks of the tools that shaped it. This book provides the reader with technqies for reading and recording these marks. Using a series of stone monuments of different types and eras as illustrations, both the technques and the ways of recording them are demonstrated."

 

Rockwell, Peter
“The Creative Reuse of Antiquity”
History of Restoration of Ancient Stone Sculptures
ed. Janet Burnett Grossman, Jerry Podany, and Marion True
Papers delivered at a symposium organized by the Department of Antiquities and Antiquities Conservaton of the J. Paul Getty Museum, 25-27 October 2001.
Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003.

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Rodewaldt, Gerhart
Kunst um Augustus..
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1937.

 

Rockwell, Peter, Stanley Rosenfeld, and Heather Hanley, with photographs by Stanley Rosenfeld.
The Compleat Marble Sleuth.
Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, 2004.
Available on the web through the Digital Sculpture Project at:
http://digitalsculpture.org/rockwell2.html

This is a personal account of marble carvng through the ages, including the present. There are sections on “quarries then and now”, on “tools and their marks”, and on copying and original craving today. The largest section is devoted to monumental works and the sculpture of master carvers. There are 300 photographs of mixed qualituy, a few superb.

There are 3 pages on the Ara Pacis, with instructive comments about the restoration of reliefs during the early 16th and late 18rth centuries. Of the 4 adequate illustrations, one photo shows shaffolding along the original south side with conservators at work.

 

Rome: Museo dell’Ara Pacis
Touch screen with extensive, educational material, on display in the lower level of the Museo dell’Ara Pacis. The impressive text and imagery on this database even provides some information not available in Rossini’s excellent museum guidebook. Available in Italian, English, German, and French. Strazzula has wisely noted that a DVD-ROM of this database would allow interested persons to explore the material in more depth than is likely in the museum (Strazzula, 2009).
The museum guidebook is listed and annotated under the name of its author-museum director, Orietta Rossini.

A wide variety of information, videos, etc. is available on the museum website in Italian, English, Spanish, and French.

 

"Rome Mayor [Gianni Alemanno] vows to remove museum"
BBC News, 2008 May 2.
Available on the web (accessed 2012 Dec. 21).

 

Rose, Charles Brian
Dynastic Commemoration and Imperial Portraiture in the Julio-Claudian Period.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Includes an excellent summary of the vast bibliography on the Ara Pacis.

 

Rose, Charles Brian
“The Parthians in Augustan Rome”.
American Journal of Archaeology (AJA)
Vol. 109, No. 1 (Jan. 2005) pp. 21-75.
Available on the web through JStor.

A major article on “the conception and commemoration of foreigners, especially Parthians, as diagrammed in the triumphal imagery of Augsutan Rome. Rosae includes 8 pages and 6 medium-size photographs on the Ara Pacis. Following his break-through article of 1990, listed below, Rose here presents an indepth analysis of the arguments for the much debated identification of two children on the Ara Pacis, one on each of the two processional friezes. Argues convincingly that the 2 children, often identified as Gaius and Lucius, are foreign children. The child in the north frieze is Parthian and the child on the south is a Gaul, thus “represented the peace that had been achieved in both East and West” (p. 41).

 

Rose, Charles Brian
“'Princes' and Barbarians on the Ara Pacis”.
American Journal of Archaeology (AJA).
 Vol. 94, no. 3 (1990), pp. 453-467.
Available on the web through JStor.

Following Simon and others, Rose here presents the first extensive case claiming that “the two children in foreign dress on the Ara Pacis Augustae … usually identified as Gaius and Lucius Caesar”, should be “reidentified as barbarians from eastern and western regions of the Empire who were brought to Rome in 13 B.C.” Rose also argues that “two youths on the north frieze are identifiable as Gaius and Lucius”.  A 15 page article with 10 medium size photos of the Ara Pacis and 2 comparative images.

Photographs of the Eastern child, and of the woman standing behind with hand on the child’s head, on the south processional frieze, are on this website.
Photos of the Western prince and images of the 2 youths, on the north processional frieze, identified by Rose as Gaius and Lucius are on this website.

 

Rossi Pinelli, Orietta
“’Chirurgia della Memoria: Scultura Antica e Restauri Storici".
Memoria dell'antico nell'arte Italiana.
Ed. Salvatore Settis.
Turin: G. Einaudi, 1986, pp. 183-247.

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Rossini, Orietta
“’Ara Pacis in piazza augusto imperatore: da morpurgo a meier”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007. Pp. 93-103.

 

Rossini, Orietta
Ara Pacis.
Rome: Comune di Roma, Assessorato alle Politiche Culturali, and Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali (printed by Electra, Milan), 2006 (nearly identical later editions 2007, 2009).

Written by the director of the Museo dell’Ara Pacis, this is often described as the museum guidebook, and it is indeed appealingly presented. However, it is a much more in-depth study than the term normally suggests. In fact, it is the single most up-to-date, comprehensive publication on the Ara Pacis Augustae. In addition to the expected sections on the individual parts of the monument, there are sections on the creation and early history of the Ara Pacis “from Augustus to the Severian Age”, on its demise, gradual rediscovery and “reassembly”, on “the residual fragments”,  on closely related “reliefs of an altar of the age of Claudius: from the so-called Ara Pietatis to the Ara reditus Claudii”, sections on “The Res gestae divi Augusti”, and on “The Ara Pacis from Morpurgo to Meier”. The text for each of these sections is so informative that it seems clear that the author could write a considerable chapter on each subject.

The illustrations are also the most comprehensive in their coverage of these subjects and of excellent overall quality. There are some 150 high-quality illustrations, almost half in color, and more than half full or nearly full-page. Altogether, text and illustrations provide a rich and systematic presentation of the Ara Pacis, much more so than any introduction. I think of this web site as, in many ways, a supplement to this model publication. 

 

Rossini, Orietta (text)
English translation and voice Susan Charlton.
“Ara Pacis”.
Audioguide for visitor to the Museo dell’Ara Pacis, available in Italian, and In English, French, and Spanish translations.
2006.

This 32 minute audioguide is based on the published museum guide by the same author. Although obviously much shorter and without illustrations, it provides an exceptionally balanced, clear introduction to the altar, with useful comments on Richard Meier’s new building.

 

Rossini, Orietta
Ara Pacis Rome: Res Gestae Divi Augusti
With English translation by Caroline Howard and Lauren Gabriele Di Giammarino.
In series Architecture, Urban Planning, Environment

 

Rossini, Orietta
Untitled 2 page article in Italian and English in
Del Prete, Federico, Ara Pacis.
Maire Engineering, Maire Tecnimont Group.
Rome: Punctum, 2007, pages unnumbered.

The director of the Museo dell’Ara Pacis here provides an inspiring statement of the importance of the new Ara Pacis Museum and its relation to its setting. She emphasizes that “it is essential to create an architectural link of some kind between the mausoleum and the altar” and the need to make the Mausoleum of Augustus “communicate with its surroundings”.
Rossini presents a clear, forceful statement of why the often proposed idea of moving the Ara Pacis to allow a more integrated urban area was rejected. “Moving the Ara pacis and putting it back together was unthinkable. The structure is composed of stone, mortar and brick; to have moved it would have meant destroying the monument as we know it today. After the dismantlement, we would have been left with a lot of separate slabs; reconstructing it from scratch would have created some philological problems to resolve. . . . The  reconstruction of 1938 . . . has its own archaeological value and is a piece of evidence we need to preserve”.  

 

Rossini, Orietta
"I Colori dell'Ara Pacis: Storia di un Esperimento".
Archeomatica,
Vol. 3 (September 2010), pp. 20-25.

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Rosso, Laura
Ara Pacis Augustae.
Quaderni di Giovinezza, diretti da Oberdan Zucci, Vol.XV, No.9 (1937 October 15).
Milan: Casa Editrice Oberdan Zucci S. A., 1937.

Although only 38 pages, this is a comprehensive book, sensitively written. It is of special importance because it was published while some of the remains of the Ara Pacis were still being excavated and studied along with the many previously known fragments, immediately previous to the reconstruction of the monument in 1938. Rosso notes that additional discoveries would be forthcoming as work progressed.

There are 14 small black-white illustrations, 12 of which are photographs of major remnants. Figure 1 is a proposed reconstruction drawing of the monument with a few slight differences from its 1938 reconstruction the next year.

After an informative review of the original creation of the Ara Pacis Augustae and the history of its rediscovery, excavations, and study, Rosso devotes the main body of his text to the meaning and symbolism of the reliefs. He writes that this masterpiece of Augustan art harmonized the idealism and symbolism of Greek art with Roman historical realism.

