Campana reliefs

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Heracles fights with the Cretan bull, panel from Quadraro , found in 1812, now in the Vatican Museums

Campanareliefs (also Campanaplatten ) are ancient Roman terracotta - or clay reliefs dating from the middle of the 1st century BC. They are named after the Italian collector Giampietro Campana , who collected these reliefs in large numbers and was the first to publish about them in 1842.

The reliefs were once used as roof cladding, but also as interior decoration. They were a mass product and were used to decorate temples and public and private buildings. They have their origins in the roof terracottas of Etruscan temple architecture . On the reliefs there were various motifs from mythology and religion, from everyday Roman life, landscape images and ornamental themes. Originally they were painted in color, of which only traces have survived, if at all. They were mainly produced in the Lazio region around the city of Rome , and their use was largely restricted to this area. Five different basic types were produced. Today, examples of this genre can be found in almost all major museums of Roman art around the world.

Research history

Since the intensification of excavations in the Mediterranean area in the 19th century, excavations in and around Rome have increasingly revealed terracotta tiles that have been found to have an architectural connection. In the past, objects made of metal and marble were popular with excavators, scientists and collectors, but artifacts made of other materials have now also attracted growing interest, such as the ancient Greek and Etruscan vases as well as the Campana reliefs.

Giampietro Campana (before 1857/58)

The first collector who made the reliefs a central collector's theme was the Marchese Giampietro Campana, director of the pawn shop in Rome. His fame in archeology was so great in his time that he was made an honorary member of the Istituto di corrispondenza archeologica . In 1842 he published his collection, arranged according to motifs, in the book Antiche opere in plastica , in which he scientifically summarized his findings on the reliefs for the first time. Therefore the plates are called Campana reliefs after him . After Campana was sentenced to imprisonment for embezzlement in 1858, he lost his honorary membership in the Istituto di corrispondenza archeologica and his collection was dissolved and sold. The terracotta reliefs that he collected are now in the Louvre in Paris , the British Museum in London and the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg . But others such as August Kestner also collected such reliefs and fragments from them in large numbers. Today, specimens of these plates can be found in most major collections of Roman archeology. Most of the reliefs are still in Italian museums and collections today.

View of the list of the Campana collection from the 2nd edition of his book Antiche opere in plastica from 1851. Long rows of "Campana reliefs" on the walls.

In spite of Campana's research, the reliefs led a rather unnoticed existence for a long time. Compared to works made of marble, they were considered to be a rather inferior handicraft product and not an artistic work. The realization that they are important sources for handicrafts, decorative taste and iconography , however, prevailed at the latest by the beginning of the 20th century. In 1911 Hermann von Rohden and Hermann Winnefeld published the work Architectural Roman Clay Reliefs of the Imperial Era in the series Die antiken Terrakotten edited by Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz with a text and an illustrated book. It was the first attempt not only to publish the reliefs, but to organize them and classify them in terms of art history. For the first time, the two authors differentiated the types of representation, discussed the use and dealt with development, style and iconography. The work is fundamental to this day. After that, apart from the publication of new finds, interest flattened again for more than 50 years. First the dissertation Campana reliefs. Typological and style-critical studies by Adolf Borbein brought the archaeological group of finds back into the focus of attention. In his work, Borbein was able to prove the origin of the Campana reliefs from the Etruscan-Italian roof terracottas. In addition, he dealt with the adoption of motifs and templates from other art genres and proved that there were also creative new creations by the craftsmen.

Since then, the researchers have mainly devoted themselves to chronological aspects or presented collections of material from recent excavations and publications from old collections. In 1999, Marion Rauch conducted an iconographic study of Bacchic Themes and Nile Images on Campana reliefs, and Kristine Bøggild Johannsen described in 2006 how the panels were used in Roman villas on the basis of secured find complexes. It has been shown that the reliefs belonged to the common furnishings and decorations of Roman villas from the middle of the 1st to the beginning of the 2nd century, both of country houses of the Roman upper class and of agriculturally used villae rusticae .

