Original scientific paper
Decadence and ideal. The principles of reconstruction of ancient monuments in Dalmatia from Adam to Andrić
Marko Špikić
Abstract
The paper discusses the ancient monuments reconstruction principles in Dalmatia from Robert Adam in the middle of the 18th century to Vicko Andrić in the middle of the 19th century. In the first part of the text, the author provides a short summary of the tradition of ancient Rome research, from Francesco Petrarca to Robert Adam, incorporating the research of the Palace in Split into that tradition. He recalls the principles relied upon by the Renaissance researchers while interpreting the ancient Rome (Rafael, B. Castiglione, A. Fulvio, Fra Giocondo, J Mazzocchi, F. Calvo, M. van Heemskerck, Leonardo Bufalini, Etienne Du Pérac and Pirro Ligorio), striving for the precise depiction of the original state.
The second part of the text explains the understanding of ancient monuments reconstruction in the 18th century. He recalls theoretical postulates of Quatremère de Quincy and Winckelmann, concerning the restoration and direct examination of monuments (the autopsy principle). They appear as foundations to Robert Adam`s examination of monuments in Split; he published Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia in 1764. Writing about reader`s curiosity and natural desire to discover the original state of the monuments, Adam started a new tradition of reconstructing the original state of the Palace in Split. Due to the low number of remains, the reader was required to rely on conjecture, at least in parts where one cannot reach certainty. Adam`s procedure of reconstruction and imitation of ancient role models was in conformity with the procedure of his contemporary Julien-David Le Roy. While Adam wrote about ideal forms as role models for the neoclassical 18th century architecture, Edward Gibbon saw only signs of decadence in the ruins of Split without direct insight.
Discussions of British antiquarians and historians instigated the development of the local antiquarian community. At the end of the 18th century this community included Julije Bajamonti, Radoš Ante Michieli Vitturi and Ivan Josip Pavlović-Lučić. The aforementioned writers, with their discussions published in Latin and Italian, represent the introduction into modern research of Dalmatian monuments, started by the arrival of the Austrian Emperor Franz I to Dalmatia in 1818 and the foundation of the Museum of Antiquities (Archaeology Museum) in Split in that period. Heads of the Museum and the researchers of the ancient Salona Carlo Lanza, Josip Čobarnić and Francesco Carrara worked on excavations and preservation of monuments in Split and Salona from 1819 to 1850 more than previous researchers, who had to rely on literary authorities.
After 1848, Vicko Andrić, the architect from Split, and Francesco Lanza, a doctor and an antiquarian, introduced the research of the Palace into the new era. Andrić combined Adam`s „natural desire“ of the researcher for comprehending the original state with stylistic and restoration-related integration of the time, which was based on analogy. Francesco Lanza, however, in his monograph Dell’antico palazzo di Diocleziano in Spalato from 1855, emphasised picturesqueness and ruination (avanzi, reminiscenze, residui, vestigia), although, in the same work, he continued the discussion on ideal reconstructions (la produzione d’ideali ricostruzioni).
Keywords
reconstruction; Robert Adam; Diocletian`s Palace; Salona; Vicko Andrić; Francesco Lanza
Hrčak ID:
99695
URI
Publication date:
25.2.2013.
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