Bonum / Melior / Optimum

BONUM / MELIOR / OPTIMUM

Bonum/Melior/Optimum

The word souvenir is a relatively recent invention, first noted only in 1775. Its etymology originates with the Latin subvenire; sub – up from below and venire – to come; thus souvenir, here a verb, to come up from below.

Below what? Perhaps we’ll see.

Piraneseum’s architectural models –almost always 19th century miniatures of the most memorable, popular and oft-visited European, especially Italian monuments – are, at once, souvenirs and mementos, a word with a longer history, reaching back to the 14th century. By the late 1500s, memento, a noun, had come to mean ‘a hint or suggestion to awaken memory, a reminder, an object serving as a warning.’

A warning of what? Perhaps we’ll see.

Thus, the pair of words souvenir memento describes both an object’s source and its purpose.

This catalog features antique Roman architectural replicas whose sources –‘coming up from below’ – are identical, but whose purposes and effects – hints, reminders, admonitions – far diverge from the norm; and are highly-realized in extraordinary ways.

These pages’ prize offering is an impressively-sized, meticulously rendered, gilt bronze model of the Lateran Obelisk, produced (confected is a better word) in the first part of the 19th century, set atop a specimen of red Egyptian Aswan granite, quarried millennia ago. The monument’s base, inscribed with lines of Latin text, reflects not its appearance c. 1800, but 357 CE, when Emperor Constantinius II directed its shipment to Rome from

Alexandria, and its erection in the Circus Maximus.

Is this a greater souvenir of the ancient monolith than those sold today in Rome, fashioned from plastic resin, pushed indifferently into latex molds, finished in a hurry and sold on every other street corner? Not especially. Both ‘come up from below’ the tangle of our often undifferentiated experiences and put us in mind of the ancient monument. The antique model, though, unlike its resin brethren, hints, suggests, awakens, reminds and warns us in an astonishing variety of ways.

Consider this object’s craft. Exquisitely fashioned from luxe materials, this little Lateran Obelisk connects us with the phenomenon of Roman decorative arts, which reached its absolute apogee in this period, seen across the city’s flourishing

workshops – the Valadiers and Righetti; the Bellis and Zoffoli, and of course, Hopfgarten and Jollage, makers of this splendid model.

Consider the Aswan Granite base, almost certainly quarried c. 1400 BCE as part of the lower part of the obelisk erected at Karnak. In several pieces after a thousand years left languishing beneath the mud of the Circus Maximus, the monolith was again stood up in Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano, though without its bottom 13 feet, discarded for structural purposes. For artistic purposes, Hopfgarten and Jollage (and others) made use of this ancient debris.

Consider the Latin inscriptions to the four sides of the model’s base, reproducing the original Roman appearance (not that of the early 19th century), celebrating the Emperor’s transport, raising and dedication of the monument.

Consider the clientele for these fancy mementos – often the Papacy, which distributed them as gifts to foreign heads of state, as well as to high ranking clergy; and grandest of Grand Tourists.

A single souvenir memento, coming up through the mash of memory; hinting, awakening, warning; pointing our attentions to Roman history (risen and fallen), Papal politics, ancient Egypt, a zenith of decorative arts; and yet more palpably and personally, a memorable place and time in the presence of the tallest Egyptian obelisk, improbably set to the middle of a Roman piazza.

Optime, David Weingarten

EIGHT 19TH CENTURY ALABASTER AND MARBLE ROMAN ARCHITECTURAL MEMENTOS

Alabaster and marble, c. 1890 6 3/8” inches high, tallest $8500

If, in the later 19th century in Rome, you’d wandered into any one of dozens of tourist shops, always situated nearby the most famous landmarks, you would have seen souvenir architectural models like these – replicas of ruined Forum temples, triumphal arches and the Colosseum; the Pantheon and Temple of Hercules Victor, called Vesta, and, though less likely, Scipio’s sarcophagus. All, save this last, are carved from Italian alabaster, quarried in Volterra, near Florence, and tinted to resemble far more costly giallo antico marble.

The pictured model of Scipio’s Tomb, on the other hand, is from this yellow marble, set atop a black stone base. Finely carved and carrying an inscription of the Latin appearing on the sarcophagus itself, this miniature is earlier than the others, dating to c. 1870.

TEMPLE OF HERCULES VICTOR

Patinated bronze, c. 1870 7” high

$6,500

This unusually large, souvenir memento of the well known round Roman temple, aka the Temple of Vesta, is closely observed. Counterintuitively, this not large monument situated far from the usual tourist attractions, was, in the 19th century, the most often replicated roman landmark.

ARCH OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS

Patinated bronze, c. 1870 6” high $15,000

This replica of the Forum’s Arch of Septimius Severus is more often seen in later 19th century carved alabaster than cast in bronze. Souvenir mementos of the Arch Constantine are more abundant than replicas of this less wellknown monument. Our model richly and accurately detailed.

The model is raised on an antique marble base, similar to verde quarried in Greece and brought Rome in the time of Augustus.

Arch often carved bronze. Arch of abundant wellmodel is detailed. antique verde antico, brought to Augustus.