Material, technology, manufacture and painting

The quality of ceramic products crucially depended on the quality and processing of the clay. The emaciation was of particular importance, in which various additives were added to the slurried clay depending on its later use: sand, chopped straw, crushed broken brick or pozzolan soil . The later dimensional stability of the panels depended on these additives. The shrinkage during drying had to be minimized so that the panels would not crack and retain their shape. These additives can be recognized as small red, brown or black grains, especially on the break lines; sometimes they stand out clearly from the plates. When examining closed collection complexes such as the Museum of Antiquities at Heidelberg University and the Museum August Kestner in Hanover , gradations in the fineness of the structure were found.

Satyrs harvesting grapes on a top plate in the Museum August Kestner Hannover: color reconstruction
Satyrs harvesting grapes on a top plate in the Museum August Kestner Hannover: Original

The plates were not individual works of art, but series goods. Negatively shaped models were drawn from an original form, the patrix . Then the moist clay came into these models, the matrices . Picture fields and moldings were probably formed separately; there are moldings known that were used in various motifs. After drying, the plate was removed from the mold and, if necessary, reworked with a modeling iron; then came the fire. After firing and cooling, the terracottas were painted, sometimes the colors were applied before the fire. Usually the reliefs were provided with a coating that served as a painting surface. This could be white, or gray-yellow in Augustan times , but also stucco .

So far, no canonically prescribed use of colors has been proven. Only the relief ground was usually light blue since Augustan times, especially for scenic and figurative motifs, but could also include two or more colors. The color of human skin was mostly represented in matte pink to pink. In Dionysian scenes, the skin color could also go red-brown. In Augustan times, light yellow was not atypical for the skin. In Hanover alone, the colors violet-brown, red-brown, dark red, red, yellow, yellow-brown, turquoise / green, dark brown, pink / pink, blue, black and white could be detected. The painting is lost in the vast majority of cases, at best residual traces can be seen.

Dissemination and dating

Relief from the Dionysian environment: Ecstatic satyr , plate added to the Louvre based on a better preserved plate in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City . From the Campanas collection.

Almost all Campana reliefs come from central Italy, especially from Lazio. In Lazio, especially in the vicinity of the city of Rome, the largest and most important workshops can be assumed. Beyond Lazio, the plates can be found above all in Campania and in the earlier Etruscan influence . Marion Rauch compiled the reliefs with Dionysian- Bacchian themes towards the end of the 1990s and was able to confirm these findings for the subject area she was investigating. So far, pictures with Nile scenes can only be found in Lazio. So far, no pieces have been found in the former Italian settlement areas of the Greeks and in Sicily. A specimen from the Academic Art Museum in Bonn was allegedly found at Hagia Trias in Greece. It shows Nike killing a bull . Some pieces come from the western sphere of influence of Rome, the ancient regions of Hispania and Gaul in today's Spain and France.

The first Campana reliefs were made around the middle of the 1st century BC. Manufactured in the late phase of the Roman Republic ; in the first quarter of the 1st century they had their blooming phase. At this time, the reliefs found not only their greatest distribution, but also their greatest variety of motifs. The last reliefs are to be set after around 200 years of production and use in Hadrianic times . While the basic dating of the genre is largely considered certain, the exact dating of the individual pieces is rarely possible. A relative chronology can be established within the genre based on motivic and stylistic comparisons. Iconographic research is less helpful here, as the motifs fall back on an inherited treasure trove of motifs that has been used largely unchanged over a long period of time. Motifs from everyday life are more helpful, such as the representation of datable buildings such as the Capitoline Temple , which was built in 82 and is depicted on a relief in the Louvre in Paris, which at least allow post-quem dating .

