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17.3 The Tomb Of the Caetennii in the Vatican Cemetery
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From the course by Yale University
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From the lesson
Bigger is Better: The Baths of Caracalla and Other Second-and Third-Century Buildings in Rome
Exploration of a "bigger is better" philosophy; exposed brick tombs with painted stucco and architectural elements; the Temple of Divine Antoninus Pius and Faustina and its post-antique afterlife as the Church of S. Lorenzo in Miranda; the earliest surviving triple-bayed Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum; the Septizodium, a lively baroque-style façade for Domitian's Palace on the Palatine Hill; and the colossal Baths of Caracalla
Meet the Instructors
Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
The most interesting tomb from my point of view actually, is, a tomb that is located,
a Roman tomb of the 2nd century, that is located beneath the Vatican, today.
And I show you a view again of the dome.
Of St. Peters Cathedral in Rome designed by Michelangelo himself.
Another view over here showing also Michelangelo's dome.
But showing below
it the so called baldacchino that was put up
by the famous seventeenth-century Italian architect Borromini, Francesco Borromini.
The the cathedral of St Peter's, and any of you who've been there will agree with
me on this, is one of the great wonders of the world, there's no question it is.
You want to talk about bigger is better or biggest is
best [LAUGH] this is a truly colossal buildings, and if you
have been there, know.
But it does give me occasion to mention,
as I've mentioned a couple of times already this
term, that one of the really great things to
do when you visit Rome is to climb things.
Is to climb.
If you're so lucky to climb Column of Trajan or the Pantheon
up to the dome, those you have to get special permission to do.
But what you don't need special permission to do, and one is, and
is one of the great climbs in Rome, is to go up St. Peter's.
And you can go up St. Peter's either
on the outside of the building, to various levels
from which you can see some of the greatest
views of Rome, including back over central Rome, ancient
Rome, all the buildings that we've been talking about.
You can see the dome of the Pantheon from the top of St. Peter's.
You can see the Victor Emmanuel monument, tall
and proud, from the dome of St. Peter's.
But you can also climb up to the, to the dome from the inside.
Which is a, another extraordinary experience.
You can go almost, not quite, but almost to to the apex of Michelangelo's dome.
Walk around a corridor there and look down on Bernini's Baldacchino.
So for those of you who are going to Rome
any time soon or in the future it's a, it's
a not to be missed experience, to climb the Cathedral
of St Peters on the outside, and also on the inside.
I bring you to St.
Peter's because one can also go down underneath St. Peters and
that's another very interesting experience to go down in the depths.
Beneath Saint Peter's and get a really great sense
of the centuries of civilization that had been piled one
on top of another from ancient Rome or from the
time of Romulus, indeed, all the way up to today.
And in order to see the Tomb of the Caetennii which is the tomb that I want
to turn to now.
You do have to go down underneath Saint Peter's.
You, you have to, this is something you can't just walk in,
you can climb, you can climb Saint Peter's any day of the week.
But, if you want to go underneath
Saint Peter's, you have to make special arrangements.
You have to get special tickets to do that, and
now one can do that online, you can plan that online.
And you can get tickets to go
to the so called Vatican cemetaries underneath, underneath.
And they don't
have them, they have small number of hours on variety of days.
So it is something one needs to plan for well in advance.
But you can do it.
You go to the left of the Baldacchino, you
go down, and you go down century upon century.
You see primarily the tombs of the popes, the
crypts with the tombs of the popes, and I show
you Pope Boniface here, just to give you an
idea of what some of these look like, lying in,
eternity here, on the top of his, sarcophagus, or a,
a sculptured portrait of him on the top of his sarcophagus.
But if you go all the way down.
All the way down and most tourists don't do this.
But you go all the way to the bottom, what
you end up with is one of Rome's great tomb streets.
And this tomb street was out in the light of
day, of course, in antiquity like all the other tomb streets.
But because of the passage of time
because other buildings that were built on top,
primarily the cathedral at Saint Peter's and just the,
the rising ground level over time it now is
is, it is subterranean, but when you, it's amazing.
You go down.
You walk along it. It is like you are walk.
I mean, it's a dark street but nonthele, I wouldn't want
to, I wouldn't want to record [LAUGH] in that in that street.
But you go down under.
It's a dark street but it is.
You feel like you are walking along a
major tomb street in Rome, and indeed you are.
And I show you a plan of it here, so that you can
see, it is very much like walking along the tomb street in Isola Sacra.
You see at your left and right these these concrete brick faced tombs that look very
much like the Tomb of Annia Regilla or the ones that we saw in Isola Sacra.
Typical house tombs of the second century AD.
One of the, one of the tombs that is located down there has
long been thought by scholars, and believers, to be the tomb of Saint Peter.
No one has been able to prove this incontrovertibly, but there is
fair, you know, there is some interesting evidence, both pro and con.
And it has been thought, and you know Peter's famous
statement, you know, upon this rock I shall build this church,
namely the Church of St. Peter's.
We believe that when Constantine, the last pagan emperor, and we're
going to talk about him in the last lecture this semester.
