Meta Sudans – Page 4 – Roger Pearse

Some post-renaissance paintings of the Meta Sudans

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Roger Pearse

Regular readers will be aware that I am interested in the Meta Sudans, a Roman fountain that stood in Rome outside the Colosseum, and behind the Arch of Constantine, until it was demolished by Mussolini in the 1930s. By that time it was merely a stump, but earlier representations show that it was originally much taller.

Today I came across a paper by Dafina Gerasimovska, which collected representations of the Colosseum, as a way to learn more about Roman architecture.^[1]:

When talking about architectural buildings from Antiquity we rely on archaeological finds and written sources. Even coins can provide information about the look of ancient Roman architecture. …

An additional rich source of clues to the original appearance of buildings and their condition at certain times, however, can be found in paintings, drawings, engravings, etchings, prints, watercolours, old reconstructions and other artistic works of different periods in the past. Many painters, engravers, architects, travellers and diplomats interested in architectural remains have left works that serve as alternative sources for the study of cultural history and the architectural monuments which form a part of that history.

This article is not intended to highlight the artistic value of the achievements of famous artists inspired by Roman buildings but to emphasize the significance of these works as historical documents—as evidence of their existence, of changes in their appearance over time, of their ruin or of their recovery.

Inevitably this paper contained images of the Meta Sudans. Here are some of them. I apologise for the rather awkward way that WordPress displays these – click on the image to get the full size original.

The oldest one is by Dutch artist Gaspar van Wittel (1653–1736) who went to Rome in 1675. From his views of the Colosseum, I have excerpted the following:

Gaspar van Wittell, Colosseum - extract view of the Meta Sudans — Gaspar van Wittell, Colosseum – extract view of the Meta Sudans

Note the slender, tall appearance of the fountain, which I have marked with a red box. The next one is by Giovanni Paolo Panini (c.1691–c.1765), from his 1758 Gallery Displaying Views of Ancient Rome.

Panini (1758) - Meta Sudans — Panini (1758) – Meta Sudans

The interesting part of this one, is that it shows a band around the Meta Sudans, about halfway up. This sort of thing appears in the ancient coins that depict the Meta Sudans.

The final item is a drawing by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) from his The Antiquities of Rome in 1756:

Again this shows a tall Meta Sudans, although not clearly.

All of these are very interesting evidence on the shape of a now vanished Roman monument.

^[1]Dafina Gerasimovska, “Alternative Sources for studying Roman architecture”, Online here.↩

An 1860 photograph of the Meta Sudans

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Roger Pearse

Another old photograph of the Meta Sudans has appeared online via Roma Ieri Oggi, this time on Twitter. What makes this one interesting is the angle; it is taken with the Palatine hill in the background. Here it is:

Another photograph of the Meta Sudans

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Roger Pearse

Regular readers will be aware of my fascination with the Meta Sudans, the ruined Roman fountain that stood beside the Colosseum until 1936. The Roma Ieri Oggi site tweeted another photograph. Here it is:

There is always room here for photographs of the Meta Sudans!

Rome before Mussolini – what a map can tell us

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Roger Pearse

Mussolini demolished various areas of the city in order to create modern Rome. I’ve given various photographs of the areas in the past; but today I learn that there is a zoomable map of Rome here, before his work began. This has interesting things to show us.

First, a map of the area before St Peter’s basilica. Today this is a wide street, the Via della Conciliazione. But prior to Mussolini, the street did not exist!

st_peters_before_mussolini

We learn from H.V. Morton that there was a little restaurant directly facing the Piazza di S. Pietro, where he ate breakfast. Today that is gone.

We also know that Mussolini demolished a stretch of buildings from his office in the Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum, to build the Via del Foro Imperiali. But some of the remains of the imperial forums must have been pretty substantial. Where were they located, before the buildings were bulldozed? Again the map shows them, embedded in the city:

imperial_forums_before_mussolini

The main losses from this activity were around the Colosseum. We lost the ancient Roman fountain, the Meta Sudans, and also the base of the Colossal statue of Nero, after which the Colosseum was named. But they both appear in this map:

colosseum_area_before_mussolini

The Via del Colosseo still exists, although its lower end is chopped off and diverted upon the hill. But the creation of the Via del foro imperiali changed the geography completely. The wide road around the Colosseum is not here.

The Meta Sudans and the Djemila fountain in Algeria

Posted on November 25, 2015 by Roger Pearse

I’ve posted a number of images of the Meta Sudans, the ancient Roman fountain that stood next to the Colosseum and was demolished by Mussolini, in posts such as this one. Today on Twitter I saw a picture of a standing, much smaller, Roman fountain in Djemila in Algeria, posted by @AlgeriaTTours. Here’s the image:

The Meta Sudans is depicted on coins, such as the sestertius of Titus. I note that the drawing rather looks like the Djemila fountain; but the coins themselves rather suggest a tall base, with a platform on it, and then a relatively small cone at the top. Anyway here they are:

The pictures of Djemila did look nice. The government travel advice for Algeria, sadly, did not.