Motif illustration of the relief with the curetes dancing around the Zeus child in Roscher's detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology

Another dating aid is the quality of the clay. Over time, its consistency became coarser, looser, grainier and lighter. The ornamental strips on the panels are also helpful. Since they were the same for entire series of motifs, one can reconstruct workshop relationships here and assume simultaneity. With very common motifs such as the ionic kymation (egg stick) and the palmette , however, they are only of limited use, since different workshops used them at the same time. Finally, size comparisons also help with dating. Matrices were not only made from the original male parts, but sometimes also from the plates themselves. This led to a natural "shrinkage" of the panel dimensions. Since the matrices were sometimes used over a longer period of time, there were sometimes noticeable changes in the size of the plates. In the case of a motif depicting curetes dancing arms in front of the Zeus child , the impression could be traced between the oldest and the youngest relief over a period of 170 years. In the course of time, the plate lost 40 percent of its size. In the case of panels with the same motif, smaller panels should therefore always be viewed as younger. In addition, the motif also loses sharpness due to the repeated impressions.

Morphology and use

Even if one can guess where exactly the relief panels were attached, there is no absolute certainty, as no panel has been found at the place of its original use to date. In research it is largely unanimously assumed that the plates served as decoration and protection, although it is uncertain exactly where in the building they were attached. The origin of the Etruscan-Italian temple architecture is obvious and is considered to be certain, but it can be assumed that temples were not the predominant context of use, at least in a later phase. Due to their comparatively small size, the reliefs are more suitable for being viewed from close up, which would therefore speak in favor of using them on smaller building structures. Like the Etruscan-Italian forerunners, the panels were initially used to clad the wooden temple roofs and thus to protect them from the effects of the weather, but were then used more and more in secular areas. There they lost their protective function and became wall decorations. At times, both forms were used side by side in temples, until the Campana plates finally replaced the old form. Due to their fragility, the bricks had to be replaced frequently, and it is believed that this was the case with the bricks of a roof about every 25 years. At first this was done by copying the already existing decorative panels, later newer motifs were also used. Since stone temples increasingly replaced the previous wooden buildings in the 1st century, only Campana plates were used in the redesign.

Two griffins facing each other on a Sima in the Museum August Kestner Hanover
Antefix (front tile) of a Campana relief in the August Kestner Museum in Hanover: full view of the siren with its wings raised

Campana reliefs can be categorized according to five criteria: chronology , geography, iconography, morphology and use. The most productive subdivision is the morphological typification, i.e. the division according to the shape of the relief plates. There is facing panels, top panels, Simen , coronations and in a special role Antefixes .

  • Cladding panels: on the upper edge, which forms a smooth end to the panel, there were decorations with egg stick patterns, on the lower edge with a lotus palmette anthemion . The lower end followed the contour of the ornament pattern. There were three to four holes in the plate through which the plates were attached to the wall.
  • Sims and coronations : Sims and coronations belong together. They were connected to one another according to the tongue and groove principle . On the top of the ledges there was a groove into which the underside of the coronation above was inserted. Like the cladding panels, the ledges ended with an egg-stick pattern at the top, but the undersides were left as a smooth strip. Gargoyles could be set in the ledges . The coronations mostly showed ornamental, floral patterns. They were worked on the underside with insert strips that were inserted into the ledges. The combination of the two elements was used as a lateral, lower roof closure.
  • Top panels : The top panels had the same reliefs as the cladding panels. But they ended at the top with a palmette-anthemion pattern and also had this shape. There were no peg holes. At the bottom, like the coronations, they were made with insert strips. In this way, these two decorative elements mixed here. Unlike the other forms, these panels were intended for interior decoration, where they could form longer friezes.
  • Antefixes: The front tiles lay on or on the eaves , the bottom row of tiles, and closed the front opening. They consisted of two parts. The arching brick was placed over the lowest brick layer, the front "lock" closed the hollow brick with a vertical plate. This plate could be decorated and was also often painted.

  • Drawing of a cladding panel

  • Drawing a Sima

  • Redrawing a coronation

  • Drawing of a top plate

The development of the terracotta tiles shows parallels to the marble decorative reliefs " Neo-Attic shape" of the late republic and early imperial times, without the different shapes being mutually dependent. Nevertheless, both forms make use of the same range of types and topics. While the marble reliefs were individual pieces both in production and in presentation, the Campana reliefs were not only intended as a single work in production, but also when used as a coherent frieze.