"[trans. pages 35-36] The general realization that the monument produces is that Augustan art was the beneficiary of all the technical advances of Hellenistic art. . . . But the Greek artist treats ideas and myth in broad glosses. . . . Roman art puts the contrasts and antitheses of real life to work. . . . Thus it celebrates the infant as an essential element of society, yet does not shy away from the representation of the twilight of life.

These attributes of Roman art we see naturally in the historical section of the frieze, while the Greek component, with its virtuosity and its values of symbolism and the ideal form, reveals its influence more prominently in the allegorical section. . . ."

Given the fascist moment, Rosso ends with the mandatory celebration of the great mission of Roman civilization.

" [trans. p. 37] It is therefore a grand cause for celebration for us Italians, in this historical moment that we are experiencing. The mere memory of the greatness of Rome, the justifiable pride we share in descending from it, reminds of the aggression we have faced and the dangers that have littered our path. That is why our Governor, with a grand gesture, seeks to rebuild as completely as possible, in the heart of Rome, a monument of incredible historical and political importance.

Let us hope that the reappearance of this noble monument will signify, as in the time of Augustus, an omen and a warning to the rest of the world. Let the last hurrah of this magnificent civilization be known once again, to the whole universe! Let it be summed up in the eternal renewal of Rome’s great mission."

 

Ruesch, Vivian, and Bruno Zanardi
“L’Intervento di Restauro della Fronte Orientale dell’Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Ara Pacis Augustae: in occasione del restauro della fronte orientale,
ed. Eugenio La Rocca.
Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1983.
Text pp. 61-76, photographs pp. 77-108, drawings and diagrams pp.109-128.

An account of the extensive 1982 study and restoration of the original east front of the Ara Pacis, by the Conservazione Beni Culturali (CBC), Rome. This constitutes perhaps the most carefully documented publication on any aspect of the physical history of the Ara Pacis Augustae. The text is presented in the form of an extensive, 8 section outline: (in translation) General Scheme of the Work; Technique of Execution of the Ancient Reliefs, Previous Interventions; Description of the State of Conservation; Restoration; List of Materials Used; Attachment. Each section except the last is itself carefully outlined, with footnotes. A few points are discussed in one or more paragraphs. In all of these, especially  in the last section, the extensive 1784  interventions of  Francesco Carradori are given special attention.

The photographs consist of extremely well-chosen details, carefully photographed, though not always sharply reproduced, with clear explanatory captions. The color diagrams identify the tools used, dates of previous recarvings, restorations, and excavations, current state of conservation, and the just completed restorations.

Altogether, for anyone interested in the Ara Pacis or the physicial history of ancient marble sculpture, this publication is an education.

Eleven of the photographs and the eleven pages of color diagrams are reproduced on this website.

 

Ryberg, Inez Scott
“The Processions of the Ara Pacis”.
Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome (MemAmAc./ MAAR).
Vol. 19 (1949), pp. 77-101.
Available on the web through JStor at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4238621

One of the first in-depth scholarly articles about the Ara Pacis following its 1937 excavation and reconstruction and after Moretti’s foundational publication of 1948.  Ryberg writes that she hopes “to add to the almost endless list of studies of the Ara Pacis a discussion of certain points which have been clarified by the most recent excavation of the site” (p. 83). She proceeds to provide a comprehensive identification of the figures and scenes in the processional friezes. Among her conclusions are that “the small frieze [of the inner altar] and the large reliefs of the enclosure compose an ensemble, representing successive parts of one great procession, the ceremony of July 4, 13 B.C.” (p. 89).

She writes that “efforts to arrive at a satisfactory explanation of the reliefs have been perplexed most of all by one question. How far is this religious ceremony represented with the accuracy of a documentary record of a specific actual event, and how far does historical accuracy yield to the demands of formal ritual or to artistic harmony?” (p. 82).
Ryberg concludes that the processional friezes are “the first presentation in sculptural relief of real persons—in part at least identifiable personages—participating in a ceremony on a specific occasion, represented in garb and mien appropriate to the actual event, but idealized in portrayal and thus lifted from the level of everyday realism to a realm where historical incident, ritual form, and artistic harmony are fused” (p. 81).

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S

Sauron, Gilles
L'Histoire Végétalisée, Ornament et Politique à Rome.
Paris, 2000.

Sauron, Gilles
“Le Message esthétique des rinceaux de l’Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Revue de l'Art.
Vol. 81 (1988) pp. 3-40.

 

Sauron, Gilles
“Le Message symbolique des rinceaux de l’Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
Vol. 126, No.1 (1982) pp. 81-101.
On the web through Persee.

An important, early attempt to read the symbolic message of the scrolling acanthus friezes on the Ara Pacis. Includes 8 small, gray-scale details of the scrolls plus 2 related images. Most importantly, there is a diagram lining up the design of the scrolling acanthus relief with the processional relief on the original south side of the monument. Because we now know that the spacing the figures in the 1938 reconstruction, as we see it now, is incorrect, all such attempts must be rethought.

The 2 scrolling acanthus friezes are extensively illustrated on this website.

 

Schütz, Michael
“Zur Sonnenuhr des Augustus auf dem Marsfeld: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit E. Buchner’s Rekonstruktion und seiner Deutung der Ausgrabunsergebnisse, aus der Sicht eines Physikers”.
Gymnasium.
Vol. 97 (1990), pp. 432-457.

This important article by a physicist was the first major rejection of the 1976 claim by Edmund Buchner (republished and expanded) that the Egyptian obelisk rerected by Augustus on the Campus Martius was the gnomen not only of a meridian, which Buchner had discovered, marking the length of the shadow cast at midday each day (still accepted by scholars) but also of a vast sundial, which he titled the “Horologium Solarium Augusti”, and which  Buchner claimed served to mark the changing hours of the day and days of the year. Until recently, most publications continued to support Buchner’s proposition and to reproduce his diagrams of this vast sundial.

Images of the so-called “Horologium Solarium Augusti” are available on this website.

 

Scriba, Friedemann
Augustus in Schwarzhemd? Die Mostra Augustea della Romanità in Rom, 1937/38.
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995.

 

Seabrook, John
“Roman Renovation”.
The New Yorker.
Vol. 81, No. 11 (2 May 2005), pp. 56-63.

It is difficult to write convincly about the highy politicized history of the commissioning, debate, postponements, revisions, and final construction of Meier’s new Ara Pacis museum. Nearly all articles on the subject are so biased and simplistic in their scorn or praise that they distort this fascinating, instructive, and understandably controversial process. The new Museo dell’Ara Pacis commission was not only for the first major building in the heart of Rome since the Second World War but also for a public museum to house one of the most famous monuments of ancient Rome. Seabrook is obviously sympathetic to Meier’s architecture and his article is influenced by behind-the-scenes information provided by Meier. He is also unsympathetic to the extreme importance of archaeological study in Rome. Nevertheless, if one takes this into account, this is a highly informative publication on the subject.

 

Settis, Salvatore; photographs by Massimo Listri
“The Altar of Peace”.
FMR Magazine, No.8 (Jan.-Feb., 1985), pp. 89-116.
Milan/New York: Franco Maria Ricci.

Written for the intelligent non-specialist (no references or bibliography), this relatively short introduction brings the Ara Pacis to life. Although dense with information, the writing is approachable and engaging. Settis provides a chronology of the altar, including its physical rediscovery and restoration. But the text is focused on a description of the altar and its meaning in Augustan Rome. As an art historian, Settis provides especially clarifying descriptions of the altar’s richly designed program. He illuminates the large compositional divisions of the reliefs, relation of figural to floral reliefs, and deliberate cross-referencing of parts.

More than half the article consists of full-page color photographs (16 of the pages are double-page photos). Taken straight on, with almost no distortion, these are valuable documents for the appearance and condition of the reliefs in 1985. The quality of most of the illustrations is excellent, a few poor, and, not surprisingly, given the conditions at the time, most of the color is peculiar.

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Settis, Salvatore
“Die Ara Pacis”.
Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik.
Catalogue of the exhibit in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, June 7 – August 14, 1988.
Antikenmuseum Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
Berlin: Kulturstadt Europas; Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern,1988; pp. 400-426.

Review of the discovery and later history of the Ara Pacis with annotated bibliography.

 

Severy, Beth
Augustus and the Family at the Birth of the Roman Empire.
New York and London: Routledge, 2003.

