Carmagnola (Spolie)

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Carmagnola, seen from the loggia
Back of the head of the Carmagnola
Carmagnola, bottom view

As Carmagnola an early Byzantine portrait head is porphyry referred to the on the loggia of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice as spoils attached. It is located outside on the southwest corner and was wrongly associated with Francesco Bussone , known as Carmagnola, who was beheaded in 1432 , hence the name.

description

It is the larger than life head of an Eastern Roman emperor made of porphyry with a height of 40 cm.

The sitter is a beardless man with short cropped hair, crowned by a tiara . The eyes were originally provided with inlaid pupils, of which the drill holes have been preserved. The forehead and the brows are strongly modeled, the nose unusually flat. Instead of the two nostrils there is a wide incision.

The skin and the diadem are polished, but the artist has left the hair matt.

Identification attempts

Justinian I.

Because of the similarity with the emperor portrait on coins has been suggested it could If the sitter to I. Justinian act.

Justinian II

Justinian II was mutilated by Rhinokopia when he was disempowered in 695 ; However, he returned to the imperial throne in 705 and ruled afterwards, as he had to be physically intact as emperor, with a nose prosthesis. The "Carmagnola" could be a portrait of Justinian II and in this case would be the earliest European representation of a person after such a surgical operation.

The archaeologist Richard Delbrueck first put forward the theory in 1914 that the "Carmagnola" showed a skin transplant using a method practiced in ancient India. A flap of skin was cut out from the patient's cheek and shaped into a nose. The corresponding scar on the cheek, according to Delbrueck, did not have to be shown on the statue, and the skin could have been removed from another part of the body.

John P. Remensnyder, Mary E. Bigelow and Robert M. Goldwyn discussed Delbrueck's thesis in 1979 from a medical point of view. They came to the conclusion that the forehead "Carmagnolas" shows traces of such a skin graft. However, it is questionable how knowledge of this method should have come from India to the Byzantine Empire.

The surgeons of the ancient Mediterranean did not perform a transplant, but rather stretched the skin next to the wound so that it could be pulled over it. Oreibasios explained, for example, how H-shaped cuts in the area of ​​the nostrils stretched the adjacent skin so far that the loss of the tip of the nose could be covered. Papadakis et al. consider a skin transplant according to the Indian method to be ruled out. But “Carmagnola” could be a document of plastic surgery according to the Oreibasios method.

Justinian's second term ended with his beheading, whereupon his head was on display in Rome and Ravenna in 713 .

A son of Constantine the Great

According to a source from the 8th century (Parastaseis, chap. 58), two life-size seated figures made of porphyry, the so-called “Just Judges”, were placed on Philadelphion Square in Constantinople. If “Carmagnola” was the head of one of these “judges”, according to recent research it would represent one of the sons of Constantine. One difficulty with this theory is that the Parastaseis also identified the group of tetrarchs who were in the same place with the sons of Constantine, which is certainly inaccurate. In a way that can no longer be elucidated, Philadelphion Square was brought together with Constantine's family in the local tradition.

A Russian pilgrim described that in 1204 the crusaders tried to cut the two seated figures into pieces; because of the hardness of the porphyry, they would have finally given up the removal. The people of Constantinople attributed numinous power to these figures, so that the laborious dismemberment by the conquerors was less due to the material value of the porphyry than to the symbolic value of the figures: “At some point, after the Just Judges had been knocked off and quartered, the Venetians took one of the heads with and attached it to the balcony of San Marco, which overlooked the piazzetta - like the impaled head of a decapitated prisoner. "

Meaning at the current location

The "blood-red" head on the loggia of San Marco can be seen from afar. He was part of the public staging of executions that took place between the two pillars in St. Mark's Square. In 1611, the heads of beheaded criminals were displayed on the porphyry column drum ( Colonna del Bando ) below the Carmagnola.

literature

  • Richard Delbrueck : Carmagnola (portrait of a Byzantine emperor) . In: Communications from the Imperial German Archaeological Institute, Roman Department . Volume 29, 1914, pp. 71-84 ( digitized version ).
  • Richard Delbrueck: Antique porphyry works (= studies of late antique art history. Volume 6). De Gruyter, Berlin / Leipzig 1932, p. 119 Fig. 48.
  • James D. Breckenridge : Again the Carmagnola . In: Gesta. Volume 20, 1981, 1-7.
  • Rudolf HW Stichel : The Roman emperor statue at the end of antiquity . Rome 1982, pp. 64–65, plates 35–36.
  • Fabio Barry: Disiecta membra: Ranieri Zeno, the Imitation of Constantinople, the Spolia Style, and Justice at San Marco . In: Henry Maguire, Robert S. Nelson (Eds.): San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice . Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2010, pp. 6-62 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Delbrueck: Carmagnola (portrait of a Byzantine emperor) . In: Communications from the Imperial German Archaeological Institute, Roman Department. Volume 29, 1914, pp. 71-84, here p. 71.
  2. ↑ Marios Papadakis et al .: Plastic Surgery of the Face in Byzantine Times. In: Demetrios Michaelides (Ed.): Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Oxbow, Oxford 2014, p. 161.
  3. ^ Richard Delbrueck: Carmagnola (portrait of a Byzantine emperor) . In: Communications from the Imperial German Archaeological Institute, Roman Department. Volume 29, 1914, pp. 71-84, here p. 83.
  4. ^ Richard Delbrueck: Carmagnola (portrait of a Byzantine emperor) . In: Communications from the Imperial German Archaeological Institute, Roman Department. Volume 29, 1914, pp. 71-84, here pp. 78-79.
  5. ↑ JP Remensnyder, ME Bigelow, RM Goldwyn: Justinian II and Carmagnola: a Byzantine rhinoplasty? In: Plastic and reconstructive surgery. Volume 63, Number 1, January 1979, pp. 19-25.
  6. ↑ a b Marios Papadakis et al: Plastic Surgery of the Face in Byzantine Times. In: Demetrios Michaelides (Ed.): Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Oxbow, Oxford 2014, pp. 159-161.
  7. ^ Richard Delbrueck: Carmagnola (portrait of a Byzantine emperor) . In: Communications from the Imperial German Archaeological Institute, Roman Department. Volume 29, 1914, pp. 71-84, here p. 77.
  8. ↑ Marios Papadakis et al .: Plastic Surgery of the Face in Byzantine Times. In: Demetrios Michaelides (Ed.): Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Oxbow, Oxford 2014, p. 160.
  9. ↑ Fabio Barry: Disiecta membra: Ranieri Zeno, the Imitation of Constantinople, the Spolia Style, and Justice at San Marco . In: Henry Maguire, Robert S. Nelson (Eds.): San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice . Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2010, pp. 6–62, here p. 38.
  10. ^ Porphyry Head of Emperor. In: The Byzantine Legacy. Retrieved April 13, 2018 .
  11. ^ A b Fabio Barry: Disiecta membra: Ranieri Zeno, the Imitation of Constantinople, the Spolia Style, and Justice at San Marco . In: Henry Maguire, Robert S. Nelson (Eds.): San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice . Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2010, pp. 6–62, here p. 37.
  12. ↑ Fabio Barry: Disiecta membra: Ranieri Zeno, the Imitation of Constantinople, the Spolia Style, and Justice at San Marco . In: Henry Maguire, Robert S. Nelson (Eds.): San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice . Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2010, pp. 6–62, here p. 42.