Motifs

Remains of a gargoyle from a Sima in the August Kestner Museum in Hanover: Mask with slight damage

The Campana reliefs are characterized by their great variety of motifs. The images can be assigned to four large groups:

  • Mythological themes: There are again three large areas here. On the one hand, the Homeric epics with the Trojan War and the resulting events such as the journey home of Odysseus , on the other hand, the stories of heroes , especially Heracles , but also of Theseus and others. The third major area was Dionysian themes.
  • Landscape pictures : Pictures with Nile landscapes were particularly popular.
  • Everyday images : This area includes depictions from the real life of the Romans, even if these, such as the triumph , were not everyday. There were presentations from theaters, palaces , the circus and also from prisoners.
  • Ornamental pictures: These include not only simple ornamental forms such as tendrils, but also mask or gorgon pictures .

Egyptian elements on some plates are of particular interest. On a cladding panel, for example, which are kept in molds in various degrees of preservation in the British Museum and the August Kestner Museum in Hanover, examples of crude imitation of Egyptian hieroglyphs , which were rarely found in Roman art. Of particular interest is the reception of ancient buildings and works of art, such as the Capitoline Temple mentioned above and the Parthenon frieze .

literature

Web links

Commons : Campanareliefs  - collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ For the history of research see: Anne Viola Siebert: Geschichte (n) in Ton. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), pp. 19-21.
  2. ^ Rita Perry: The Campanareliefs . von Zabern, Mainz 1997, ISBN 3-8053-1827-8 (= catalog of the collection of ancient cabaret of the Archaeological Institute of Heidelberg University , Volume 4), pp. 52–53
  3. ^ Anne Viola Siebert : Story (s) in tone. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), p. 28.
  4. ↑ For the painting see: Hermann von Rohden, Hermann Winnefeld: Architectural Roman clay reliefs of the imperial era . Verlag W. Spemann, Berlin and Stuttgart 1911, pp. 26-29.
  5. ^ Anne Viola Siebert: Story (s) in tone. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), p. 30.
  6. ^ Marion Rauch: Bacchic themes and Nile images on Campana reliefs . Leidorf, Rahnden 1999; ISBN 3-89646-324-1 (= International Archeology , Volume 52), pp. 202, 269.
  7. ↑ inventory number D 205; Harald Mielsch : Roman architectural terracottas and wall paintings in the Academic Art Museum Bonn . Mann, Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-7861-2195-8 , p. 12 No. 7.
  8. ^ Marion Rauch: Bacchic themes and Nile images on Campana reliefs . Leidorf, Rahnden 1999; ISBN 3-89646-324-1 (International Archeology, Volume 52), p. 2
  9. ↑ Inventory number 3839.
  10. ^ Kristine Bøggild Johannsen: Campanareliefs in context. A contribution to the re-evaluation of the function and importance of the Campana reliefs in Roman villas . In: Facta 22 (2008), pp. 15-38.
  11. ^ Anne Viola Siebert: Story (s) in tone. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), pp. 24-26.
  12. ^ Anne Viola Siebert: Story (s) in tone. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), p. 23.
  13. ^ Anne Viola Siebert: Story (s) in tone. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), p. 24.
  14. ^ Anne Viola Siebert: Story (s) in tone. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), pp. 24-25.
  15. ^ Anne Viola Siebert: Story (s) in tone. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), p. 25.
  16. ^ Anne Viola Siebert: Story (s) in tone. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), pp. 25-26.
  17. ^ Anne Viola Siebert: Story (s) in tone. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), p. 26.
  18. ↑ Fragment of terracotta Campana relief: imitation Hieroglyphs, Egyptian-style figure to left .
  19. ^ Christian E. Loeben : An extraordinary type. Egyptian on a terracotta plate . In: Anne Viola Siebert: History (s) in tone. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), pp. 68–73.
  20. ^ Anne Viola Siebert: Story (s) in tone. Roman architectural terracottas . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2579-1 (= Museum Kestnerianum  16), p. 74.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 21, 2012 .