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• 1 2021-03-30T11:16:09-07:00 View of the Arch of Constantine 8 Veduta dell'Arco di Costantino Magno plain 2025-01-27T12:58:05-08:00 Veduta dell'Arco di Costantino Magno.; A. Avanzo della Meta Sudante. B. Vacuo del tubo della medesima. C. Avanzo del Palazzo de’ Cesari sul Palatino. D. Chiesa di San Bonaventura.; Piranesi Archit(etto) dis(egnò) inc(ise). View of the Arch of Constantine the Great; A. Remains of the Meta Sudans. B. Cavity of the pipe in the Fountain. C. Remains of the Palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill. D. Church of San Bonaventura.; Drawn and engraved by the Architect Piranesi. The Arch of Constantine is situated at the far end of the Roman Forum and next to the Colosseum, which is beyond the right edge of this image. While the Forum is shown a hub of meandering tourists and an evocation of over several hundred years of the ancient city’s history compressed into one location, the monument here, by contrast, stands solid and singular. The intricately carved arch looms over the human figures, yet they seem wholly unperturbed by its size and presence. The detail with which the elements of the arch are completed adds to its sense of solidity and is in direct contrast with the freer and lighter rendering of clouds and surrounding ruins: the ancient reality is the vivid focus against a more dream-like present day.   
  
  The arch itself was constructed in the fourth century from a combination of earlier monuments, sculptures and reliefs, some of them dating to the reigns of Trajan (53-117 CE) and Hadrian (76-138 CE) during the early second century. This distinction, although known to Renaissance architects, is not clarified in the etching. A letter from Raphael to Pope Leo X (1475 – 1521) dated around 1519 laments the burning of ancient monuments for quicklime to make concrete. In it, Raphael also praised the quality of the Trajanic sculptures, while he considered the Hadrianic ones to be appalling, without any skill or disegno. This discussion is an early example of what we might now call connoisseurship; Raphael somehow knows that these sculptures are different from one another, based on their appearance. Rather than differentiation in Piranesi’s sketch, instead, the sense of compressed time across centuries within the monument is notable through the treatment of detailed etching and lighter, wispier lines. Thus, in this image Piranesi emphasizes the contrast between the monument and its surroundings, instead of focusing on the layers of different historical periods and the types of sculpture contained within the arch itself. This emphasis is all the more notable since, as the annotations indicate, the surroundings include the important “avanzi” or “remains” of the meta sudans (A) (a turning post and bubbling fountain), a tube relating to the water supply (B), part of the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill (C), and the seventeenth-century church of San Bonaventura (D). (PC)