Old Age in Rome - Truth in Statues

Boxer at Rest at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme

Covid-19 is forcing us to look at old age more closely, even to consider the value of an older human life as the virus ravages the elderly. And so it might be helpful to examine the attitude towards old age of other ages and cultures as well--in the case of this blog, that of the ancient Romans.

Cicero (106-43 BCE), from the Capitoline
Museums in Rome. Bust 1st century CE.
An image of Cicero is the lead photo
for the site: The Geopolitics of Dignity.

Much has been written about old age in ancient Rome, based primarily on writings of the classic authors of the epoch - Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Plautus. The general conclusion is that, perhaps as today, the attitude was one of ambivalence. The weak and decrepit were often marginalized, because they were seen as not contributing to society. And Romans had a strong work ethic, and a commitment to their society. 

On the other hand, the old were valued as having gained knowledge, being good moral models for the young, and as still useful in society, some holding important positions into their 80s.

The average life expectancy of ancient Romans was much shorter than in the Western world today--around 25. This is distorted, however, by half of children dying before 10. And 7-8% of the population lived beyond 60 or 65. Although that is less than half of the percentage of Americans today living beyond 65, it's still a significant group.

This image from The Getty accompanies
an article on hair loss in ancient Rome.
25 BC - 10 CE

Most surprising is Romans' willingness--even desire--to portray old age accurately, complete with balding heads (photo at left), wrinkles, flabby skin, sunken cheeks, and blemishes. We get these depictions from statues, the faces of which are usually solemn, indicating the gravitas of old age. These physical markers of old age are considered to be signs of one's having contributed to society, having put in years of hard work and having gained experience--in a word, dignity.

Boxer at the Getty, 2015. Date of sculpture from
330-50 BCE.

We first saw the dramatic effects of this kind of portraiture in the spectacular sculpture, "Boxer at Rest." It's a Greek sculpture, valued by the Romans, and found only in the 1880s near the Quirinale. You can see it now in the national museum at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, near the train station. The statue shows the boxer's scarred and bruised face and broken nose. We saw the "Boxer" a few years ago when it had been recently restored--in a room in the seat of the Italian Senate, Palazzo Madama, as I recall. It was alone in the room, and we were alone with it, all the better to feel its power. We saw him again in 2015 at The Getty Center, which managed to borrow the statue for its blockbuster Roman statuary exhibit that year. The photo at the top is by Carole Raddato on Wiki commons.

from the Vatican Museums;
1st half of 1st century BCE.

The bust at left is from the Vatican Museums and illustrates "Verism" - the hyper-realism valued by the Romans, according to some scholars. 

Photo of bust - cast from the original
bronze -  in Wiki commons.
See By Daderot - Own work, CC0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78464202

At right, from the Naples museum, Lucius Caecilius lucundus. He's not bald; his hair is etched into the bronze bust. But, as others have pointed out, he's a "Verism" example - or "warts and all," which the Romans preferred. He was a Pompeian banker, born 14 AD, died about age 62.

Women who reached old age also were viewed from two perspectives: as useful and authoritative matrons or as grotesque - especially, in the latter case, old prostitutes.

It's not as easy to find statutes of women in old age as it is as of men. Perhaps women were not generally subject to the "verism" of male portraits. I didn't find any in Rome--a hunt left for a future visit.

"Bust of a Flavian Matron" - Toledo (Ohio) Museum
of Art.  1st-2nd century CE

The bust at right is considered a rare portrait of an older woman. And, according to the museum's notes, the hairstyle is that of a younger woman.

Below is the statue of a clearly old woman - from The Met. It's a 1st Century CE copy of an earlier Greek sculpture. The museum notes the range of subject matter for sculptures was expanded to include figures on the fringe of society. This sculpture is known as the Old Market Woman, but it is probably, per the museum notes, an aged courtesan on her way to a Dionysian festival.

Old market woman or aged courtesan? 14-68 CE.

For more information on the treatment of old age in ancient Rome, see these two articles, both titled "Old Age in Ancient Rome":

https://www.brlsi.org/events-proceedings/proceedings/25020#:~:text=At%20present%2C%20the%20aged%20(those,becoming%20a%20major%20social%20problem.

and

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/old-age-ancient-rome

The illustrations in this post - and decisions on how to illustrate these points - are from my own research.