Another image of the Meta Sudans

Posted on September 22, 2015 by Roger Pearse

Via Twitter, I saw this photo of the Meta Sudans from 1885. It’s always nice to see these old photographs. I wonder who the lady was? Somebody’s wife, someone’s mother, someone’s grandmother.

More pictures of the Meta Sudans

Posted on June 24, 2015June 26, 2015 by Roger Pearse

Here’s another photograph of this now vanished monument in Rome:

Rome – Prof. Clementina Panella: Archaeological Investigations (2002-2008) - THE META SUDANS & THE N.E SLOPE OF THE PALATINE HILL. "Roma vista dall' alto Collosseo." # 8 (c. 1900) Alb. 25 / 2351 - Arch. Storico Capitolino Roma (2008). — Rome – Prof. Clementina Panella: Archaeological Investigations (2002-2008) – THE META SUDANS & THE N.E SLOPE OF THE PALATINE HILL. “Roma vista dall’ alto Collosseo.” # 8 (c. 1900) Alb. 25 / 2351 – Arch. Storico Capitolino Roma (2008).

The source for this is Flickr, which gives some more details of the photograph:

Foto Fonti / foto source: Roma vista dall’alto (8) Colosseo.
Fotografo: Stabilimento Costruzioni Aeronautiche Roma – Laboratorio Fotografico.
Data: primo quarto 1900
Tecnica: gelatine
Vecchia_Segnatura: Alb.25
Sottoserie: 12) Roma vista dall’alto – Album
ID_progr: 2351
Note: did.tip.
Serie: 4) Monumenti, Vie, Piazze, Palazzi
©2008 Comune di Roma – Dipartimento politiche culturali
ARCHIVIO STORICO CAPITOLINO

Hmm. We really need some proper way to locate all these pictures.

UPDATE: (Via the comments) It seems that Martin G. Conde has been collecting, and posting online, the materials assembled by Prof Clementina Panella during her work in the Colosseum valley area between 202-2015. This consists of 374 photographs, plus scholarly articles, etc. This is really important – such material too often rots in a box somewhere. Dr Conde’s site can be found here.

Here’s another photo from 1890, via Roma Iera Oggi:

1890 Image of the Colosseum and Meta Sudans. Via Roma Ieri Oggi

Next, a picture of an 1816 painting, by J.M.W.Turner no less, taken from the Tate Gallery.

Rome: Arches of Constantine and Titus 1819 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/D16367 — Rome: Arches of Constantine and Titus 1819 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/D16367

Note the extra height of the monument: but also that it has been opened up at the back, right to the centre, doubtless in search of treasure.

It is wonderful to have these photos. Rather less wonderful is when a site collects photographs – all long out of copyright, of course – and disfigures them with its own “watermark”. Such is the shameful practice at the RomaSparita website. There are four pages of photos of the Meta Sudans here, some very interesting, all vandalised. I won’t try to reproduce them here.

More engravings of Rome in the 18th century from Piranesi: Vatican Rotunda and Meta Sudans!

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Roger Pearse

A tweet this evening drew my attention to the fact that a search by author on Piranesi at the Spanish National Library produces heaps of results, available in very high quality and very large images. I looked through these, and found a couple of gems.

First, an external view of St Peter’s: “Veduta dell’ Esterno della gran Basilica di S. Pietro in Vaticano”. This is too large to display here, but it features the vanished 3rd century circular tomb, known as the chapel of St Andrew, which stood to the south of St Peter’s and was demolished in the 18th century. I’ve made a detail picture, itself still very large:

Piranesi, Vatican Rotunda. From external view of St Peter's Basilica. — Piranesi, Vatican Rotunda. From external view of St Peter’s Basilica.

I have also found the two images of the Colosseum and Arch of Constantine, which I dealt with yesterday, but in much higher resolution. In fact it is only when you see the original detail, that you realise quite how special these pictures are.

But what I was most interested in was the vanished fountain, the Meta Sudans, visible in them. Let’s remind ourselves of how this looked ca. 1900, a stubby thing of brick with the upper portion gone.

