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Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, until

February 9, then Grand Palais, Paris,
from March 19
Eugenio La Rocca, et al
AUGUSTO
336pp. Electa. 32.
978 88 3709 607 6
Published: 2 January 2014
A relief panel from the Augustan Ara Pacis, showing
part of a procession of senatorial families Photograph:
Photo RMN - Herve Lewandowski
The new Augustus
MARY BEARD
O n September 23, 1937, Benito Mussolini opened a vast
exhibition of Roman culture, the Mostra Auguste della
Romanit, to celebrate the 2,000th anniversary of the birth
of Augustus, first Emperor of Rome, on the same date in 63
BC. It was housed in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni
(Exhibition Hall) on the Via Nazionale in Rome, which had
been the venue for other notable Fascist propagandist
shows; and it put on display more than 3,000 plaster casts,
as well as hundreds of models, plans and photographs, to
illustrate the achievements of the Fascist empires ancient
predecessor. Even though many of the original works of art
could easily have been brought to the exhibition from little
more than a mile away, this was emphatically a display of
reproductions and copies. In fact, it was seen as a tribute to
the creative genius of the Fascist regime that it could
recreate the glories of ancient Rome on such a grand scale.
Meanwhile quite contrary to the protocols of modern
exhibition design the walls of the Palazzo were plastered
with the Fascist equivalent of information panels:
quotations from ancient authors and modern poets
(Gabriele DAnnunzio prominent among them), and slogans
from Mussolini (No one reaches power without discipline
and so forth). Even the new faade of the building, modelled
on a triumphal arch and specially constructed for the
exhibition, carried quotations from Latin classics
underneath the repeated words Rex (King, referring to the puppet Vittorio Emanuele) and Dux (Leader,
referring to Mussolini, il Duce, himself).
Despite this blatant propaganda, the Mostra on the whole went down rather well with British scholars: one
reviewer, Eugnie Strong (not without some wistful Fascist sympathies herself), referred to the rare taste and
intuition in the display of the early history of the city, enthused about the dazzling show of reproduction
silverware, and expressed the debt of gratitude owed to the organizers by all students of ancient Rome . . . for
making visible the magnificent output of the Empire.
You can recapture something of the Mostras atmosphere even now not only from the comprehensive 900-
page handbook that went with it, but from a visit to the Museo della Civilt Romana. Designed to house part of
an even more extravagant International Exhibition that was to have taken place in 1942 (but for obvious
reasons did not), this Museum now displays most of the objects (minus the slogans) from Mussolinis show.
They include what must count as its most lasting legacy: the beautiful scale model (1:250) of the whole of the
ancient city of Rome. Though now little visited (except by film crews and parties of disaffected Italian
schoolchildren), it has had a most remarkable afterlife, blazoned on posters and tourist brochures that still sell
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in their thousands. Even in the digital age, it remains perhaps the most evocative reconstruction of imperial
Rome there is.
The Emperor Augustus had a long life, dying at the age of seventy-five, in 14 AD appropriately enough in
August, the month that had already been renamed in his honour by the grateful (or sycophantic) senate. This
2,000th anniversary is now being commemorated in Rome by another exhibition just a few hundred yards away
from the Palazzo delle Esposizioni: simply titled Augusto, it is on show in the Scuderie del Quirinale, the
wonderful exhibition space created some fifteen years ago out of an eighteenth-century stable block on the
Quirinal hill, from where in March it moves to the Grand Palais in Paris. Seventy-five years on, the curators of
this new, and much smaller, show have clearly been concerned to distance it from its Fascist forebear. Indeed,
in the first essay in the excellent catalogue that accompanies the exhibition, Andrea Giardina takes great care to
treat Mussolinis Augustus with shrewd, analytic dispassion and so to consign that Mostra to history.
The two shows are certainly very different. Where the Mostra Augustea celebrated the art of reconstruction,
Augusto celebrates the artistic originality of the Augustan age (31 BC14 AD), particularly in sculpture; though
painting is discussed in the catalogue, there is none on display (no Livias Garden Room, for example, nor the
exquisite decoration from the Villa della Farnesina). Even so, the show has managed to gather together in one
place more of the most significant, original works of art of Augustus reign than have ever been assembled
before even in the ancient world itself. This makes it possible, for the first time, directly to compare portraits
of the Emperor scattered across Europe (from London to Corinth, Ancona to Athens); and, no less important, to
put side by side statues usually housed a short but inconvenient journey apart, the other side of the city of
Rome. I have no idea when (if ever) the famous statue of Augustus as a priest, now in the Palazzo Massimo
Museum near the Roma Termini station, was last under the same roof as the even more famous Prima Porta
Augustus from the Vatican, showing the emperor in the guise of a heroic general. But seeing them in close
proximity is a powerful reminder not of the bland similarity of these imperial portraits (as people often
imagine), but of their startling variety.