Dianne

R.B. Kitaj and "The Rise of Fascism"

The painting below, by American-born London artist R.B. Kitaj (1932-2007), is part of the "London Calling" exhibit--featuring 6 London artists--at The Getty Center in Los Angeles.  It was loaned for this exhibition from London's Tate.  This excellent exhibition's last day is Sunday (November 13).

A work of the late 1970s, Kitaj's painting is titled "The Rise of Fascism."
According to the curator of the show, Kitaj explained the painting in a 1980 letter: the central bather is the Fascist, the bather on the left is the beautiful victim, and the bather on the right is the ordinary European, "watching it all happen."

The fuselage of a bomber enters the frame upper left.
Patricia Zohn of The Huffington Post says "'London Calling' is just about perfection and should not be missed."

Bill

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Finding a link to Rome in a Sienese Renaissance painter - The gold of Giovanni di Paolo

The Rome connection here is a bit of a stretch, but the art of Giovanni di Paolo (1399-1482)-  currently the feature of an exhibition at The Getty Center in Los Angeles - is so astounding, I couldn’t pass up writing about it.

Giovanni di Paolo’s 1427 altarpiece for the Branchini Chapel in Siena is deservedly considered his masterpiece.  Even the jewels in Mary’s crown are still intact.  The gold that di Paolo, primarily a manuscript illuminator, distributes in this central panel of the altarpiece warrants the title of the exhibition, “The Shimmer of Gold.” 

Note jewels in Mary's crown.

The painting (above, top), and one smaller one that likely was part of the altarpiece, belong to the Norton Simon Museum in nearby Pasadena.  The Getty is exhibiting it, and several other related pieces owned by the Siena Pinacoteca and a Dutch museum, because of its work in restoring the work.  The Getty shows us the various pieces together and speculates how they might have been mounted in the San Domenico church.

The shimmer of the gold is impossible to ignore
(photo taken by Bill at The Getty Center).

The exhibition takes note of di Paolo’s influences, particularly the “master” Gentile da Fabriano, with whom some suggest di Paolo may have worked on the altarpiece.  And, now, for the Rome connection.  The name Gentile da Fabriano rang a bell with us, not because we know so much about Renaissance art, but because we have lived in a Rome apartment that is on Piazza Gentile da Fabriano.  

Piazza Gentile da Fabriano is across the Tevere at the end of
Ponte della Musica - the large, treed piazza in the center of
this photo (taken from Lo Zodiaco on Monte Mario).

Rome’s neighborhoods beyond the Centro are marked by thematic street and piazza names.  This neighborhood, Flaminio, features names of artists. We have lived nearby on via Pietro da Cortona.  And I wanted to rent an apartment one time simply because it was on via Masaccio, a painter I studied in college.  The art museum MAXXI's address, for another example, is viale Guido Reni.  Da Fabriano did set foot in Rome, unlike his student di Paolo.  Da Fabriano, who was from Northern Italy but also worked in Siena, where he influenced di Paolo, painted in the nave of Rome's San Giovanni in Laterano, paintings destroyed in a 1600s’ “restoration” of that basilica.  Da Fabriano died in Rome, and there is evidence he might be buried in Santa Maria in Trastevere.  That’s it – the tenuous Rome connection of Giovanni di Paolo through his mentor Gentile da Fabriano.

Gentile da Fabriano's The Coronation of the Virgin, about 1420, The J. Paul Getty Museum

Meanwhile, if you are in LA, don’t miss this lovely, small, beautifully curated exhibition that is on until January 8, 2017.  And if you can’t make it in person, there are photos of the works, and reproduction of the explanatory panels online.

The Shimmer of Gold:Giovanni di Paolo in Renaissance Siena, publishedonline 2016, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California.

Dianne

JMW Turner's Rome paintings - new light, new film, new prices

Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino

JMW Turner, the 19th-century artist experiencing a kind of renaissance of public opinion, in some ways is simply one among the hundreds of artists influenced by Rome.  And he's one who doesn’t easily come to mind when we think of Rome influences.  With Turner, we think of seascapes.  I first saw - to my surprise - a few of his Rome works in the magnificent collection in London at the Tate Britain (not the Tate Modern).  Turner's views of Rome illuminate (and I use that word purposefully because of Turner's amazing representation of light) the city in a blend of realism and idealism that quickens the heart of any Romaphile.