PANTHEON

Patinated bronze, c. 1870

6” high

$19,500

While there are abundant souvenir architectural mementos of Rome’s Pantheon carved in alabaster, those cast in bronze are vanishingly scarce. These are much more ambitious undertakings, requiring skills beyond those involved in carving soft stone. The offered model, in dark-patinated bronze, is without the “ass’s ears,” - the loathed belltowers by architects Maderno and Borromini - removed in 1883, Another, nearly identical model, includes the ears.

The roof of Rome’s Pantheon, 2,000 years later, remains the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. With this model, the dome lifts off revealing a space designed for a pair of inkpots. The model’s base is in Portoro marble, quarried near Liguria.

LATERAN OBELISK, ROME

Fire-gilded bronze on antique Egyptian Aswan granite base.

By Wilhelm Hopfgarten & Ludwig Jollage

c. 1820

29-1/2”high Inquire

Occasionally, a souvenir of a different, surpassing order comes our way. This extraordinary model of Rome’s Lateran Obelisk was cast and finished in the first part of the 19th century by two Prussian emigres to Rome, Hopfgarten and Jollage, whose work came to be valued by popes, kings, and heads of state; leading sculptors like Bertel Thorvaldsen; and the very most well-heeled. The pair’s production of architectural souvenirs (they cast gilded models of the Trajan and Antonine Columns; Marcus Aurelius Equestrian Monument; Arches of Constantine and, possibly, Septimius Severus; Capitoline Wolf, as well as the Flaminian and, as we see here, Lateran Obelisk supplanted the even more rarefied, often one-of-a-kind works made, until then, by Rome’s leading decorative arts workshops, especially that operated by the Valadier family.

What is today called the Lateran Obelisk was originally erected in Karnak, c. 1400 BC, at the direction of a couple of Pharoahs Thutmose. Seventeen hundred years later (!), early in the 4th century AD, Roman Emperor Constantinus directed that the immense red Aswan granite monolith be floated down the Nile to Alexandria. By the middle of that century, the obelisk was on its way to Rome, where it was erected at the center of the Circus Maximus. Rome fell, and 1200 years later (!) in the 1580’s, Pope Sixtus V directed that the three broken pieces of the long ago toppled monument be excavated and re-assembled in the Piazza fronting the Cathedral of St. John the Lateran.

The obelisk’s bottom 12 feet were too damaged to re-use (in this way). Even without this, though, the monument remains the world’s largest standing Egyptian obelisk. That, of course, does not mean the discarded Aswan granite went to waste. Instead, it was employed, at least in part, as souvenirs, including the stone mount to the offered model.

Cast into the model’s base are Latin inscriptions, which do not reflect those inscribed when the obelisk was reerected. Instead, these mirror the inscriptions chiseled into the base when it was originally brought to Rome, more than fifteen hundred years ago.

The Lateran is one of many ancient Egyptian obelisks in Rome, which is home to more of these monuments than Egypt.

Hopfgarten and Jollage’s Roman gilded architectural models are vanishingly scarce. We know of pairs of both their obelisks and their columns in Milan’s Pinacoteca Ambrosiana; and happened across another set of both their columns and obelisks in an out-of-theway section of Rome’s Lateran Palace, the ancient part of the St. John the Lateran complex, close to the Lateran Obelisk itself. We asked if we might take a picture. The answer – “Non e possibile”. Last year, the pair of spectacular gilt bronze hopfgarten and jollage obelisk models - the lateran and flaminian - made six figures in an italian auction.

GILDED BRONZE MODEL OF TRAJAN’S COLUMN IN ROME

gilded bronze on Belgian black marble base. By Freres LeBlanc. c. 1880 31-1/2” high $17,500

Beginning in the late 18th century, this monument became a go-to subject for Roman souvenir makers. Early examples in ormolu and semi-precious stone were produced by the fanciest makers, including the studios of the Valadiers and Bellis. By the first part of the 19th century, gilded and darkpatinated examples were offered by the city’s Hopfgarten and Jollage, and shortly afterward, in various antique stones, by a range of other makers.

The present model, in gilded bronze, is very well -made and breaks new ground in the evolving definition of architectural souvenirs; for here is a memento or an urRoman monument, produced and sold in Paris! It’s testament to the Eternal City’s hold on the period’s popular imagination. Made by the Parisian foundry Freres Le Blanc, notice the firm’s characteristic closelyobserved, carefully-wrought detail and rich finish, which approaches that seen in earlier Roman examples.

RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF SATURN

Marble, c. 1870 20 3/4” high $18,500

Among the scarcest of 19th century Roman architectural mementos are these large, marble models of the Temple of Saturn. This handsome, wellmade example, in giallo antico marble mounted to a stepped nero antico base is c. 1870 and in especially fine condition.

Engraved across the entablature of this model is

the Latin “SENATUS POPULUSQUE ROMANUS / INCENDIO CONSUMPTUM RESTITUIT” –

‘The Senate and the People of Rome restored (the Temple) consumed by Fire’ – just as it appears on the ruined temple at the Western end of the Forum.