Just a single object managed to find a place in both exhibitions: the only replica (I believe) in the new show and
one of those dazzling pieces of reproduction silverware that so impressed Strong in the 1930s now with its
own secret history. A highlight of Augusto is the extraordinary collection of original plate and precious metal
from the period. This includes key pieces from the silver treasure found outside Pompeii, at Boscoreale (far
better displayed here than in their rather gloomy home in the Louvre), and a wonderful pair of silver cups found
in an ancient tomb in Denmark (decorated with scenes from Greek mythology, these have the name of their
Roman owner, Silius, scratched on them perhaps a diplomatic gift to the local potentate in whose burial they
ended up). Among these objects is an almost equally impressive silver wine jar, covered in spiralling silver
foliage (a characteristic decorative motif of the time).
It is part of another rich Roman treasure, from Hildesheim on the Rhine frontier. The original jar was lost,
probably destroyed, during the Second World War. Its place here is taken by the exact replica from the Museo
della Civilt Romana that had already been on show, alongside other replicas from the same hoard, in
Mussolinis Mostra. Significantly, I suspect, the catalogue entry makes no mention of its previous appearance
seventy-five years ago. It is more, however, than a difference between copies and originals. The scope of the
1937 show was much wider than that of the current exhibition. As the slightly ambivalent title of the Mostra
hints (the Augustan exhibition of Roman culture), its aim was to display the whole of the ancient Roman
achievement, with the reign of Augustus as the key moment at its centre. There were not only those tasteful
galleries on the early history of the city, but room after room covered such topics as Roads and Means of
Communication (plenty of models of bridges and plaster casts of milestones), Hunting and Fishing: Diet,
Engineering (more models, this time of aqueducts) and, of course, The Army. In the plan of the show, it is
clear that the galleries devoted to Augustus lay at its heart. The reign of the first emperor was the culmination of
the rise of Rome through its early centuries; and, so the message clearly ran, Augustus was the ancestor of
Roman power and greatness (in all its aspects, from literature and technology to military conquest) down to
Mussolini.
More unexpected, perhaps, was the Mostras emphasis on Christianity. The triumph of the Church was
represented in a series of galleries, displaying copies of early images of Jesus, as well as photographs and
models of early Christian buildings and catacombs. But Christianity was explicitly linked to Augustus too. In the
main hall of the exhibition, which housed a whole series of replicas of statues, busts, coins, cameos and gems of
the Emperor, there also stood a tall glass pillar framing a cross; on the cross were inscribed the words, in Latin,
of the gospel of St Luke, which told the story of the nativity. The idea was to underline the fact that Jesus was
born in Augustus reign; he could even be given some credit for Christianity too. Possibly no feature of the
Exhibition attracted more attention, observed Strong.
In Augusto there are no triumphs of Roman engineering, no bridges, and not a trace of Christianity. The
curators have focused much more narrowly on the artistic achievements of Augustus reign and its immediate
aftermath. They are concerned most of all to explore how artistic imagery and symbols helped to establish the
new regime of one-man-rule, after the quasi-democratic Republican government collapsed in chaos and
bloodshed. How did Augustus mark both his own continuity with and difference from those earlier
traditions? How did the art sponsored by the new empire signal the rebirth of Rome or, more correctly, its
return to a glorious Golden Age? More firmly identified portrait statues and busts of Augustus survive than of
any other single Roman, over 200 of them. How were these portraits used to secure his power, and how were
they understood by his subjects? How did he exploit artistic style (in particular a Greek classicizing mode) to
stamp his own distinctive image, and distinctive politics, on the Roman world?
The couple of hundred works of Augustan art that the curators have brought together to explore these questions
make an unforgettable display. Anyone who fondly imagines that Greek art was almost by definition superior to
its Roman descendant need only visit this show (the cameos alone are breathtaking). For those who do not
know the art of the Roman Empire well, it offers a stunning introduction to the very best that Rome could
produce (the single pilaster capital from one of Augustus major building projects demonstrates the skill and
care that could be lavished on a simple architectural block). For specialists, there are all kinds of novelties and
surprises.
