Spoilage
Spolia (from Latin spolium : “booty, robbery, something taken from the enemy”) are components and other remnants such as parts of reliefs or sculptures, friezes and architrave stones , remains of columns or capitals that come from buildings of older cultures and are reused in new structures.
The installation of spoilers can - in addition to the practical use - also be meant as the transfer of a tradition if they are taken over from the previous building and reappear as "relics" in a prominent place on the new building. This is especially true if spoils are stylistically outside of the newer architectural design concept. The sanctity of a place can be passed on in this way. A fragmentary, hidden or wrong installation of a spoiler can, however, also be understood as a demonstrative mark of overcoming a previous culture.
term
The term was applied to architecture for the first time in the Renaissance : In his description of Rome from 1510, the Florentine Canon Francesco Albertini reports that the porphyry columns in the chapel of Pope Sixtus IV in St. Peter's Church are "Spolia" from Diocletian's baths, and little later, in the so-called Raphael letter to Pope Leo X, the spolia on the Arch of Constantine is mentioned , the building that should then be of particular importance for the modern research discussion about spolia. Already Giorgio Vasari used the term in its fundamental artists History Le vite dei più eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori italiani naturally and this document, the term should then feed have taken art history research in the 20th century.
history
Antiquity
In the pre-modern era, when building materials were expensive and mostly scarce, the reuse of building materials was a natural practice of the construction company, especially when it came to materials that would otherwise have to be fetched from far away. This is how many spoils in architecture arose without any artistic or programmatic intention. In ancient times, building ruins were used as a quarry for new buildings such as B. at the mausoleum of Halicarnassus or the city of Tralleis , from whose stones the new foundation Aydın was built. The Justinian Cistern ( Yerebatan Sarnıçı or Yerebatan Sarayı) in Istanbul is supported by hundreds of mostly Corinthian columns from other buildings. Two of these sit on monumental Medusa heads as bases.
middle Ages
Since the Romanesque period at the latest , Spolia has also been used in a planned manner: Churches sometimes show complete pre-Romanesque or Visigoth, Longobard and Irish Scottish portals (e.g. some churches and chapels in Aachen , Regensburg , Tuscania , Perpignan or Romainmôtier ); the cathedral of Syracuse hides the columns of a Greek temple that was formerly in the same place. Sculptures from Byzantium , such as the statues of the tetrarchs carved in porphyry , adorn the corner of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice ; the pillars of the Palatine Chapel in Aachen come from Ravenna .
The tombstones of the Jewish cemetery in Regensburg were reused many times after its destruction.
Renaissance
Since the Renaissance , Spolia has been used primarily as a romantic quote. They were collected and traded in order to build them into villas and palaces in a seemingly random but clearly visible manner. The artificial ruins built in the 18th and 19th centuries are in this tradition, although they no longer contain spolia.
present
In the present, spoilers are mostly used for more decorative reasons and as an original design element, but sometimes also for historical reasons as a reminder of a previous building. One example from 2009 is the "Klostergarten Lehel" residential complex by Hild und K Architektur . In terms of monument preservation, the latter is viewed critically, as only individual fragments of a monument are preserved and these are integrated incoherently. In addition, there is a risk that buildings of cultural historical significance will be cannibalized through dubious trading in decorative components.
Others
Antique gems and reliefs on medieval book covers and reliquaries can also be called spolia.
literature
- Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann : The spoils in late antique architecture. Beck, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-7696-1473-9 (session reports of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Munich, Philosophical-Historical Class; 1975, No. 6).
- Joachim Poeschke (Hrsg.): Ancient Spolien in the architecture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7774-6870-3 .
- Arnold Esch : Reusing antiquity in the Middle Ages. The archaeologist's point of view and the historian's point of view. Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-11-018426-5 (Hans Lietzmann lectures; 7).
- Richard Brilliant, Dale Kinney (Eds.): Reuse Value. Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture, from Constantine to Sherrie Levine. Ashgate, Farnham 2011, ISBN 978-1-4094-2422-2 .
- Stefan Altekamp, Carmen Marcks-Jacobs, Peter Seiler (eds.): Perspectives on Spolia Research 1. Spoliage and Transposition. Topoi. Berlin Studies of the Ancient World Vol. 15, De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-029105-6 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans-Rudolf Meier: The beginnings of the modern concept of Spolia in Raffael and Vasari and the Arch of Constantine as a paradigm of the interpretation pattern for the use of Spolia , in: Das Münster. Journal for Christian Art and Art History Year 2007, Issue 1, ISSN 0027-299X , Page 2.
- ↑ Lehel monastery garden. In: Hild and K Architects. Accessed on July 18, 2020 (German).