Antonio da Sangallo the Younger's Reactions to the Pantheon:

2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 276-291
Author(s):  
Francesco Benelli
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Architectural Practice ◽  
Deep Knowledge ◽  
Ancient Monuments ◽  
Professional Confidence ◽  
Ancient Monument

In Antonio da Sangallo the Younger's Reactions to the Pantheon: An Early Modern Case of Operative Criticism, Francesco Benelli looks at three annotated drawings by Antonio in which he analyzed features of the Roman Pantheon. The architect's analysis of this ancient monument drew on both his close, methodical, and pragmatic investigations of the building and his deep knowledge of Vitruvian theory. Together, the drawings and text represent an unprecedented critique of a building then almost universally admired. Yet Antonio's dependence on Vitruvius, who belonged to a different period of Roman history than did the Pantheon, led to certain discrepancies within his conclusions. Nonetheless, Antonio's study marks a new level of professional confidence, objectivity, and critical detachment among Renaissance architects, as ancient monuments were no longer seen as perfect and unquestionable, but as sources to be praised, criticized, utilized, adapted, or ignored according to the specific needs of modern architectural practice.

Greek Light on World History

1950 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold Toynbee
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
World History ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Western Education ◽  
Good Fortune ◽  
Greek History ◽  
The Subject ◽  
To Come

Approach.: The subject of this talk is in one sense a rather personal one. I am venturing to say something about my own approach to History. I had the good fortune to be born just not too late to come in for the old-fashioned ‘Early Modern Western’ education in the Greek and Latin languages and literatures; the first grown-up job that I did was to teach Greek and Roman history for the School of Literae Humaniores at Oxford; and, in afterwards exploring other provinces of history, I have always found my way into them through a Greek gate. Greek history has been, for me, the key to world history.

scholarly journals Republican friendship and the fall of the Roman Republic in late Elizabethan and early Jacobean drama

2021 ◽  
pp. 018476782110293
Author(s):  
Ross Moncrieff
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Jacobean Drama ◽  
The Ideal

This article synthesises historical scholarship on early modern friendship and classical republicanism to argue that Cicero, through the ideal of ‘republican friendship’, exerted a much greater influence over early modern understandings of Roman history than has previously been realised. Exploring Roman plays by William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, with reference to other classical dramas, it examines how dramatists used the Ciceronian ideal of republican friendship to create a historical framework for the political changes they were portraying, with Jonson using it to inform a Tacitean perspective on Roman history and Shakespeare scrutinising and challenging the nature of republican friendship itself.

The Excavations at Cairnpapple Hill, West Lothian 1947–8

Antiquity ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 23 (89) ◽  
pp. 32-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Piggott
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Burial Site ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Main Road ◽  
The North ◽  
Site Field ◽  
Ancient Monuments ◽  
Ancient Monument ◽  
The Hill

In ANTIQUITY 1948, p. 35, a brief account was given of the first season’s work on a Bronze Age sanctuary and burial site on Cairnpapple Hill, near Torphichen in West Lothian. With the co-operation of the Ancient Monuments Department of the Ministry of Works, excavations were continued in the summer of 1948. The site was completely stripped, and revealed a complex series of structures indicated by the sockets of once-standing stones or by stones still extant. It will be laid out and conserved by the Department as an Ancient Monument under guardianship. The following account of the main results of the 1947–8 excavations is intended as a preliminary to the full excavation report, which will appear in due course in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, who financed the first season’s work.Cairnpapple Hill, the summit of which is within the 1000 feet contour, is a part of the Bathgate Hills, which form a compact block of high land between the main road to Stirling on the north and from Glasgow to Edinburgh on the south. On the summit, the site before excavation was chiefly distinguished by the grass-grown cairn which gives its name to the hill, but most maps and the earlier antiquarian literature indicated a ‘fort’ on the same site. Field-work in 1946 had shown that the cairn stood eccentrically within a low roughly circular earthwork (the ‘fort’) which on surface showing was almost certainly a member of the ‘Henge Monument’ class of structure. The site was confused by an octagonal turf dyke which had been made round the cairn in the late 18th or early 19th century to enclose a plantation of trees, now vanished.