The author examines the relationship between the emergence of the Roman Empire and the role of the family in Roman society, arguing that “the notion of family became central to the ideal and image that Augustus sought to promote.” Five pages of text and 4 of illustrations are devoted to the Ara Pacis. In her description of the figures represented on the altar, Severy focuses on their relationship to Augustus’s family. Given the size and important of the 6 scrolling acanthus reliefs and friezes, however, it seems extreme to write that “On the altar to the goddess Peace, almost all images of peace and security come in the individually depicted forms of members of Augustus’ family, both human and divine” (p. 62).

 

Sieveking, Johannes
Das römische Relief. 
Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1925.

 

Sieveking, Johannes
“Zur Ara Pacis Augustae”
Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischn institutes in Wien (Österr. Jahreshefte / Öjh Jahreshefte / Öjh / JÖAI). 
Vol. 10 (1907), pp. 175-199; and Supplement, pp. 107-109. 

Sieveking published a number of early articles on Roman reliefs and the Ara Pacis. His 1903 and 1917 articles dealt almost exclusively with the identification of the family of Augustus on the 2 processional friezes.

In contrast, this article included the first published photograph of the famous photograph of the relatively complete, well-preserved panel of the flamines to the right of Augustus in the south side processional frieze. Although not visible in the photograph, this slab also includes the well-preserved back half of Augustus’ figure. This slab had been discovered and photographed during the 1903 excavation but was not fully unearthed and brought to the surface until the 1938 excavation. The article also includes the second, but first high quality, photograph of the recently unearthed fragment with the heads of Augustus and a few other figures, and reaffirms the identification as Augustus.

In this 1907 article, Sieveking was the first to pubish the identification of the famous relief of Aeneas sacrificing, the identification that has been supported by most scholars until recently. Although there are problems with this identification, it has been so deeply incorporated within interpretations of the entire monument that the debate over identification of this relief may continue for some time.

Sieveking convincingly argues that 5 Villa Medici reliefs, previously published as part of the Ara Pacis, must belong to a different monument.

 

Simon, Erika
Ara Pacis Augustae.
Türbingen: Verlag Ernst Wasmuth, 1967.
English translation from German, Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphics Society, Ltd., 1968.

This was a first-rate publication for 1967 and remains essential reading a half-century later. The text is especially informative in describing the design of each relief, compositional patterns, their effects and meanings. This is remarkably perceptive, many observation still usurpassed. Simon was the first to suggest that the head inserted at the upper-right of the Aeneas relief should be placed, instead, on the Roma relief. 32 pages of high quality gray-scale images of the Ara Pacis and a few closely related objects with 24 pagesof text describing them and a 2 page bibliography. The English translation is awkward.
A copy of the text of the English tranlation is available on the web at 
http://articleserver.info/Hoelscher/Simontext.pdf

 

Simon, Erika
Ara Pacis Augustae: Die Altar der Friedensgöttin Pax Augusta in Rom.
Ponte Fra le Culture. Schriften des Knauf-Museum Iphofen. Band 3 Rom.
Dettelback: Verlag J. H. Röll GmbH, 2010.

A 50 page book with standard but authoritative descriptions of the Ara Pacis. 49 illustrations, about half are large, out-of-focus, discolored photos.

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Simon, Erika
Augustus: Kunst und Leben in Rom um die Zeitenwende.
Munich:  Hirmer, 1986.

A superbly produced book by an outstanding scholar. There are more than 40 photographs in color and nearly 300 high-quality black-white photographs and diagrams, including some 25 of the Ara Pacis. Many are reproduced full-page. There is an 8-page glossary and major bibliography. When published, this was the most imortant publication relating Augustan art to all other aspects of Roman culture. The text includes over 20 pages on the Ara Pacis, discussed in relation to closely related objects.

 

Simon, Erika
“Helbig Führen II”.
Turbingen 1966, p.687.

In this rarely referenced article, Simon first called attention to the improperly narrow space between panels II and II of the north side processional frieze, as reconstructed in the hurried 1937-38 reconstruction. Moretti’s reconstruction assumed that the back of a figure on panel III and front of a figure on panel II belonged to the same figure, whereas one is a foreground figure and the other a background figure. Thus, at least one now-unknown slab must originally have been between them, altering the spacing of figures on the frieze. 
A detail photograph of the heads of these 2 figures with incorrect narrow space between them is on this web site.

 

"La Sistemazione della zona Circostante l'Augusteo".
Architettura.
Rivista del Sindacato Nazionale Fascista Architetti, diretta da M. Piacentini.
XV, numero speciale del 1936; pp. 79 ff. .

 

Spaeth, Babette Stanley
“The Goddess Ceres in the Ara Pacis Augustae and the Carthage Relief”.
American Journal of Archaeology (AJA).
Vol. 98, No. 1 (Jan. 1994), pp. 65-100.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/506222

The author presents a reinterpretation of the best surviving relief panel on the Ara Pacis, referred to by scholars as Tellus, Venus, Pax, Italia, and other names. Spaeth writes that “the type and attributes of the central figure point to her identification as Ceres, with possible polysemantic references to this divinity’s cultic connectiins with Tellus and Venus. The two side figures in the Ara pacis relief are identified as a Nereid (sea nymph) and a Naiad (freshwater nymph).” She also identifies the associated relief from Carthage (Louvre inv. 1888) as Demeter/Ceres, Persephone and Poseidon. This 36 page artiicle is impressively documented and includes 20 well-chosen, high quality illustrations.

This relief is extensively illustrated on this website.

 

Spengler, Maia
“Campus Marzio”.
Ara Pacis Augustae, ed. Pino Stampini.
Dibattiti rotariani, rivista monografica del Rotary club Roma Sud.
Vol. 3, nos. 5-6 (1970) pp. 61-72..
Direttore responsable Alberto Pugliese.
Rome: Edizioni del Tritone, 1970.   

A  brief history of the Campus Martius from early antiiquity to recent times; including brief accounts of the Mausoleum of Augustus, Ara Pacis Augustae, and Arco del Portogallo.

Three pages of text, 5 maps, a model and a drawing of the Campus Martius, from the 16th to 20th centuries; 2 prints of the Arco del Portogallo.
Maps and models of the Campus Martius are on this website.

 

Sperti, Luigi
"Il fregio vegetale dell'Ara Pacis".
Engramma, no. 75 (Oct.-Nov.  2009).
On the web at
http://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=381

Spivey, Nigel
Review of I colori del bianco, ed. Liverani et. al., (here listed under Bankel), 2004.
Journal of Hellenic Studies.
Vol. 127 (2007), pp. 220-221.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30033577

Spivey warns against jumping to the conclusion that nearly all ancient sculpture was colored. He writes :
“If a marble surface were regularly overlaid with pigment – so that even a nude Venus would be covered in a ‘glaze’ of white lead – why do Greek and Roman poets like to apostrophize the purity of Parian marble as a likeness to the complexion of a desirable female”
“if, as it is argued, bronze statues were also painted, then why might certain facial components – such as lips – be crafted out of different matals, such as copper? For that matter, why go to the trouble of combining glass paste for inlaid eyes?
The literature of ancient appreciation for the materials of sculpture is sufficient to indicate that the substance of a statue was important in the eyes of viewers: not only gold and ivory in the case of chryselephantine stateues, but marble preferred to other stones, and certain quary-sources of marble held in particular esteem. Such esteem could only flourish if at least some sculpture were once displayed as Winkelmann would have wished- unadorned by paint”

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Stampini, Pino
Ara Pacis Augustae / a cura di Pino Stampini
Roma: Rotary Club Sud, 1970.

Three of the articles are separately listed and annotated in this web bibliography:
Gatti, Guglielmo, “Ara Pacis Augustae: Le Vicende”, pages 31-57.
Spengler, Maia, “Campo Marzio”, pages 61-72.
Tranquilli, Antonio, “Il Grande Perimetro di Cristallo e un’Attenzione alle Opere di Restauro”, pages 73-80.

 

Stanley, Alessandro
“Rome Journal: Colorful Characters Lurk around Monument”.
New York Times International.
June 29, 2001. A4.

 

Steinby, E. M., ed.
Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae.
5 vols.
Rome, 1991-1999.

 

Stern, Gaius
“How Many Lictors are on the Ara Pacis Augustae?”
Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS), Cincinnati, Apr. 2007.
A summary is available on the web.