As a coin of Titus shows, it was originally tall, and slender:

So how did it look ca. 1800? In the first Piranesi etching, “Veduta dell’Arco di Costantino, e dell’Anfiteatro Flavio detto il Colosseo”, accessible here, I have zoomed in on the Meta Sudans:

Piranesi, "Veduta dell'Arco di Costantino, e dell'Anfiteatro Flavio detto il Colosseo". Detail showing Meta Sudans. — Piranesi, “Veduta dell’Arco di Costantino, e dell’Anfiteatro Flavio detto il Colosseo”. Detail showing Meta Sudans.

The second, “Veduta di Arco di Costantino”, online here, shows the fountain from the other side through the Arch of Constantine. Again I have extracted a detail:

Piranesi, Meta Sudans in "Veduta di Arco Costantino" — Piranesi, Meta Sudans in “Veduta di Arco Costantino”

It’s pretty obvious that at this time it stood much nearer to its original height. We can see the point at which it was then chopped off, in a tidying-up exercise, losing two-thirds of its height in the process.

As we can see, by comparison with the massive stub in the 1900 photograph, this was a big monument!

The Meta Sudans in a drawing of the Arch of Constantine by Piranesi

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Roger Pearse

The Meta Sudans is (by now) familiar to us in old photographs, as a Roman fountain extant as merely a brick stump outside the Arch of Constantine in Rome, which was demolished by Mussolini in the 1930’s. But until the 19th century it was twice the height. Ancient pictures on coins show a slender, pointed item.

Here is a drawing by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1760, of the Arch of Constantine, which I saw on Twitter here. It is notable because we can see the Meta Sudans through one of the arches.

G.B.Piranesi, Arch of Constantine with Meta Sudans

This seems to be an engraving called “Veduta dell’Arco di Costantino Magno”. I learn from the British Museum site that it comes from a volume called “Le Antichità Romane”,^[1] where it is Plate XXXVI, figure II of the first volume. It is a 1756 etching, apparently.

Here is another, also by Piranesi, from here:

Piranesi, 1760. Arch of Constantine, Colosseum, and Meta Sudans

This etching is labelled “Veduta dell’Arco di Constantino e dell’Anfiteatro detto il Colosseo”. Sadly it is not clear to me whether this is part of a series, or how it should be referenced. The Library of Congress make a high resolution image available here.

The British Museum site also has another etching and aquatint, “Veduta del Monte Palatino, dell’Arco di Costantino, e di Tito, dei Tempi di Venere e Roma e parte del Colosseo”. This also shows the double-height Meta Sudans, looking rather unfortunately shaped (which may explain why its upper storey was removed).

Let’s have a detail of the Meta Sudans:

This was made between 1800-1820. The more info we can find from before the partial demolition of the 19th century, the better.

^[1]Giambatissta Piranesi, Le antichità romane opera di Giambatista Piranesi architetto veneziano divisa in quattro tomi, Nella stamperia di Angelo Rotilj, 1756. 4 vols. Full details here. Volume 1 at least is at Arachne here, although not for download.↩

A couple more photographs of the Meta Sudans and base of the Colossus

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Roger Pearse

A couple more interesting pictures appeared on Twitter tonight.

The first of these was posted by Ste Trombetti, and shows the Arch of Titus in 1848 (!). The photo is in the Getty archive, and was taken by Count Jean-François-Charles-André Flachéron (French, 1813-1883). Through the arch, the Meta Sudans is visible, in its truncated 19th century state.

Here it is:

Arch of Titus, Meta Sudans, and Colosseum. Flacheron, 1848.

The next item is a photograph which was found by searching on “Collina della Velia”, i.e. the little Velian hill. This hill was completely levelled by Mussolini, in building the Via del Foro Imperiali. This old photograph shows the black base of the Colossus of Nero, which existed until Mussolini removed it. The black item below the Colosseum is the base.

I found it on Flickr here. Here it is:

Collina della Velia. Note the base of the Colossus of Nero.

Finally let’s include an aerial view of the whole region, from a 2009 exhibition here. Click on it to get a very large photo!

The base of the Colossus is in the shade of the Colosseum, but I think the rectangle can be made out if you zoom:

Zoomed area of the aerial photo of the base of the Colossus of Nero

There seem to be very few photographs of this obscure item.

Roger Pearse

Tag: Meta Sudans

Some post-renaissance paintings of the Meta Sudans

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An 1860 photograph of the Meta Sudans

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Another photograph of the Meta Sudans

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Rome before Mussolini – what a map can tell us

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The Meta Sudans and the Djemila fountain in Algeria

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Another image of the Meta Sudans

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More pictures of the Meta Sudans

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More engravings of Rome in the 18th century from Piranesi: Vatican Rotunda and Meta Sudans!

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The Meta Sudans in a drawing of the Arch of Constantine by Piranesi

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A couple more photographs of the Meta Sudans and base of the Colossus

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