When Constantine built the first basilica,
Christian basilica on this site, the basilica
that we refer to as Old Saint Peter's that obviously predated New Saint Peter's.
He he he, we think he may have built it on that very
rock, and on that very tomb of Saint Peter.
And that's what this restored view shows you here.
If you'd walk along though and look at these tombs, for the
most part they look like typical Roman tombs from the second century.
Brick face, concrete construction with interesting decoration inside.
And I show you just the most famous mosaic that is located down there.
What you see is a figure in a chariot, we think
it's a representation of the sun god Sol or Helios
in the chariot, because you can see the rayed crown.
But some believe it is a representation of Christ as Helios.
And I show it to you only because it is the single most
famous mosaic down there and one of the most famous mosaics in Rome.
But also because it heralds what we're going to be, begin to see
happening, especially in the last lecture, and that is this transition from paganism
to christianity in Rome.
Constantine being the last pagan, first christian emperor
and this interesting way in which pagan imagery
elides into christian imagery, both in terms of,
of figural decoration but also in terms of architecture.
I can't, because it's so poorly lighted down there I can't show
you the, a good picture of the tombs beneath Saint Peter's but
I can show you another set of tombs.
Beneath a, the, they're very well lighted and can be photographed better beneath a,
a columbarium, an underground, a catacomb actually,
an underground burial area that was used by
the early Christians in Rome and you see that it's called you, you d, you
don't have to worry about this it's called the Church of San Sabastiano and these.
These tombs are underneath that but I
showed them to you here just to give you a
sense of what that tomb street looked like underneath the Vatican
or looks like underneath the Vatican with the concrete brick faced
tombs looking very similar to those we saw at Isola Sacra.
The same same travertine door jams, inscriptions, slit windows and if you look
through the entrance way of this one you will see it's barrel vaulted.
And it has a scheme that is very similar to the stucco
decoration of the Tomb of the Valerii with these circles done
in a raised, stucco, and with the floating figures in between them.
And this is exactly what it looks like beneath the Vatican.
I can show you some views of the interiors of
some of the Vatican tombs because those have lights in them.
They're better lighted. You can see them here.
We see this interesting combination that we also saw at Isola Sacra
of the smaller niches that are used for, urns.
And the larger arcosolia that are used for the placement of bodies.
And then you can see on this view on the
right, the way in which they have closed off those arcosolia.
By placing marble plaques on them
that either have inscriptions or sometimes figural
scenes, and then again here a freestanding sarcophagi on these interiors as well.
This is an axonometric view from Ward-Perkins of the Tomb of the Caetennii.
It dates to 160 AD, in the Vatican cemetery in Rome.
And I think you can see here both the
brick-face concrete construction, the way in which the windows have
similar stucco decoration to what we saw on the
Tomb of Annia Regilla on the Via Appia in Rome.
But most interesting for us is the way in which the interior
is treated because this is my type two.
Here we, we will see some stucco but you will
see here that the walls are enlivened in a different way.
They are enlivened through architectonic means through the use of columns.
Through the use of niches, through the use
of pediments, triangular pediments but also broken triangular pediments.
Here you see a pediment that has been split apart.
Triangular pediments split apart to,
to show what is inside.
This is the same scheme that we saw in second style Roman
wall painting way back when, this whole idea of taking the traditional vocabulary
of architecture, and and de, and, and, dealing with it in a very
different way than had been done, before breaking the rules so to speak.
We see that happening here.
But the main thing is that we're looking at, at, at these,
this designer using architectural members to create the
visual interest of the walls of the structure.
You can also see in this axonometric view, this combination of small niches,
for cinerary urns and then these larger arcisolia for the bodies.
So, cremation and inhumation still going on,
hand in hand, during the second century AD.
This is a spectacular
view of the interior of the Tomb of the
Caetennii, and here, you can really see what I mean.
Yes, there is some stucco.
If you look at the vaults, you will see that those, that
there, this is, again, a groin vault that has been stuccoed over.
and, and, it has the same kind of it had the same kind of
compartments and, painted decoration, relief decoration that
we saw in the tomb of the Pancratii.
But you can see that most
of the effects have been done through architectural means.
If you look carefully you will see that there's a black and white
mosaic on the floor, not so different from what we see in Ostia.
There are niches on the walls, these niches used
of the cinerary urns, archesolia down here for the bodies.
But, there are stucco decoration in the use of the shells that you can see here.
But if you look very carefully
at the combination of sort of maroon and cherry red walls you will
see the remains of the architectural members that served to enliven this space.
Look up here.
You will see that there was a triangular pediment over the central niche.
You can see parts of the broken triangle, triangular pediments on either side.
You can see the remains of capitals and beneath those would have
been the projecting columns that we saw in the axonometric view in
Ward Perkins.
So, this again, the second type where the walls
are enlivened with architectural members and those architectural members,
when intact, would have created a scheme in which
you had progression, recession, progression,
recession, all along the wall.
This in and out scheme that we're going to see becomes the hallmark of what
I'm going to term here this semester, the
baroque element in Roman antiquity, in Roman architecture.
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