Mike Leigh's new biopic, Mr.Turner, focuses on the last 25 years of the painter’s life, but does not include the Rome years.  Yet the film brings to life this often underrated - especially in Rome - painter.  One of the Rome paintings is seen quickly in the film at some point -  as I recall, the Forum Romanum for Mr. Soane's Museum (see below); and the movie helps us understand the eccentric Turner's love of light and ability with color.

Turner's Rome paintings also are in the news for their recent sales.  The Getty LA bought Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino (at top) in 2010 for $45 million, a record for a Turner at that time.  The British government placed an embargo on the painting, hoping a British museum would raise the money to buy it so it would not leave the country.  None did, and so the Getty now owns this acknowledged masterpiece. Modern Rome, a view over the forum, exhibits Turner’s exceptional ability to capture the real and the idealized views with an extraordinary mastery of color.  The Getty describes the work as follows:

"Ten years after his final journey to Rome, Turner envisioned the Eternal City through a veil of memory. Baroque churches and ancient monuments in and around the Roman Forum seem to dissolve in iridescent light shed by a moon rising at left and a sun setting behind the Capitoline Hill at right. Amidst these splendors, the city's inhabitants carry on with their daily activities. The picture's nacreous palette and shimmering light effects exemplify Turner at his most accomplished.

When first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1839 with its pendant, Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus, the painting was accompanied by a modified quotation from Lord Byron's masterpiece, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818): "The moon is up, and yet it is not night / The sun as yet divides the day with her." Like the poem, Turner's painting evokes the enduring sublimity of Rome, which had been for artists throughout history less a place in the real world than one in the imagination.

The painting is in a remarkable state of preservation and remains untouched since it left Turner's hands."

Given that last statement, we're not sure why it's not yet on display at the Getty. [UPDATE:  The Getty is hosting what looks like a magnificent Turner exhibit Feb. 24-May 24, 2015 - and it looks like this painting will be in the exhibit.  It's one of 3 paintings on the Web site announcing the exhibit.]

Just this December 3, another Turner Rome painting - Rome, From Mount Aventine, painted in 1835 (at left), sold for $47.5 million, setting yet another record (the estimated value going into the Sotheby's auction was 15-20 million pounds; it sold for 30.3 million pounds).  It was the first time the painting had been sold in more than 130 years. 

Turner was an inveterate sketcher (also shown in Leigh's film), and no doubt used his many sketches to paint Modern Rome 10 years, and Rome, From Mount Aventine, 7 years (respectively) after he left the city.  Those sketchbooks also are the property of the Tate, and can be viewed online as well. 

Vision of Medea - one of the 3 works exhibited in Rome in 1928
and on display at the Tate Britain when I saw it.

In 1828, Turner's second trip to Italy (the first was in 1819 and also included Rome), he stayed primarily in Rome and 3 of his works were on public display.  His biographer says a high number of visitors (estimated 1,000) saw these works, and "were mostly mystified by what they saw," so new and unusual was his painting style.

Turner was born in 1775 to working class parents (his father was a wigmaker, and then, when those went out of style, astutely turned to being a barber).  The painter's early work under architects perhaps explains some of his life-long attraction to architectural forms, which served him well in Rome. 

As noted above, another great Rome painting is Forum Romanum for Mr. Soane's Museum.  Soane was an architect - so the architectural themes play out again here.  (And if you haven't been to the Soane Museum in London, put it on your Top Ten list!)  This painting, however, ended up as part of Turner's bequest to the government; so it apparently never went to Soane's museum; why, I don't know. 

Perhaps the most famous Rome painting is Rome, from the Vatican. Raffaelle, Accompanied by La Fornarina, Preparing his Pictures for the Decoration of the Loggia, exhibited 1820 (above).  Raphael was one of Turner's influences and 1820 marked the 300th year of Raphael's death. 

So why the Turner Exhibit at the Tate - including one on view now of "Late Turner"?  Turner bequeathed the government all the paintings, sketches, and sketchbooks in his possession at his death, with a plan to establish a fund for needy artists.  The fund never materialized, but more than a century later, the Turner Society raised enough money for the exhibition space for this vast collection at the Tate.   Many of the works are on permanent display there.

