This page was created by Avery Freeman. The last update was by Jeanne Britton.
Marble Fragments from the Ancient Map of Rome (2 of 3)
As in the previous image of the same subject, Piranesi here arranges fragments of the Marble Plan between metal dividers that, near the bottom of the image, disappear underneath a jumble of tightly-packed fragments. At the very bottom of the image, piles of small, unmarked stones accumulate, and sprouts of vegetation emerge between the fragments of the map, as if to suggest that they are being unearthed. Some fragments appear to be unrelated to those near them, while others show a definitive relationship. For example, the two fragments in the lower left corner are matched by five vertical lines, confirming that Piranesi has made a successful connection between them.
For Piranesi and modern scholars alike, the fragments raise more questions than answers, and identifications are seldom straightforward. As literary scholar Sophie Thomas puts it, architectural fragments “simultaneously raise and disavow the possibility of totality and wholeness” (Thomas 502). Nevertheless, this illusion of order highlights Piranesi’s desire to use the marble fragments as evidence, or at least present them as such. Piranesi used the marble fragments to understand the urban fabric of ancient Rome, but this evidence equally fueled his own cartographic fantasies. Piranesi’s handling of fragments would prove to be revolutionary, as architectural historians of the twentieth century would deem him the first modernist; in 1938, Rudolf Wittkower contended that thanks to Piranesi, “Archeological material now becomes a weapon in the hands of a revolutionary modernist” (155). Piranesi was a pioneer in harnessing the evocative power of the fragment, both as an artistic tool and an archaeological method, capturing the imagination of his contemporaries. (PC & SAH)
To see this image in the first volume of Le Antichità Romane, volume 1 of Piranesi’s Opere, click here.
