Month: December 2020

Palladio and the Baths of Constantine

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The next item in our little series on the now-vanished Baths of Constantine in Rome is by none other than Palladio.  Andrea Palladio was a 16th century Italian architecture who became very famous for his 4-volume handbook on how to do Roman architecture.  This contained illustrations of many standing monuments, giving a plan, elevation and notes.  He also left unpublished drawings of the Roman baths, and one of these is of the Baths of Constantine, perhaps made around 1570.

The publication history of this is complex, and I will defer it to a separate blog post.  So these I give from an 1810 reprint of a 1785 volume: Andrea Palladio & Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi [Editor], Le terme dei Romani: disegnate da Andrea Palladio e ripubblicate con l’aggiunta di alcune osservazioni da Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi giusta l’esemplare del Lord Conte di Burlingthon impresso in Londra l’anno 1732, Vicenza, 1810.  This is available online at the Digital Library at Heidelberg here.  The plates (“tavola”) are at the end.  The text in the book is NOT by Palladio, but by the unfortunate Bertotti (who added himself the surname of Scammozi, taken from one of the Palladio’s pupils).

Plate 14 is the plan of the baths (from here).

Plate 15 is the elevation, a reconstruction (from here):

The notes and the measurements are original.  The unit of measurement is probably something called the Vicentian foot, which is about two metres, I believe.  Note that the section at the bottom of the elevation is the other way round to the plan – the big hall is at the right in the plan, the pool and arches to the left.

Scammozi did add a key, much of it his own guesswork or referring to an earlier volume by the Scottish adventurer, Charles Cameron, who published in London in 1772 his The baths of the Romans explained and illustrated. With the restorations of Palladio corrected and improved.  This can be downloaded from Archive.org here.  On p.64 (p.79 of the PDF) may be found Cameron’s comments on the Baths of Constantine, followed by his key to the plan.  The plan is on p.245-6 of the PDF, the elevation (printed backwards) is p.249-50 of the PDF.  Here is his key:

A. The Theatre.
B. A large circular building, which contained the baths for the wrestlers.
C. The Apodyterium.
D. Exedrae for the Philosophers.
EEE. The Tepidarium, Caldarium, and Laconicum : invariably placed in all the Thermae to the south west, according to the direction of Vitruvius.
F. The Frigidarium. It appears from Fabricius, that the buildings in this quarter were very lofty, as well as the furnaces, to which there was an ascent of one hundred steps.  “Aedificia quaedam Quadrata, auaedam rotunda altissimis fornicibus extant, quoroum unum per centum fere gradus ascendimus”.
G. The Xystus, with the margins I I round it.
HH. Atrium, and piscina [swimming pool].
KK. Porticos, for those to deposit their clothes who bathed in the piscina.
LL. Vacant area for admitting light to the different apartments.
MM. Conisterium and Elethoseum.
NN. Rooms where the spectators could see those who exercised in the Xystus without being incommoded. These rooms likewise served for libraries.
OO. &c. Rooms for the use of the wrestlers.
PP. Rooms for those who had the care of the baths.
QQ. Cold Baths for those who did not choose to exercise in the Xystus.
RR. Rooms for the candidates to withdraw in, who exercised in the open air.

Bertoti repeats the key of Cameron, but prefixes it with some comments on the plan of the baths which, unlike Cameron, he has examined.  He comments that he can’t understand the use of the arches around a semi-circular area at one end, with the label HH in it.[1]  He frankly confesses that he could make no sense of the measurements on the elevation.[2]

This is all very detailed, and naturally has been used by subsequent model makers.  The elevations must be largely reconstruction, even though they have measurements on them.

But how reliable is all of this?  How much is the imagination of Palladio, or borrowed from other baths?  I do not know.

I notice that the floor plan differs quite a bit from that of Bufalini, posted here.  Bufalini shows no semi-circular piscina, nor any blank space in which it could be.

These sorts of questions I will have to leave to the specialists.  For specialists there are!  There are articles devoted to elucidating all sorts of questions around each drawing by Palladio, it seems.[3]  But this is a rabbit hole that is outside the scope of this post.

In my next post, I will discuss exactly what we are looking at here.  These drawings have a history of their own!

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  1. [1]Trovo una Piazza, semicircolare cinta da Archi dei quali non so comprendere l’uso: questi Archi sono alti una larghezza e poco meno di due terzi, ed il pieno trammezzo eccedo la metà del loro lume.↩
  2. [2]Non potei determinare le proporzioni delle altre parti, perchè alcune sono segnate con numeri ; in altre è necessario adoprare la scala de’piedi, la quale rare volte corrisponde ai numeri medesimi; difetto da me riscontrato in tutti i Disegni di queste Terme.↩
  3. [3]See for instance Laetitia La Follette, “A contribution of Andrea Palladio to the study of Roman thermae”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 52 (1993), 189-198.  JSTOR.↩

The Baths of Constantine in the panorama of Antonio van Wyngaerde ca. 1560

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In 1894 the famous Italian archaeologist R. Lanciani found a long-forgotten 2-metre long drawing of a panorama of Rome, in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, in the Sutherland collection of some 20,000 artworks of all sorts.  He published it in facsimile the following year, in the Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale de Roma, vol. 23 (1895), as a foldout between pages 80-81, followed by his own article on the subject on pp.81-109.  A high-resolution scan of the image can be found at the wonderful Heidelberg Digital Library, here, where the whole volume is online.  (Lanciani’s text begins on the next page here.)