This paper is largely based on the author’s dissertation the previous year (listed below), particularly his study of the lictors on the two processional friezes. Stern writes: “The chief failure of Moretti’s 1948 folio is its omission of how Moretti made several crucial decisions in reassembling the monument. All too often Moretti failed to explain why he put certain fragments together.” Stern argues that “Moretti made two important errors in reconstructing the South Frieze that have led modern authors astray in their understanding of the scene depicted”. First, “because he made room for too many lictors at the start of the South Frieze, he inadvertently pushed toward the rear every figure on the South frieze by two slots.” “The second construction error Moretti made involves the misfit of blocks 5 and 6 . . .” Stern points out (overlooked by some other scholars) that “Domaszewski argued back in 1909, that at least two figures belong between Antonia and her male Neighbor”. This led, among other things, to the misalignment of the figures on the south processional frieze with the vegetal frieze below.

There is an important description of the lictors on the two processional friezes, describing their role and arguing that there are ten on the south frieze and two on the north, no more.

 

Stern, Gaius
“M. Aemilius Lepidus, and the Four Flamines on the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Boston, August 23-26, 2003; Common Ground: Archaeology, Art, Science, and Humanities.
Carol C. Mattusch, A.A. Donohue, and Amy Brauer, eds.
Boston, 2005, pp. 293-97 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2006, pp. 318-322).

 

Stern, Gaius C.
“Short-lived Signs of International Peace on the Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Congrès annuel de la Sociètè canadienne des `ètudes classiques
(SCEC) / Classical Association of Canada (CAC), Halifax, May 2010.
A  brief summary is on the web
http://www.evenements.fl.ulaval.ca/index.php/SCEC-CAC/2010/paper/view/228

A revealing account of the social and political basis for the choices and presentation of images on the Ara Pacis, especially on the 2 processional friezes.

 

Stern, Gaius
“The Trouble with Gaius and Lucius: Augustus’ Adopted Sons on the Ara Pacis Augustae”. 
Classical Association of Canada (CAC) / Congrès annuel de la Sociètè canadienne des `ètudes classiques (SCEC), Halifax, 2011.
Abstarct on the  web at
http://cac-scechalifax2011.classics.dal.ca/index.php/CAC2011/CACHFX/rt/printerFriendly/250/0

This is an especially impressive review of past scholarship on the identification of a few figures on the processional friezes.

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Stern, Gaius
“Varus' Legacy After Teutoburger Wald: Roman POWs, Tiberius, and the
Ara Pacis".
Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS) , Minneapolis, Apr. 2009.
A  summary is on the web at
http://www.camws.org/meeting/2009/program/abstracts/09C3.Stern.pdf

 

Stern, Gaius
Women, Children, and Senators on the Ara Pacis Augustae: a study of Augustus’ Vision of a New World Order in 13 BC.
Ph.D. dissertation, History.
Berkeley: University of California, Spring 2006.
Parts available on the web through Google Books.

The author’s main purpose in this dissertation is to identify as many as possible of the figures and subjects represented in the figural reliefs on the Ara Pacis, as a means of understanding the meaning the monument was intended to convey. One of Stern’s key ideas, which interplays with his identification of figures, is that the Ara Pacis should be seen as “a snapshot of Augustus’ political and religious notions in 13 BC”, rather than as a representation of the longer term “dynastic ideals of Augustus’ dynasty”. Stern believes that the processional frieze “depicts an event in summer 13 BC as Augustus wanted us to remember it”, a snapshot in time before the changes of 12 BCE. Based on comprehensive study of all types of available evidence, Stern concludes that “virtually all of the figures on the Ara Pacis represent real people who attended the event (only the attendants and the lectors are anonymous)”.

The thesis is an impressive example of a thorough review of all previous scholarly opinions on a subject, with the author’s evaluations of each. Accompanying the text, Stern presents 4 diagrams of the south processional frieze, with the alternative numbering systems and identificatiosn of each scholar. Also, there are drawings to suggest how the processional friezes might have looked with spacing adjusted and missing figures added. There are also sections on each of the 4 figurative relief panels, reviewing scholarly opinions on the individuals and scenes represented.

This 549 page dissertation includes over 200 small illustrations, about half of coins, our most important evidence for many ancient image identifications.There are valuable appendices such as a “Timetable of Augustan building projects”.

 

Stewart, Peter
The Social History of Roman Art.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
2008.

An up-to-date examination of the role of art in Roman society. In his introduction, the author provides an important discussion of the various ways in which art has been interpreted and problems involved. There are forty-three small, weak, grey-scale illustrations, including one old photograph of the Ara Pacis. Stewart calls attention to the Greek origins for many features of the altar, the thin evidence for the altar commissioning, and its political and religious nature.

 

Storia Fotografica di Roma: 1930-1939, L'Urbe tra autarchia e fasti imperiali.
Napoli: Inta Moenia, 2006.

Magnificent volume of over 250 large black-white photographs reproduced on high quality glossy paper, accompanied by informative text. Includes a rare photo showing visitors watching the ceremonial front (original west) of the Ara Pacis Augustae being reconstructed in its new pavilion in 1938 (page 238). Other photographs and text provide rich context of Rome at the time.

 

Strazzulla, Maria José
“War and Peace: Housing the Ara Pacis in the Eternal City”
American Journal of Archaeology:  Online Publications: Museum Review.
Issue 113.2 (April 2009).
On the web at
http://www.ajaonline.org/sites/default/files/AJA1132_Strazzulla.pdf

This is the most informative, balanced review of the new Ara Pacis Museum, with sensitive observations about the building and its displays. Following a brief review of the history of the altar, images represented, the 1937-1938 rebuilding of the altar in its present location, and construction of its enclosing building, the author turns to the new building and its displays.

Strazzulla describes the creation of the new building, designed by Richard Meier and associates, begun in 1996, and the sometimes-violent architectural criticism and political conflicts that ensued. She provides a remarkably level-headed review of these debates and her own perceptive evaluation of the completed building. Most unique among the many reviews of the new museum, Strazzulla includes an informative description of the important displays in the lower floor of the museum, room by room, with critical observation. Her suggestion that the rich database of information available on a computer touchscreen in gallery one should be made available as a DVD is to be applauded. There are 5 excellent color photographs and a carefully selected bibliography of publications from 1937 to January 2009.

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Strong, D. E.
Roman Imperial Sculpture: an Introduction to the commemorative and decorative sculpture of the Roman Empire down to the Death of Constantine.
London: Alec Tiranti, 1961.

Although there are only 3 pages of text on the Ara Pacis, they clearly relate the monument to Roman art before and after. The Author writes: “It is not until the Ara Pacis that we reach one of the great achievements of Roman Sculpture” (p. 19) and  “All the subsequent developments of the Roman processional frieze are based upon this prime creation of Augustan sculpture and, in its prosaic sincerity, the procession is a magnificent memorial of the dedicated purpose of Augustus’ Principate” (p. 20). Although the pages are only 7 ¼ by 6 ¼, the quality of the gray-scale photographs is outstanding. There are only 6 illustrations for the Ara Pacis (figs. 34-39) but a wealth of closely related works.

 

Strong, Eugénie Sellers
“La legislazione sociale di Augusto ed I fregi del recinto dell’Ara Pacis”.
Quaderni di studi romani (Istituto di studi romani), 2.
Roma: Istituto di studi romani, 1939.

 

Strong, Eugénie Sellers
Roman Sculpture from Augustus to Constantine.
London: Duckworth and Co., 1907; New York, 1911 (reprinted by Arno Press, NY, 1969).
“The Ara Pacis”, pp. 39-68, plates VIII-XX, drawing p. 58.

A classic 400 page chronological survey, with 130 small, gray-scale plates. This is a basic book for reviewing the physical evidence and scholarship available in the early 20th century. For the Ara Pacis, Strong reviews previous scholarship and the available evidence and at places struggles with possible interpretations. Chapter I, “The Augustan Age”, includes 19 pages of text and 9 plates of small, weak gray-scale photos of the then known fragments considered from the Ara Pacis, plus one hypothetical ground plan. Chapter 2, "Augustan Decoration", includes 9 pages of text on the Ara Pacis, 2 photos of scrolling acanthus and 1 of an interior festoon.

 

Strong, Eugénie Sellers
"'Romanità' Throughout the Ages".
Journal of Roman Studies.
Vol. 29 (1939), pp. 137-166.
Available on the web through JStor.

An in-depth description and review of 3 progressively and dramatically expanded Roman exhibitions: the 1911 Mostra Archeologica; 1938 Mostra Augustea; and projected 1942 Mostra della Romanità. Strong describes the ways in which the nature of the exhibits evolved in keeping with the changing political aims of the Roman state. 30 pages of text with 9 illustrtaions and 10 plates of high quality black-white photographs.