Turner is sometimes called the painter of light, and these Rome paintings exhibit that quality.  He supposedly said on his deathbed (and as replicated in Mike Leigh’s film), "The Sun is God," attributing a kind of metaphysical power to light. 

Dianne

Rome's Starchitects: Meier, Piano, Hadid, Fuksas, Portoghesi

Our thoughtful daughter-in-law sent along an article from amNewYork on New York City's "Starchitects," the flashiest of the architects who have built in the city, those who design projects that "capture the imagination," as a fellow architect put it. 

The article divides the New York stars into three categories: Elder Statesmen (Frank Gehry and Henry Cobb, both in their early 80's); Europeans (Sir Norman Foster, 75; Santiago Calatrava, 59, who is building what promises to be a spectacular transit hub at ground zero; Renzo Piano, 73, whose New York Times Building and addition to the Morgan Library, both of which we took in last month; and Jean Nouvel, 65; and Gotham Stars (including Bruce Fowle, Bob Fox, and Richard Meier (for his Perry Street Towers).  The age info is in the article, though why it's important--or relevant--we're not sure. 

Rome has a magnificent architectural heritage dating to the Republic and the Empire, and includes major contributions in the Renaissance and, less well known, in the 19th and 20th centuries.  But the past decade or so, and especially under the liberal, arts-oriented former mayor, Walter Veltroni, Rome has been active again, hiring Starchitects to design major museums, performance spaces, and--most recently--a convention center.  As far as we know, there are currently five Starchitects who have built or are building in Rome: Richard Meier, Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid, Massimiliano Fuksas, and Paolo Portoghesi.  Three are Italians.  (And, several - including Piano, Hadid and Fuksas - are featured in our new book: Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  More information on the book is at the end of this post.)



Cleaning the paint of Dadaist vandals  from Meier's
box for the Ara Pacis, June 2009

Richard Meier, 76, was born in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey.  Like Piano and Hadid, he's a winner of one of architecture's most prestigious prizes, the Pritzker (1984).  His best-known project is the Getty Center in the hills of Los Angeles, a monumental if somewhat sterile complex that recalls the grandeur and splendor of ancient Rome as well as the Italian villas and gardens of the 16th century.  Other admired buildings include the tourist center in New Harmony, Indiana, the Hartford Seminary of Theology (late 1970s) and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (early 1980s).   He's known for not caring much for architectural fashion and for sticking with the tried and true ideas of mid-century European and American modernism.  A purist, most of his buildings are rectilinear, box-like forms--not a bad description of his Rome container for the Ars Pacis, a building whose modernist ordinariness has infuriated the city's right wing politicians and even some of its residents, who can't believe it cost 25 million Euro.  He's a Rome starchitect NOT for his Ara Pacis box, but for his sublime Jubilee church (2000), a gem built out in the suburb of Tor Tre Teste--a building so unusual for Meier that it must have come from a dream state, from the architect's subconscious (see Dianne's post on the church, which is #17 in our Rome the Second Time Top 40).  Even so, his Ara Pacis effort produced a strong backlash--against modernism, the particular building and its relationship to the site, and the arts.  In a statement that may have relevance for Meier's experience with an irate Roman public over his Ars Pacis building (photo above right), fellow Starchitect Massimiliano Fuksas (see below) notes: "When people are prepared to damage your building, you have failed." 





Renzo Piano's Parco della Musica

Renzo Piano, 73, was born in 1937 in Genoa.  Piano acknowledges several architects that have influenced him, including Louis Kahn and Pier Luigi Nervi, a Rome Starchitect of an earlier era, and one of whose masterworks, the Palazetto dello Sport, is across the street from Piano's own contribution.  Piano made his name as a co-designer of  the Pompidou Centre in  Paris--intended, Piano says, "to be a joyful urban machine, a creature that might have come from a Jules Verne book."  Other well known buildings of his include the 1982 museum for the De Menil Collection in Houston, and a much-ballyhooed addition, recently opened, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA - where we've spent a lot of time).  The addition is highly functional but, like Meier's Ara Pacis container, essentially a nice box (and the same applies to Piano's Morgan addition in NYC).  Fortunately, Rome got the best out of Piano; his Parco della Musica complex in the quartiere of Flaminio is both functional (except for some maze-like approaches to upper-level seating) and, in the Pompidou Centre mode, playful, combining traditional modernism with shapely organic motifs.
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Aerial View, MAXXI gallery (lower left)

