Remains of the Temple of Cybele
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Avanzi del Tempio di Cibele
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2024-10-14T13:16:41-07:00
Avanzi del Tempio di Cibele.; A. Cella del Tempio. B. Interno della medesima. C. Stipiti della porta. D. Finestre.; Piranesi Archit(etto) dis(egnò) inc(ise).
Remains of the Temple of Cybele.; A. Cella of the Temple. B. Interior of the same. C. Door jambs. D. Windows.; Drawn and engraved by the Architect Piranesi.
The allure of the antique often prompted Piranesi to create deliberate exaggerations and distortions of perspectives in his prints in order to amplify the ancient at the expense of the modern. Here, that tendency is taken to such an extreme that every trace of renovation and modern intervention is removed, which has the effect of rendering this building nearly unrecognizable to the contemporary viewer familiar with its modern incarnation. His annotations label the cella and its interior (A and B), its door jambs (C) and windows (D). This tendency towards exaggeration is uncommon across Le Antichità Romane, but it features largely in his volume on the Campus Martius. Here even the ostensibly modern buildings in the background are so decrepit, and the staffage figures so generic, that the viewer would be forgiven for thinking themselves transported to ancient Rome.
Identified by Piranesi the Temple of Cybele following the accepted attribution at the time, the building is described in the index to the volume’s Map of Rome as standing in the Forum Boarium on the banks of the Tiber. This and the round form of the temple help us identify Piranesi’s temple with the second-century BCE Temple of Hercules Victor, as it is known today, Rome’s oldest extant marble building. One of only a few such round temples in the region to survive, the temple was not correctly identified until the nineteenth century. The original Roman temple had been converted to a church in the twelfth century, and dedicated as Santa Maria del Sole in the seventeenth century with numerous renovations including a brick façade, windows, and tiled roof. These later additions, absent in Piranesi’s print, obscure much of the ancient ruins today and are visible in Piranesi’s treatment of the building in the Vedute di Roma.
The “semplici vestigia” of the Temple (Index to the Map of Rome, no. 169) as the effect of better capturing the round cella and its single file of fluted Corinthian columns ringing the structure. The relatively rare and compact round form of the temple made it an important model for later antiquaries and architects, for whom Piranesi has done a service here in abstracting the early Roman features. (SB)