 

Strong, Eugénie Sellers
"'Terra Mater or Italia".
Journal of Roman Studies.
Vol. 27 (no.1), 1937; pp. 114-126.
Available onlne through JStor.

 

Studniczka, Franz                          
"Zur Ara Pacis".
Abhandlungen der Philologisch-Historischen Klasse der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften.
(Abb, Sächs. Ges. der Wissenschaften ). Vol. 27, No.26, 1909. 
Text pp. 901-944, plus 34 images on 9 pages of plates.
Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1909.

This was the next major publication on the Ara Pacis following Petersen's 1902 two volume publication and Cannizzaro's important 1907 account of the 1903 excavation. Several of the most important photographs in this new publication had already been published by Petersen, and Durm’s remarkable 1904 drawing had already been published by Dissel. Nevertheless, no fewer than 7 key fragments, 4 enlarged details, and a few related materials were here published for the first time. Most notably, Studniczaka included the famous photograph of block III of the original south processional frieze, which included the figures of two flamines (Plate 2, fig. 2) photographed as discovered in the narrow passageway of the tunnel under the Via in Lucina, along the south side of the Piazza Fiano. This block was not excavated until 1937. 
All of the illustration in this article with captions are reproduced on this website.

Surtonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus)                          
The Twelve Caesars
Trans. Michael Grant.
Englishtranslation of De Vita Caesarum, 121 CE.
Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin books, 1957.

 

Swetnam-Burland, Molly
“Aegyptus Redacta: The Egyptian Obelisk in the Augustan Campus Martius”.
Art Bulletin.
Vol. XCII, No.3 (Sept. 2010), pp.135-153.

The author states that the obelisk erected by Augustus in the Campus Martius “is usually treated as part of a category rather than discussed as an individual monument” (no.23 on p.151), and that “with few exceptions, scholars gloss the monument’s Egyptian significance with but a generalized statement about obelisks’ role as Pharonic cult objects dedicated to the sun” (p.139). Instead, Swetnam-Burland argues that “though Romans had neither a comprehensive nor a precise understanding of the obelisk, the information available to them was surprisingly detailed. Setting aside questions of accuracy, elite authors writing about the obelisk in its new home took pains to demonstrate a sophisticated grasp fo the object’s Egyptian history, employing visual analogy that amounted to a kind of contemporary art criticism” (p.149). She writes that “the question is not whether Roman audiences grasped an obelisk’s Egyptian significance as a resident of late Period Egypt would have but, rather, whether the Egyptian content of the monument, as Romans understood it, was significant to them” (p.142).

In the process, the Swetnam-Burland developes the original context in Egypt and the meaning to educated Egyptians. At several points in her article, the author provides a valuable, basic chronology of the obelisk from first guarying to the present day.

 

Syme, Ronald
The Augustan Aristocracy..
Oxford, 1986.

 

Syme, Ronald
“Neglected Children on the Ara Pacis”.
American Journal of Archaeology.
Vol. 88, no.4 (1984), pp. 583-590.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/504746

 

Syme, Ronald
The Roman Revolution.
Oxford, 1939.

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T

Tacitus, Cornelius
The Agricola and the Germania.
Trans. H. Mattingly.
New York: Penguin Books, 1970.

 

Tafuri, Manfredo
"Architettura: per una Storia Storica".
La Rivista dei Libri.
1994, 4, pp. 10-12.

 

Tanner, Jeremy
“Portraits, Power, and Patronage in the Late Roman Republic”.
Journal of Roman Studies, Vol 90 (2000), pp. 18-50.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/300199

 

Thomson de Grummond, Nancy
“Pax Augusta and the Horae on the Ara Pacis Augustae”
American Journal of Archaeology
Vol. 94, No. 4 (October 1990), pp. 663-677.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/505125

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Thornton, M. K.
“Augustan Geneaology and the Ara Pacis”.
Latomus.
Vol. 42 (1983), pp. 619-628.

 

Torelli, Mario
ˆPax  Augusta, Ara".
Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae.
Vol. 4, ed. Eva M. Steinby, pp. 70-74.
Rome: Quasar, 1999.

 

Torelli, Mario
Typology & Structure of Roman Historical Reliefs.
Jerome Lectures, 14.
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1982.

The author attempts to formulate typology for Roman historical reliefs. He argues that these reliefs, though varying over time and for particular situations, follow a well-fixed logic. The book is organized chronologically, tracing the development of the type by examinig a few of the most significant examples. In charpter 2, titled “A New Start: The Ara Pacis Augustae”, Torelli attempts to establish how far the tradition of previous examples are carried on in the Ara Pacis. In the following chapter, he examines in what ways the Ara Pacis established a type for later monuments.

Most of the Ara Pacis chapter is devoted to an extensive and detailed review of the various interpretations of the imagery and its organization on the precinct wall and on the altar itself. Torelli shows how the meaning of the Ara Pacis is dependent on a series of correspondences and oppositions. There are about 25 black-white illustrations, about half of suitable quality.

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Torraca, Giorgio
"The Scientist's Role in Historic Preservation with Particular Reference to Stone Conservation".
Conservation of Historic Stone Buildings and Monuments: Report of the Committee on Conservation of Historic Stone Buildings and Monuments.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1982., pp. 13-18.

 

Torsello, B. Paolo
La Materia del Restauro: Techniche e Teorie Analitiche.
Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1988.

Considers conflciting values in current Italian theories of restoration and conservation, arging for the recovery of material values.

 

Toynbee, J. M. C. (Jocelyn Mary Catherine, 1897-1985)
“The Ara Pacis Augustae”
Journal of Roman Studies (JRS).
Vol. 51 (1961), pp. 153-156.
Available on the web through JStor at  http://www.jstor.org/stable/298848

A detailed review of Stefan Weinstock’s article, “Pax and the ‘Ara Pacis’”, Jounral of Roman Studies, Vol.1 (1960), pp. 44-58.. Toynbee agrees that it is impossible to prove that the monument now known as the Ara Pacis Augustae is the same as the one referred to in the few ancient texts. However, she shows that the circumstancial evidence argues strongly that the identification is correct.

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Toynbee, J. M. C. (Jocelyn Mary Catherine)
The Ara Pacis Reconsidered and Historical Art in Roman Italy.
London: Geoffrey Cumberledge, 1953.
Proceedings of the British Academy (BSA/ ProcBritAc).
Vol. 39 (1953), pp. 67-95 plus 28 pages of very high quality black-white photos.
A high quality pdf with full text and images has been made available by David S. Rose at Northern Virginia Community Collge.

All of the images are reproduced on this web site.

This was the first comprehensive review of the Ara Pacis following the landmark, two–volume publication by Moretti. As such, it provides a major indication of the state of scholarship in 1953. While Toynbee relies heavily on Moretti’s publication and its images, she has a number of specific objections to Moretti’s interpretation of the images on the altar and their meaning. The author provides a chronologcal history of the monument and, throughout the text, specific dates for the discovery of separate portions of the monument and their later history. On each point she discusses, Toynbee evaluates the ideas of previous scholars. providing dated references to their publications.

The author gives special attention to the importance of the Ara Pacis as the leading exemplar of the new character of Roman art, the “documentary precision, as regards the time, place, and personnel of the evnt depicted” (p.75). Toynbee continuously looks for precedents in previous Roman and Greek art, concluding that “the Ara Pacis brilliantly illustrates the adaption by Roman-age Greek architects and artists of classical Greek models to works conceived ad carried out in a thoroughly Roman spirit” (p.92). There are 28 plates, a few with multiple images,  of excellent grey-scale illustrations, a number not previously available and others of higher quality. All 38 images are reproduced on this web site

 

Toynbee, J. M. C. (Jocelyn M. C.)
“Some Notes on Arists in the Roman World, II: Sculptors”.
CollLatomus.
Vol. 9 (1950), pp. 49-65.

 

Tranquilli, Antonio
"Il Grande Perimetro di Cristallo e un'Attenzione alle Opera di Restauro".
Ara Pacis Augustae, ed. Pino Stampini.
Dibattiti rotariani, rivista monografica del Rotary Club Roma Sud.
Vol. 3, nos. 5-6 (1970) pp. 73-80.
Direttore responsable Alberto Pugliese.
Rome: Edizioni del Tritone, 1970.   