Hadid's MAXXI, from the rear

Zaha Hadid, 60, was born in 1950 in Baghdad.  She practiced with Rem Koolhaas before opening her own shop.  As a child, she was influenced by a tour of ancient Sumerian cities in southern Iraq.  "The beauty of the landscape," she explains, "where sand, water, birds, buildings, and people all somehow flowed together--has never left me.  I'm trying to discover--invent, I suppose--an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same kind in a contemporary way."  Hadid's first major success was the Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (c. 2000).  Another was a museum adjoining Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, a commission she was awarded because she is sometimes understood as Wright-like in her enthusiasm for futuristic designs and, according to one writer, her "visionary rethinking of the relationship between humans and buildings."  Her recently opened MAXXI gallery--a 10-minute walk from Piano's Parco della Musica--has made her a Rome Starchitect.  It's typical of Hadid's work in that it looks wonderfully inventive from the air (photo above left, lower left), a perspective available mostly to pigeons.  However, as our readers have heard more than once, we aren't fond of the way the building relates to its surroundings or to human beings seeking access to it.  From certain angles it looks sensational; from others it's a forbidding hunk of windowless cement.  Some nice spaces inside.  (BTW, one can do a nice architectural tour of Nervi, Piano and Hadid within a couple blocks of each other.)

  

Architectect's rendering of Fuksas' "Cloud" building,
 under construction in EUR

Proposed Italian Space Agency

 Massimiliano Fuksas, 66, was born in Rome in 1944, while the city was occupied by the German army, and he earned his degree in architecture from La Sapienza (Rome's historied university) in 1969.  Fuksas is the loner/rebel type.  "All my life," he has said, "I have fought against form, shape and style," and he denies any "evolution" to his work: "I use a different language each time."  He admits to being an admirer of Francesco Borromini.  Fuksas is well known for the Zenith Music Hall in Strasbourg, France (2008), a bold structure in orange, and  for the Milan Trade Fair complex (2005); we also like his modernistic renovcation of the former stables in Frascati, neaer Rome.  Fuksas is scheduled for Rome Starchitectdom when his EUR "Cloud" building--apparently a meeting and convention center--opens; it's currently under construction and, somewhat surprisingly, his first major building in Rome.  (See Bill's post on our exploration of the "Cloud".) Fuksas is also designing a new unhomelike home (above right)  for the Italian Space Agency (we didn't know the Italians had a Space Agency), to be built near the 1960 Olympic Village and Hadid's MAXXI.   

Paolo Portoghesi, 79, was born in 1931 in Rome, where he earned a degree in architecture at La Sapienza in 1957.  For much of his career he has been in private practice while teaching architectural theory at the University.  His inclusion among Rome's Starchitects is appropriately suspect; his deep interest in the history of architecture--in Borromini, the baroque, and Michelangelo, especially--has given his work strong links to tradition and history, as in his Casa Baldi (1957-62), a house built an hour from Rome in the village of Olevano Romano.  Nonetheless, he's earned the designation of Starchitect for his striking mosque, built 1974/75  in the north end of the city, near Acqua Acetosa, at the behest of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia (and it comes in at #24 on Rome the Second Time's Top 40).  It is said that the building strikes a balance between modernism, Roman forms, and the traditions of mosque architecture, which surely functioned here as a restraint on the architect's creativity and innovation.  Dianne believes the building rises to the Starchitect threshold and "captures the imagination,"  and the interior photo at left would seem to confirm her view.
  

Bill

Hadid's MAXXI and Piano's Parco della Musica are on the Flaminio itinerary; and Fuksas's Cloud is on the EUR itinerary in our new print AND eBook,  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  Modern Rome features tours of the "garden" suburb of Garbatella; the 20th-century suburb of EUR, designed by the Fascists; the 21st-century music and art center of Flaminio, along with Mussolini's Foro Italico, also the site of the 1960 summer Olympics; and a stairways walk in Trastevere.

This 4-walk book is available in all print and eBook formats The eBook is $1.99 through amazon.com and all other eBook sellers.  See the various formats at smashwords.com. 

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler now is also available in print, at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores, and other retailers; retail price $5.99.