Consecration and Materiality

2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-158
Author(s):  
Fiona R. Greenland
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Consumer Goods ◽  
Formation Mechanisms ◽  
Archival Data ◽  
Media Campaigns ◽  
Central Park ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Ancient Monuments ◽  
Ancient Monument ◽  
The Town

This article focuses on a case of failed consecration: the Egyptian obelisk in New York’s Central Park, commonly known as Cleopatra’s Needle. The obelisk arrived in New York from Alexandria in 1880, with great fanfare. For a brief period, it was the talk of the town: a tourist curiosity and star of advertising campaigns for consumer goods. After an initial surge in public visibility, the monument’s prominence faded. Today, the obelisk is not on the list of New York’s top cultural attractions, and no longer features in media campaigns or political rallies. I ask why the obelisk’s initial popularity failed to crystallize into an enduring condition of consecration. To answer this question, I use archival data to chart the obelisk’s transfer of ownership and planned move, through its Central Park début and subsequent decline in cultural salience. The obelisk met key criteria associated with successful cases of retrospective consecration. What weakened the obelisk’s career were lack of consecrating institutions and inherently unstable material conditions. These mechanisms are symbiotically related: because no institution took responsibility for conserving and protecting the obelisk, its granite face rapidly deteriorated and frustrated attempts to attract potential consecrating institutions. The article makes a twofold contribution to the literature on retrospective consecration. First, by discussing a failed case, it highlights the linked efficacy of consecration formation mechanisms. Second, in focusing on an ancient monument, it demonstrates the role played by materials and the specific measures of consecration that obtain in the broader sphere of ancient monuments.

II.—The Aqueduct in the Grounds of the British Embassy in Rome

Archaeologia ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
pp. 81-104
Author(s):  
P. K. Baillie Reynolds ◽  
T. A. Bailey
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
British Embassy ◽  
Ancient Monuments ◽  
Ancient Monument

The garden of the British Embassy in Rome is traversed by a stretch of some 400 yards of a Roman aqueduct of the first century A.D. This being an Ancient Monument on British territory, its consolidation and repair were considered in 1957 by the then Minister of Works, now Lord Molson, to be a proper task for the Ancient Monuments division of that ministry, just as the care and maintenance o the embassy itself is the task of another division of the same ministry.

STOICS WHO SING: LESSONS IN CITIZENSHIP FROM EARLY MODERN LUCCA

2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER N. MILLER
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Political Literature ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Lucca was the smallest and least important of the three Italian republics that survived the Renaissance. Venice and Genoa still command the attention of historians. But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for all that it might seem out-of-the-way, Lucca developed an extraordinary political literature. The regular election of senators was marked by the musical performance of a text, generally drawn from Roman history, that illustrated the way citizens of a republic were to behave. The poet and composer were natives and the event was a lesson in citizenship. A close look at the content of these serenades, or operas, makes clear that the republic's motto might have been Libertas but its teaching emphasized constantia. The themes and the heroes of Lucca's political literature were those we associate with neo-Stoicism. The relationship between neo-Stoicism and citizenship in early modern Lucca is the focus of this article. These texts present us with the self-image of an early modern republic and its understanding of what it meant to be a citizen. They are an important source for anyone interested in early modern debates about citizenship and in the political ideas that are conveyed in the commonplaces of baroque visual and musical culture.

More than Piety

2018 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Lucinda Martin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Deep Knowledge ◽  
Male Officer ◽  
Lay Theology ◽  
Cultural Turn ◽  
Church Historians

Abstract Histories of Early Modern religion in Europe typically contrast the activities of ordained theologians with those of laity. The thought and writings of the former usually constitute “theology” and those of the latter “piety.” The result has long been a divided history. Confessional church historians have written histories that were essentially genealogies of (male) officer holders, while scholars of folklore, culture or literature analyzed the contributions of laity. Since the so-called cultural turn, the contributions of laity as organizers, transmitters and patrons of Early Modern religious movements are being recognized. What has been less studied are the intellectual achievements of laity, many of whom possessed deep knowledge of theology, history, and ancient languages and played important roles in Early Modern religious history. This article provides an overview of the main issues and the development of lay theology in the period and argues for increased study of the phenomenon.

Roman History, Essex, and Late Elizabethan Political Culture

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulina Kewes
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Print Publications ◽  
Earl Of Essex ◽  
Political Figure

Roman history had a shaping influence on early modern political culture. In the historiography, the focus has been typically on court-centred uses of Roman historians, principally Tacitus, or else on Shakespeare. By contrast, this chapter explores how late Elizabethan print publications representing a variety of non-dramatic genres deployed Roman history to sway educated classes beyond the confines of the political elite. More precisely, it considers the role ofromanitasin polemical writings responding to the rise and fall of the earl of Essex, the period’s most controversial political figure. The three instances described in the chapter—Romes Monarchie(1596), Clement Edmondes’sObservations upon . . . Caesars commentaries(1600), and William Fulbecke’sHistoricall Collection(1601)—show how ancient Rome could be appropriated and utilized by authors with different political agendas wishing to appeal to a broad range of publics.

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