An account of the extensive 1970 reconstruction of the Ara Pacis Pavilion, written by the managing director and editor-in-chief of the Rotary Club Rome South, which funded the reconstruction and published the book in which this article appeared. Built in 1938 to house the Ara Pacis, the pavilion had been constructed hurridly and with inferior materials. By 1970 it had become clear that the Ara Pacis was deteriorating because of the inadequate pavilion, which needed major restoration. Tranquilli provides an instructive description of the work accomplished. He writes that the most important and complicated work was the substitution of large crystal plate walls to regulate the temperature and provide increased light and transparency. 

The author points out that the Ara Pacis was the single work of art most projected during World War II and deserves our respect and protection. There are 10 black-white photographs showing the reconstruction underway and a list of organizations that collaborated on the project.

 

Trimble, Jennifer
Pharonic Egypt and Ara Pacis in Augustan Rome
Princeton Stanford Working Papers in Classics. Sept. 2007.
A high quality pdf is available on the web through Princeton University.    

The theoretical focus of this paper is the nature of appropriation of previous cultures and their monuments by the Augustan state, especially “the transmission of imperial ideas about pharonic Egypt to Rome” (abstract). In her introduction, the author relates this to the appropriation of the grandeur of the Roman empire by Mussolini and the 1930’s Italian state. Trimble devotes 7 pages to Greek precedents, followed by 15 pages on possible Egyptian precedents for the Ara Pacis, providing illustrations of important parallels for each.

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Urbani, Giovanni, ed.
Problemi di Conservazione.
Bologna: Editrice Compositori, 1973.

The authors describe the newly important ways in which science had become an integral part of conservation in Italy.

 

Urbani, Giovanni, ed. .
La Scienza e l'Arte della Conservazione: Storici dell'Arte, Tecnici, Restauratori a Confronto sui Temi Ancora Irrisolti del Restauro.
Ricerche di Storia dell'Arte.
Rome: La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1882; Vol. 16.

The authors present examples demonstrating the need for collaboration among conservators, scientists, and art historians in the restoraton and conservation of art.

 

Uzzi, Jeannine Diddle
Children in the Visual Arts of Imperial Rome.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

The author examines imperial images of children to see what they reveal of Roman nobility and political ideology. The 10 chapters of her book include chapters on such subjects as “Public Gatherings”, “Submisison”, “Triumph”, and “The Battleground”. There are 74 medium-size, black-white illustrations, including 3 of the Ara Pacis.

Uzzi devotes chapter 9 (14 pages) to the Ara Pacis describing it as “the capstone of my study” (p.142). She identifies 6 of the 8 children represented on the north and south processional friezes as Roman (3 on each frieze), the 2 others as non-Roman. Uzzi provides a detailed description of the Roman children and describes how their placement, postures, and clothing “demonstrate visually the continuity of the family line” (p.145). The focus of her chapter, however, is the 2 children in non-Roman attire (1 on the north and 1 on the south frieze processional frieze). She presents a carefully reasoned, convicing argument, including that “the images of the non-Roman children from the Ara Pacis are consistent in costume, composition, gesture, and posture with other non-Roman child images” in other Roman art. She concludes that these 2 processional friezes present the non-Roman as “conquered, subordinate, impotent, childlike, and stripped of its supportive kin group, look[ing] to the Roman ruling elite for guidance and support, while the Roman elite may choose to ignore his or her pleas” (p. 155).

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Van Buren, A. W. (Albert William Van Buren, 1878-1968)
“The Ara Pacis Augustae”
Journal of Roman Studies (JRS)
Vol. 3 (1913), pp. 134-141.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/296027

An important early study of the so-called Tellus relief, at that time in the Uffizi Gallery. Van Buren finds the identification of the central figure as Tellus unpersuasive. Partly through parallels with passages in Virgil’s Georgics, she identifies the figure as the goddess Italia. She finds that this interpretation shows the Ara Pacis to be “one of the most carefully and logically conceived structures of which we have knowledge” (p.141).

 

Van Buren, A. W. (Albert William Van Buren, 1878-1968).
“Review of Giuseppe Moretti, Ara Pacis Augustade, 1948”.
American Journal of Philology.
Vol. 70, No. 4 (1949), pp. 418-421.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/291110

In reviewing Moretti’s definitive publication of his monumental 1937-38 excavation and reconstruction of the Ara Pacis Augustae, Van Buren states that “The outstanding result of the most recent campaign itself was the finding of enough of the essential elements of the actual cult altar that stood within the enclosure  . . . to justify its reconstruction . . . thus revealing the functional and organic nature of the ensemble” (p. 420).

Worth quoting are Van Buren’s important identifications and distinctions among the materials used in reconstructing the monument: “(1) original blocks, slabs, and fragments; (2) for the substructure marble from quarries at Carrara—not demonstrably those used by the Augustan buildiers; (3) for certain parts of the friezes and decorative elements, the originals of which are preserved elsewhere, plaster casts taken from those originals; (4) for some of the missing decorative parts, further casts, made from details already used elsewhere in the restoration, and arbitrarily introdued here for a second time in order to assist in giving a general impression of the sculptured bands; (5) also, in some instances, newly modeled plaster details” (p. 419).

The author commends “the draghtsmen who prepared the restored designs of the monument as it now is”, but criticizes the choice and arrangement of plates, poorly reproduced photographs, and overall quality of the luxurious printing. She calls attention to several other deficiencies in Moretti’s publication.

 

Varagnoli, Claudio
"Sui restauri di Gustavo Giovannoni".
Gustavo Giovannoni: Riflessioni agli albori del XXI secolo
Giornata di studio dedicata a Gaetano Miarelli Mariani (1928-2002).
a cita di Maria Piera Sette.
Questo volume è stato promosso dal
Dipartimento di Storia dell'Architettura, Restauro e Conservazione dei Beni Architettonici
d'intesa con il Centro di Studi per la Storia dell'Architettura.
Roma: Bonsignori Editore, 2005, pp.21-39.

 

Varndi, L.
"Sulle Tracce di una Tradizione della Natura; Rilettura  dei Fregio Ornamentale dell'Ara Pacis Augustae".
Acta ad Archaelogiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia. 
Vol. 11 (1999),pp. 7-39.

 

Varner, Eric R.
Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture.
Monumenta Graeca et Romana, Vol. X.  
Leiden, Boston: Koninklijke Brill, 2004.

 

Veltroni, Walter
“Roma, l’antico e il moderno”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007. Pp. 130-131.

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Vermeule, Cornelius C., III
The Dal Pozzo-Albani Drawings of Classical Antiquities in the British Museum
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series,
Vol. 50, No. 5.
Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1960, pp. 1-78.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1005822

Detailed account of drawings from the collection of Cassiano del Pozzo and his family, now in the British Museum. One drawing of the original south side processional reliefs from the Ara Pacis Augustae is catalogued and illustrated (no. 191, fig.73, on page 67).

 

Vermeule, Cornelius C., III
The Dal Pozzo-Albani Drawings of Classical Antiquities in the Royal Libray at Windsor Castle.
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series,
Vol. 56, Part 2.
Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1966.

Detailed account of drawings from the collection of Cassiano del Pozzo and his family, now in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. The 5 important drawings of the processional reliefs from the Ara Pacis Augustae are catalogued, one illustrated (fig.30).

 

Vickers, Michael
“Mantegna and the Ara Pacis”.
The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal.
Vol. 2 (1975), pp. 109-120.
Available on the web through JStor at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4166336

Vickers proposes that “Andrea Mantegna saw fragments of the Ara Pacis Augustae during his stay in Rome between 1488 and 1490, or at least knew drawings or engravings of them, for certain details of the Triumph of Caesar recall the Ara Pacis too closely for the resemblance to be coincidental” (p. 109). He argues that “the simplest explanation” for these resemblances “is surely that parts of both the North and South friezes of the Ara Pacis had come to light in the fifteenth century and had been copied, before they were lost and subsequently re-found in 1568” (p. 120). As evidence, he illustrates and describes Mantegna’s engraving of the “Triumph of Caesar” and Mantegna’s drawing and painting of the “Captives”.

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Visser, Romke
“Fascist Doctrine and the Cult of Romanità".
Journal of Contemporary History.
Jan. 1992, Vol. 27, pp. 5-22.

 

Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Polli) ca. 80-70 BCE - after ca. 15 CE.
Ten Books on Architecture (De Architectura Libri Decem).
Written on scrolls, ca. 30-20 BCE.
References and quotes are from the translation by Ingrid D. Rowland, with commentary and illustrations by Thomas Noble Howe (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Book 4, "Corinthian, Doric, and Tuscan Temples"; Chapter 5 "Orientation", Chapter 9 "Altars".
Book 9, "Sundials and Clocks"; Chapter 7, "Making the Analemma" (figures 114, 115).

