This page was created by Constance Caddell. The last update was by Zoe Langer.
View of the Arch of Titus (1 of 2)
In the textual key below the image, Piranesi recounts that the Arch of Titus was "erected for the Emperor after his death in the memory of the destruction of Jerusalem." Indeed, directly above the key Piranesi draws our eyes to the menorah, among other symbols of the city, in the monumental bas-reliefs inside the Arch that depict the "triumph" of Titus carrying the spoils of war "from the Temple of Solomon." The coffered barrel vault is elongated, exaggerating the perspective, such that viewers of the print almost inhabit the position of the Emperor himself, walking through the Arch in a triumphal procession. The perspective from below (or "sotto in sù"), combined with the descriptive text in the key, enhances the grandeur of the monument and persuasively involves spectators in both the historical past as well as the eighteenth-century topographical present.
Yet for all the pomp and glory, there is perhaps a touch of irony in Piranesi's visual emphasis on decay. The structure is imbued with both physical and metaphorical ruin. The scars and wounds of the facade in the exposed brick and stone, are made visible by Piranesi's forceful and jagged incisions onto the metal plate. The glory of conquest, retained only in the well preserved bas relief, is on the verge of destruction, surrounded by the crumbling, overgrown, and broken pieces of the architrave, central volute, and heavy fluted columns, of which only the base lower shaft is still standing. Lowly activities by the actors in the foreground now amalgamate as the outcropping of medieval and Renaissance buildings pile on top of one another in disorderly succession. A "veritable anthology of deterioration" is how art historian John-Wilton Ely has described the scene (1978, 37).
Decay is additionally underlined in the text between the words "spoglie" and "spogliato." Piranesi contrasts the "spoglie [spoils]" brought back from the war depicted in the reliefs, and the current state of the Arch as "spogliato [bespoiled, divested]," having been stripped of its decoration and ornament in later periods. The prominence of the gothic looking tree provides a foil to the Arch, further highlighting its ruinous state (Wilton-Ely 1978, 37). The jagged lines of the trees and branches are reproduced in the plant-like veins of the exposed and rough stone. What is produced by nature and by art is deliberately blurred through Piranesi's juxtaposition of light and dark, as well as different textures, almost as though man-made structures have become fused with their natural environment.
To see this image in Vedute di Roma, vol 17 of Piranesi's Opere, click here.