We find, for example, an unexpected new look at the most famous image of Augustus of all: the full-length
marble statue (possibly a copy of an earlier bronze) found in his widows villa at Prima Porta, just outside
Rome. The Prima Porta Augustus shows the Emperor, his arm raised as if addressing his troops, dressed in an
elaborately sculptured cuirass (featuring a landscape of mythological and astral figures, centring on a scene of
the submission of the enemy Parthians to the power of Augustus and Rome as if to put Roman military
victory in cosmic terms). He is shown bare-footed (a hint at divine status according to the conventions of
ancient representations), and close to his shin, doubling as a structural support for this weighty piece of
sculpture, is a little Cupid, surely to remind us that the Emperor traced his lineage back to the goddess Venus.
In its permanent home in the Vatican, the statue is displayed against a wall. Here, in the Scuderie, it is possible
to walk all around it. What is striking is that the back is hardly finished: it is only very roughly carved, and that
wonderful decoration on the cuirass stops abruptly as soon as it has turned the corner of Augustus hips. It must
originally have been intended to be placed up against a wall, its rear completely invisible. Even artists of this
quality clearly did not bother to spend time on what could not be seen.
The biggest coup, though, comes at the very end of the exhibition, where the sculpted panels from what must
have been a major monument in honour of Augustus, erected soon after his death, are reassembled for the first
time since the sixteenth century from pieces now scattered between Cordoba, Seville and Budapest. After they
had been found somewhere in South Italy (exactly where is unknown), the Spanish viceroy of the kingdom of
Naples tried to ship them all back to Spain. Some were damaged in the process (like Lord Elgins workmen, the
Spanish agents tried to saw the backs off the panels to make them lighter to transport). The broken ones were
abandoned, and were later acquired by a collector from Budapest. The others were eventually split up in Spain,
passed down through different branches of the viceroys family. Bringing them together again, the exhibition
gives us a new Augustan monument (even though the Spanish pieces have been heavily restored). We seem to
have the remains of a marble life cycle of Augustus going from an extraordinary scene of the Battle of Actium
(where he defeated Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BC), watched over by the god Apollo, through his triumphal
procession, to a ceremony in honour of the Emperor after his death, now a Roman god. It is a cheering
reminder of how much ancient art there is still to rediscover.
The differences between the two Augustan shows, seventy-five years apart, are instructive, and they do not
come down merely to politics. Of course, the curators of Augusto have been keen to avoid any taint of the
ideology that ran through the Mostra. But the fact is that there has been an art-historical, as much as a political,
revolution in the intervening period. In the 1930s (and for decades afterwards) few historians gave much
attention to Augustan art, in its own right. To be sure, it was regularly used (as in the Mostra) for illustration of
the characters and political events that defined the period, but no one cared very much about the way that
artistic style, symbols and patterns were integral to the persuasive success of the new regime.
The questions that lie behind the new exhibition (on the major role of art in the establishment of Augustus
autocratic regime) go back directly to a single groundbreaking book by the German art historian Paul Zanker,
The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, originally published in 1988. It was he who first showed that the
hallmarks of Augustan art the multiple imperial portraits, the classicizing grandeur, even the repeated images
of luxuriant vegetation (with its strong hint of prosperity and plenty) were all related to the establishment and
acceptance of autocratic power after the miserable downfall of the Republic. In many ways Augusto is the show
of Zankers now classic book, and the catalogue (for which Zanker wrote an essay) is a wonderful adjunct to it
partly for the stunning illustrations, which outclass the murky black-and-whites in the Power of Images.
But who was behind all this artistic production? Zankers book has prompted some to imagine an imperial
propaganda office, churning out portraits of the leader and cunningly manipulating, from the top down,
representations of Romulus and Remus, peace and plenty, triumphal processions, and so forth. Others have
argued for a more subtle and ambivalent process: spontaneous trickle-down of key images, creative imitation
from the bottom up, and subversive readings of art as well as of official literature. Subversive readings there
may well have been. But these sculptures gathered together in the Scuderie point to an imperial machine that
knew what it was doing in the moulding of popular opinion. It is hard to resist the idea that Augustus might
actually have liked the way Mussolinis exhibition presented him.
Mary Beard is Classics editor of the TLS and teaches Classics at the University of Cambridge. Her most recent
books include Confronting the Classics: Traditions, adventures and innovations and All in A Dons Day, a
collection of pieces taken from her TLS blog, both of which were published last year.
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