A remarkable collection of high resolution digital scans of 73 editions of Vitruvius from 1497 to 1909, from the Werner Oechslin Library Foundation, Einsiedeln, Switzerland, are available on the website of the European Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO).

 

Vlad Borrelli, Lisia
"L'Archeologia Italiana Prima e dopo la Teoria del Restauro".
La Teoria del Restauro nel Novecento da Riegl a Brandi.
Ed. Maria Andaloro .
Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Viterbo 12-15 novembre 2003.
Firenze: Nardini, 2006, pp. 215-224

 

Vogel, Lise
The Column of Antoninus Pius.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973.

Vogel argues that the obelisk represented on the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius is the obelisk of Psametik II, which Augustus had erected on the Campus Martuus near the Ara Pacis.
Photographs of the relief with image of this obelisk are reproduced on this website.

 

von Duhn, Friederich                          
“Sopra alcuni bassirilievi che ornavano un monumento pubblico romano dell’epoca di Augusto”.
Annali dell’Instituto di corrispondenza archeologia (AICA/AnnInst/Ann.dell’ Inst.).Vol. 53 (1881), pp. 302-332, illustrations in Mon Inst II (1881), figs. 34-35.
Monumenti dell'Instituto di corrispondenza archeologico (Mon. dell’Inst). Vol. XI  tav. 34-36; tavv. d’agg. V, W.

After his first brief 1879 paper identifying recovered, carved marble slabs as coming from the monument referred to in texts as the "Ara Pacis Augustae", von Duhn published this extensive study with additional information and the proposal that additional discovered slabs were also part of the same monument. This landmark publication included early and recent drawings of key slabs, a few presumably drawn by von Duhn or assistants, showing their condition at different times and additions made.

As an addendum, von Duhn published the 1784 notes of the Roman sculptor-restorer-teacher Francesco Carradori (1747-1825), who had been commissioned to restore 5 panels of the 2 processional friezes. This essay, "Relazione del Restauro fatto dà me Francesco Carradori scultore, è da farsi nei noti Bassirilievi già spediti per la  volta di Livorno per condursi in Firenze", preserved in the Uffizi archives, described the condition of the slabs as Carradori received them and his approach to their restoration.

von Duhn, Friederich   
“Über einige Basreliefs und ein römisches Bauwerk der ersten Kaiserzeit”.
Miscellanea Capitolina (Instituto Archaeologico centum semestria feliciter peracta: Gratulantur Iuvenes Capitolini qui per centesimum instituti semester in Monte Tarpejo constiterunt).
Ed. E. Borman and F. van Drehn.
Rome: Typis Salviuccianis,1879; pp. 11-16.

This 6 page article was the breakthrough publication for the scholarly study of the Ara Pacis Augustae. The young German archaeologist Friedrich von Duhn observed that a number of ancient Roman marble reliefs were so similar in style and size that they most have come from the same monument. Through a careful review of the history of each of these marble slabs, von Duhn concluded that not only those recently removed from under the Palazzo Fiano and the Via in Lucina, then on display in the courtyard of the Palazzo Fiano, but also some then in other collections, had come from an ancient Roman building where the Palazzo Fiano was then located. Through a review of ancient sources and of the topography of Rome, von Duhn concluded that these marble reliefs had come from the structure referred to in ancient Roman texts as the "Ara Pacis Augustae" on the Campus Martius, and that it had been located in the vacinity of the San Lorenzo in Lucina.

A  copy of this article is available on the web through Google Books.

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Wallace-Hadrill, A.
"Mutatio morum: the idea of a cultural revolution”.
The Roman Cultural Revolution.
Ed. T. Habinek and A. Schiesaro.
Cambridge University Press, 1997; pp. 3-22.

 

Ward-Perkins, J. B.
Marble in Antiquity: Collected Papers of J.B. Ward-Perkins.
Ed. Hazek Dodge and Bryan Ward-Perkins.
Archaeological Monographs of the British School at Rome. No.6.
London: British Shool at Rome, 1992.

Provides major information on quarying, the marble trade, and the organization of marble workshops. Only 1 brief mention of the Ara Pacis. Long bibliography by topic without annotations.

 

Weinstock, Stefan                  
“Pax and the ‘Ara Pacis’”.
Journal of Roman Studies (JRS)
Vol. 50, Nios.1-2 (1960), pp. 44-58.
Available on the web through JStor.

Weinstock decribes reasons for rejecting the traditional identification of one of the famous relief panels on the Ara Pacis as the sacrifice of Aeneas. Less convincingly, he argues that the monument commonly referred to as the Ara Pacis “is certainly not the Ara Pacis Augustae” (p.58). He writes “I presume that the Augustan altar of Pax was inscribed but was without any further decoration except the door in front”. He reviews the evidence for calling it “The Ara Pacis”, the origins of “the cult of Pax”, and its association with Augustus. Although he disagrees with them, Weinstock recognizes the contributions of the scholars who have gradually reconstructed the altar.
There are 4 photographs of the Ara Pacis, 7 photographs of related sculpture, and 2 pages illustrating 29 coins.

 

Wilkins, Ann Thomas
“Augustus, Mussolini, and the Parallel Imagery of Empire”
Donatello among the Blackshirts: History and Modernity in the Visual Culture of Fascist Italy, ed. Claudia Lazzaro and Roger J. Crum.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005; Chap. 3, pp. 53-65, endnotes pp. 252-254.

Includes 4 gray-scale photos, including 1 of the 1938 Ara Pacis pavilion.

Winkes, R.
“Review of D. Boschung, Gens Augusta, Mainz, 2002".”
BJb, 2002-2003: pp. 610-612.

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no listing

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Yilmaz, Havva
“Der Zoilosfries aus Aphrodisias: Typologie, Stil und Eigenart des Frieses und sein Verhältnis zur Ara Pacis".
Dissertation, University of Marburg, 1987.

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Zanardi, Bruno, and Vivian Ruesch
“L’Intervento di Restauro della Fronte Orientale dell’Ara Pacis Augustae”.
Ara Pacis Augustae: in occasione del restauro della fronte orientale,
ed. Eugenio La Rocca.
Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1983.
Text pp. 61-76, photographs pp. 77-108, drawings and diagrams pp.109-128.

An account of the extensive 1982 study and restoration of the original east front of the Ara Pacis, by the Conservazione Beni Culturali (CBC), Rome. This constitutes perhaps the most carefully documented publication on any aspect of the physical history of the Ara Pacis Augustae. The text is presented in the form of an extensive, 8 section outline: (in translation) General Scheme of the Work; Technique of Execution of the Ancient Reliefs, Previous Interventions; Description of the State of Conservation; Restoration; List of Materials Used; Attachment. Each section except the last is itself carefully outlined, with footnotes. A few points are discussed in one or more paragraphs. In all of these, especially  in the last section, the extensive 1784  interventions of  Francesco Carradori are given special attention.

The photographs consist of extremely well-chosen details, carefully photographed, though not always sharply reproduced, with clear explanatory captions. The color diagrams identify the tools used, dates of previous recarvings, restorations, and excavations, current state of conservation, and the just completed restorations.

Altogether, for anyone interested in the Ara Pacis or the physicial history of ancient marble sculpture, this publication is an education.

Eleven of the photographs and the eleven pages of color diagrams are reproduced on this website.

 

Zanker, Paul
“Ara Pacis Augustae: Introduzione ad Ara Pacis di Giulia Bordignon".
This is the title of Zanker's introduction as it appears on the Engramma website. On the engramma website Zanker's introduction (in Italian) is accompanied by the author's original german text, not included in the printed book.
Engramma, no. 83, Sept. 2010.
On the web through Engramma.    

In this web bibliography, Zanker's Introduction is annotated below under "Zanker, Paul. "Introduzione" to Giulia Bordignon, Ara Pacis Augustae", 2010.

 

Zanker, Paul
Arte Romana.
Italian translation M. Carpitella.
Bari: Gius, Laterza & Figli Spa, Rome, 2008.
English translation published as Roman Art by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2010.

A book of obvious importance for all Roman art by a renowned scholar. For the Ara Pacis there are 2 standard photographs and 2 pages of text, summarizing Zanker's now accepted view that the principal message of the Ara Pacis was that Augustan peace was dependent on Augustan military success.

 

Zanker, Paul
Augusto e il Potere delle Immagini.
Torino: G. Einaudi, 1989.