The panorama is 360 degrees.  It includes a view of the ruins of the Baths of Constantine, and beyond this the prominent fragment of the “Temple of the Sun”, looking towards the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Vatican to the south-west.  It is of course far too large to appear here, but here is a greatly reduced excerpt.

It is a frustrating image in a way.  At the bottom we see the “Avanzi …. delle terme Constantine” on both sides – ruins of the baths of Constantine – but it’s hard to know what is what.  A rotunda is clearly seen in the middle, looking half buried.  To the right are various walls and exedra.

I can’t determine what is supposed to be seen on the left, where the same “Avanzi…” message appears, but plainly the author thought that he was showing something.

Still it is good to have it.

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A 1621 reconstruction of the Baths of Constantine in Rome by Lauro Giacomo

Posted on by Roger Pearse

By 1621 there must have been little left of the Baths of Constantine, but there was a market for a drawing, as the existence of this item by Lauro Giacomo shows.  Here’s a small image from Europeana:

A proper-sized image can be found at the Savannah College of Art and Design, here.  This allows us to read the text, which is, however, of no real interest.  But the title is more useful – “Thermae Constantini Imperatoris (Ad Templum S. Silvestri in Monte Quirinali)”.  The baths are described as near the church of S. Silvestro on the Quirinal Hill.

By coincidence I managed to find that church on Google Maps, and so I updated yesterday’s post about the Bufalini Map.  It’s good to see that this correction appears to be in line with this 1621 image.

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Bufalini’s plan of the Baths of Constantine

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In 1541 Leonardo Bufalini drew a map of the whole city of Rome, the Pianta di Roma, with emphasis on the surviving ancient monuments.  This was printed in 1551.  Bufalini was early enough that his map shows much that has since been lost.

Among them is a map of the Baths of Constantine, standing on the ridge of the Quirinal hill, between two valleys on either side, with the Via Quirinalis leading off to the north-east, just as it does today, and the piazza where the Quirinal palace was to be built clearly visible next door.

A 1911 reproduction, with study, can be found at Heidelberg here.  The map is printed on individual pages, which makes it hard to use.  An enterprising gentleman has created a website here with all the pages put together, although for some reason he wants to stop people copying bits of it.

I’ve taken a small bit, and rotated it so that it aligns what must be north-south, using the roads that run off, in parallel, to the north-east, just as the modern map does today.  My apologies for the crudity – I am not great at image manipulation.  But here it is.

I would imagine that a good part of the gridwork shown on the plan of the “Thermae Constantiniae” is in fact foundations for gardens, because the slope underneath had to be built up.  The two circular structures on either side of the “gardens” were free-standing at this time, and appear as rotundas in other illustrations.

And here is the modern layout, via Google Maps, with what I imagine must be the location of the baths:

The key connection point is the (somewhat smaller) Quirinal plaza and the via Quirinale going off to the top right.

The modern Via della Dataria that leads down to the Trevi fountain is clearly shown on Bufalini’s map, to the left of the lettering “Vinear. Card. Ferrrariae”.  The Via Quirinale is shown.  A parallel “via Viminalis” is probably the Via Nazionale – a modern sounding name! – not labelled in the above screen-grab.

Surely there must be a monograph on the Baths of Constantine?

Update: I have since located the church of S. Silvestro al Quirinale, which the Bufalini map shows as facing the entrance to the baths, and to the left somewhat.  Here it is: so we need to slightly redraw the rectangle.  Looking again at the Bufalini map, I see that the “Via del Corneliis” drifts left, relative to the Via del Quirinale, just as the modern road does at the piazza, and the Baths are lined up with that, not the Via del Quirinale.  So let’s shift the plan a bit, and allow for the church.

Note how the road going east from the church of San Silvestro al Quirinale – today called the Via Mazzarino – also appears on the Bufalini map.

Update (16/12/20): I have come across an article discussing the Bufalini map.  It seems that he was prone to embellishment.  His version of the Baths of Caracalla, which are extant, is apparently intentionally inaccurate.  For details see Jessica Maier, “Leonardo Bufalini and the first printed map of Rome”, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 56/57 (2011/2012), pp. 243-270 (JSTOR).

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The Baths of Constantine in Rome

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I came across this interesting drawing from Du Perac, Vestigi dell’Antichita di Roma, 1621, plate 32 (online at Heidelberg here).

Duperac, Baths of Constantine

The text beneath reads:

Vestigij delle Terme di Constantino nel monte quirinale dalla parte che guarda verso Libecchio (= sud-ovest) qualli per esser molto ruinati non vi si vede adornamenti ma solo grandissime muraglie et stantie masimamente nel giardino del Ill.mo Car.le de Vercello et da poi che io designai questa parte vi si sono fabricate case et granarij di modo che al di doggi non si puol piu vedere per esser occupata di dette fabriche.

Nothing remains of it today.  I gather that the baths stood on the slope of the Quirinal Hill, a little below the modern presidential palace.  Because of the slope, Constantine’s architects had to support it with a platform, built on top of 3-4th century houses which they demolished.  These houses in turn stood on top of still earlier houses.

I believe that other early drawings exist.  It might be fun to locate them.

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