From: Stephen Lauf
To: John Wilton-Ely
Subject: back to the Campo Marzio
Date: 2001.09.08 16:50
Hello John,
I trust you had a wonderful time in Italy, and that you're now back in England. I am very grateful for your sending me your paper on the Campo Marzio and Tafuri. It arrived here right around when you left for Italy, so I didn't email respond at that time. So, again thanks for your effort and kindness.
My work has somewhat shifted since our last email correspondences. Briefly, I'm working heavily on my theories revolving around the role of St. Helena (the mother of Constantine) within the Christian church building boom of the early 4th century. It was actually Piranesi and the Ichnographia Campi Martii that lead me to Helena and Rome's Pagan to Christian paradigm shift in general. I'm writing a lot to the lt-antiq (late antiquity) email list, and receiving much scholarly help and encouragement there.
Anyway, getting back to the two states of the Ichnographia, here are some further thoughts and questions:
1. I believe the first state is the plan as it is NOT published in books today. If you look at the smaller and earlier plans of the Campo Marzio within the plates prior to the Ichnographia, you will see earlier plans of the Circus Flaminius the same as the Circus Flaminus plan within the Univ. of Pennsylvania Ichnographia. Furthermore, the aerial view the circuses within the frontispiece depicting the Bustum Hadrian correspond in plan with the UofP Ichnographia.
2. I think the circus delineations of the second state (which are all virtually identical to each other) are in fact delineations based on the Circus of Maxentius (rather than the Circus Maximus). This is somewhat significant in that (according to my research and interpretation of the Ichnographia as a double narrative relating Rome's "inversion from pagan city to Christian city) Maxentius is exactly the ruler of Rome immediately prior to Constantine's Chistian efforts. (I will soon upload at Quondam a paper I wrote and delivered at Brussels November 1999 on this pagan-Christian inversion issue).
3. via questions I raised at lt-antiq, I'm now quite knowledgable of the practice of damnatio memoria, and thus I now wonder if Piranesi purposefully 'erased' portions of the Ichnographiam as a reenactment of the damnatio memoria practice, and, like some extant examples of dm inscriptions, if he then purposefully followed up with a palimpsest (of another plan) over the erasure.
4. I realized that I have yet to see an actual print version of the second state of the Ichnographia. All I've ever seen is an actual first state (1761) version. Do you know if you've seen an actual eighteenth cent. print version of the second state? Moreover, did you happen to make a trip to Rome to see which state the actual engraved plates are in? It is the current state of the plates that would surely identify the second state (that is, unless someone long ago altered a reproduction, and it happens to be an altered reproduction that's been printed in books all these years).
5. I also believe that it was indeed Piranesi that made the changes. My main reasoning here is that Piranesi was very likely the only person that could have made the changes with such dexterity.
Let me know if you have any comments on these ideas, or if you've found out anything to enlighten the matter further on your own.
As to Tafuri, I have documented so many cases within the Ichnographia that carry explicit meaning and message on Piranesi's part, that all of Tafuri's theorizing that the Ichnographia is indicative of and/or percursor to the modern meaninglessness of architectural form is plainly and emphatically wrong. What Tafuri obviouly never did, but definitely should have done, is translate all the Latin labels that Piranesi applies to virtually all the plans of the Ichnographia. It is only through reading the labels in tandem with the planimetrics that the full meaning of Piranesi's Campo Marzio comes through. In other words, all your suppositions as to the incorrectness of Tafuri's interpretation of the CM are right on target.
Hope to hear from you soon.
All the best,
Steve Lauf
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