A masterful account of the multifaceted ways in which Augustus used images to create a pervasive myth of the Augustan golden age.
First published in German, Augustus und di Macht der Bilder (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1987).
Annotated under English edition listed below, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, 1988.

 

Zanker, Paul
Augustus und die Macht der Bilder.
Munich: C. H. Beck, 1987.

A masterful account of the multifaceted ways in which Augustus used images to create a pervasive myth of the Augustan golden age.
Also published in an Italian edition, Augusto e il potere delle immagini (Torino: G. Einaudi, 1989).
Annotated under English edition listed below, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, 1988.

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Zanker, Paul
“Introduzione" to Giulia Bordignon, Ara Pacis Augustae.
Classica. Venice: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, 2010; pp. 9-16.

The comprehensive and well-balanced handbook by Giulia Bordignon, titled Ara Pacis Augustae, is separately listed and annotated in this web bibliography under Bordignon, 2010.

Zanker is widely recognized as one of the leading scholars of Augustan Rome, wonderfully describing the ways in which Augustus used images to create a pervasive myth of the Augustan golden age. This makes his 8-page introduction to a recent 133 page handbook on the Ara Pacis of special interest and deserving of careful review, especially as his review of the new museum continues a few of the common misconceptions.

Zanker devotes the first section of his introduction to the new 2006 museum, designed by Richard Meier and Associates. He immediately calls attention to the partisan controversies that have dominated discussions of the success or failure of the new building.

He notes that the design of the new museum “attracts the visiting public” and that (in translation) “the younger public might be happy to find in Rome, among so many ruins and ancient palaces, something that responds immediately to their aesthetic sense. The ancient monument, with its fragments and its gaps, has been given, so to speak, a facelift, as if it were the face of an old man that shines now, in the white of its marbles, with an almost timeless beauty.”

Zanker also calls attention to the major enlargement of the overall museum building, with the addition of a large atrium, auditorium, gallery, offices, etc., and some of the  major adjustments this required.

Unfortunately, his introduction also continues some of the most commen misconceptions about the new museum. It is especially unfortunate that, like many critics, Zanker nowhere mentions that the new museum building superbly achieves its main purpose, the protection of the Ara Pacis Augustae from further deterioration. The double-coffered ceiling and tempered glass walls, in concert with an advanced electrical and air control system, provide exceptional climate, sound and vibration isolation from the intense traffic and pollution just outside and to undesirable changes in humidity and temperature inside. This, the main purpose and most significant achievement of the new Museo dell’Ara Pacis, is too often overlooked.

Many judgments about the new museum are of course dependent on point of view and personal opinion. Zanker writes (in translation): “Richard Meier has confined the Augustan altar in a room with an oppressive roof”. But the new ceiling/roof above the altar is much higher than in the previous pavilion and allows in significantly more daylight, in addition to being fitted with ducts for air control and major artificial light for overcast days and night viewing.

In the same sentence the author writes (in translation): “on the side facing the Mausoleum, the distance between the monument and the glass wall is too narrow”. This is indeed the most serious restriction on viewing conditions for the Ara Pacis, especially as the viewing level from outside this glass wall is at street level an entire floor below the monument. But neither the architect nor others involved should be faulted for this because this glass wall could not be moved further from the monument in the 1938 pavilion or more than a few inches in the 2006 museum. The narrow slice of land chosen by Mussolini for the location of the reconstructed Ara Pacis Augustae severely restricted the space on both sides. It would be reasonable, however, to criticise the new museum for not repeating the ramps along both sides in the 1938 pavilion, which provided a higher viewpoint for viewing the processional friezes.

Zanker further writes (in translation): “The immense proportions of the construction makes it so that the Ara Pacis seems small, almost to be disappearing, or at least appears extremely modest”. But on entering the new museum, many visitors find that the transition from dark entry area to the spacious, sun-filled grand hall in front of the Ara Pacis enobles the monument far more than at any time since ancient Rome.

In the second, slightly larger section of his introduction Zanker describes the Ara Pacis itself and its societal context.

Like others, he writes that it is not conceivable that large sacrificial animals would have been made to mount the long stairs leading up to the sacrificial altar or would have been sacrificed in the constrained interior space. He suggests that the Ara Pacis conveys "a more abstract, as it were ‘sublimated’, form of sacrifice".

Zanker joins some other experts in praising the unifying Roman style in contrast to the Greek style, most notably in the Pergamon Altar. Like others he also praises the clarity of its basic message, which he notes would have been understood by the full range of even foreign visitors. Importantly, he calls attention to the danger of over-interpretation. However, it may be extreme to write (in translation): “the meaning [of the 'frieze spirals'] is clear: these vines symbolize the blossoming and the prosperity of the empire of the Roman people, and thanks to the Pax Augusta. All interpretations beyond this are due to the erudition of the interpreters, whose knowledge surpasses that of Augustan viewers.” But most scholars believe that the complex imagery of the scrolling acanthus friezes would have conveyed additional meanings to well-educated Romans.

The range of information and opinions in Zanker’s essay impressively conveys the scope of the entire Ara Pacis project.

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Zanker, Paul
The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus.
Trans. from German by Alan Shapiro.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988 (German original: Augustus und die Macht der Bilder; Munich: Beck, 1987; also published in Italian, Augusto e il Potere delle Immagini; Torino: G. Einaudi, 1989).

In this much acclaimed book, the author provides a synthetic study of the ways in which art and architecture were “pressed into the service of political power” in the Age of Augustus and thus how they reflect that society. Zanker writes that “the goal of this book is to examine the complex interrelationship of the establishment of monarchy, the transformation of society, and the creation of a whole new method of visual communication”. The underlying basis for such a study is that “’style’ itself is treated as a complex historical phenomenon”. The author's description of the rows of figures in the processional friezes wonderfully embody this approach (pp. 121-122).

The book is organized by concept, drawing on a wide range of architecture, urban design, altars, sculpture, reliefs, cups, coins, wall paintings, inscriptions, contemporary poetry and other literary sources. Brief but revealing descriptions of the Ara Pacis and 14 photographs are scattered through the book, informed primarily by their similarities and differences from other works of art, related in form and meaning.

There are some 260 small, high quality black-white illustrations. The select bibliography is organized under some 50 subjects, whose titles  convey the rich conceptualization of the book, and within them by subtopics.

 

Zanker, Paul
“La restitutio augustea e l’ara pacis”.
Richard Meier: Il Museo dell’Ara Pacis. 
Milano: Mandadori Electra spa, 2007. Pp. 15-17.
This essay is quoted from Zanker, Augusto e il potere delle immagini (Torino, 2006), pp. 128-136; previously published in English in The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, 1988), pp. 118-125. This book is separately listed and annotated above.

Zanker here interprets the 2 processional friezes on the 2 sides of the Ara Pacis Augustae. He writes that (trans. Alan Shapiro) “the sacrificial procession on the Ara Pacis is a carefully planned, idealized reflection of the renewed Republic, design not by order of Augustus himself, it is important to remember, but of the Senate, to honor itself and the state. In essense we are seeing here the newly constituted leading aristocracy  of Rome as it wished to be represented and as it wished, at least outwardly, to be closely idenitified with the new order”.

The author devotes primary attention to the chief priesthoods, which he notes occupy 2/3 of the processional friezes. He describes their very high statues in society, clothing by which they could be idnetified, and the importance of strict protocol.

As usual, the author’s descriptions reveal essential concepts (trans. Alan Shapiro): “The dense row of figures all similarly veiled in their togas give the impression of unity and uniformity. The sculptural style and composition, inspired by Classical reliefs, elevates the scene beyond the historical occasion into a timeless sphere. . . . Significantly, only the most  important men have portrait features, while the rest have idealized faces that conceal their individual identity. The figure embodies the office, not the man who happened to hold it at the time”.

Photographs include 3 sections of the south side processional frieze with Augustus and 1 detail of 3 flamines from one of these sections. In the English edition of the book (see above) there are also 7 photographs of related reliefs referred to in this section of the text.

 

Zanker, Paul
Roman Art.
English trans. Henry Heitmann-Gordon.
Originally pub. by Bari: Gius, Laterza & Figli Spa, Rome, 2008.
Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010.

A book of obvious importance for all Roman art by a renowned scholar. For the Ara Pacis there are 2 standard photographs and 2 pages of text, summarizing Zanker's now accepted view that the principal message of the Ara Pacis was that Augustan peace was dependent on Augustan military success.

 

Zeri, A.
“L’ara pacis Augustae da Morpurgo a Meier”.
Forma Urbis.  Vol. 2, no. 5 (2006), pp. 4-25.

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